Index Geophysics

Expanding vulnerability assessment for public lands: The social complement to ecological approaches

In recent years, federal land management agencies in the United States have been tasked to consider climate change vulnerability and adaptation in their planning. Ecological vulnerability approaches have been the dominant framework, but these approaches have significant limitations for fully understanding vulnerability in complex social-ecological systems in and around multiple-use public lands. In this paper, we describe the context of United States federal public lands management with an emphasis on the Bureau of Land Management to highlight this unique decision-making context. We then assess the strengths and weaknesses of an ecological vulnerability approach for informing decision-making. Next, we review social vulnerability methods in the context of public lands to demonstrate what these approaches can contribute to our understanding of vulnerability, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we suggest some key design principles for integrated social-ecological vulnerability assessments considering the context of public lands management, the limits of ecological vulnerability assessment, and existing approaches to social vulnerability assessment. We argue for the necessity of including social vulnerability in a more integrated social-ecological approach in order to better inform climate change adaptation.

Shannon M. McNeeley

Trevor L. Even

John B.M. Gioia

Corrine N. Knapp

Tyler A. Beeton

Climate change

Public lands

Land-based livelihoods

Social vulnerability

Vulnerability assessment

Adaptation

Meteorology. Climatology

QC851-999

Elsevier

2017-01-01T00:00:00Z

article

2212-0963

10.1016/j.crm.2017.01.005

https://doaj.org/article/313603b89ac0473783d2cd183bd3b2b7

Climate Risk Management, Vol 16, Iss C, Pp 106-119 (2017)

EN

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212096317300153

https://doaj.org/toc/2212-0963

Journal Licence: CC BY-NC-ND