Climate Change Adaptation Strategies and Approaches for Outdoor Recreation

Climate change will alter opportunities and demand for outdoor recreation through altered winter weather conditions and season length, climate-driven changes in user preferences, and damage to recreational infrastructure, among other factors. To ensure that outdoor recreation remains sustainable in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2019-12, Vol.11 (24), p.7030
Main Authors: O’Toole, Daniel, Brandt, Leslie A., Janowiak, Maria K., Schmitt, Kristen M., Shannon, P. Danielle, Leopold, Patricia R., Handler, Stephen D., Ontl, Todd A., Swanston, Christopher W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Climate change
Climate change adaptation
Cross country skiing
Cultural heritage
Federal employees
Floods
Grey literature
Heat
Information sources
Infrastructure
Literature reviews
National forests
Natural resource management
Natural resources
Outdoor activities
Precipitation
Public lands
Rain
Recreation
Recreation demand
Seasons
Sustainability
Tourism
Weather
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Summary:Climate change will alter opportunities and demand for outdoor recreation through altered winter weather conditions and season length, climate-driven changes in user preferences, and damage to recreational infrastructure, among other factors. To ensure that outdoor recreation remains sustainable in the face of these challenges, natural resource managers may need to adapt their recreation management. One of the major challenges of adapting recreation to climate change is translating broad concepts into specific, tangible actions. Using a combination of in-depth interviews of recreational managers and a review of peer-reviewed literature and government reports, we developed a synthesis of impacts, strategies, and approaches, and a tiered structure that organizes this information. Six broad climate adaptation strategies and 25 more specific approaches were identified and organized into a “recreation menu”. The recreation menu was tested with two national forests in the US in multi-day workshops designed to integrate these concepts into real-world projects that were at the beginning stages of the planning process. We found that the recreation menu was broad yet specific enough to be applied to recreation-focused projects with different objectives and climate change impacts. These strategies and approaches serve as stepping stones to enable natural resource and recreation managers to translate broad concepts into targeted and prescriptive actions for implementing adaptation.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su11247030