First, adapting to climate change requires clearly linking an explicitly stated expectation about how climate change may affect species, BMS202 chemical structure ecosystems, or even people,

to clear objectives and actions that can address those climate impacts. The structured process we used for developing adaptation strategies was intended to create clear logic leading from climate impacts to adaptation strategies. For example, the Great Lakes project concluded that increasing air temperature will lead to increased evapotranspiration and a lowering of average seasonal lake levels by 0.5–1.5 m. This in turn will expose shoreline substrate, creating new ground for invasive species and for human Selleck BI 10773 development. The project team determined that a key adaptation strategy is to develop policy to ensure that any new exposed bottom land (including wetlands and unvegetated nearshore) is protected from development. Adaptive monitoring could include tracking lake levels, exposed substrate, and the progress of actions toward policy development. Second, the outcome from our 20-project sample suggests that for the majority of conservation projects, climate impacts will necessitate significant changes, such as changing the project

area, reprioritizing or even abandoning some ecosystems or species, revising conservation goals for ecosystems or species, or modifying management actions or interventions. Although not surprising, these results constitute early evidence of how climate change could specifically see more impact a number of existing conservation projects. Ideally, all conservation projects should evaluate potential adjustments for climate change. Incorporating climate considerations into conservation projects must become the new business as usual, although the institutional mechanisms for achieving this are not yet in place. Key enabling conditions include having an explicit step-by-step methodology, cultivating the ability to take reasoned action

despite uncertainty, identifying ‘no-regrets’ strategies that hedge bets against major uncertainties, and further embracing an adaptive conservation paradigm. Finally, although all of our projects adjusted MRIP their strategies in some way, there was a general cautiousness reflected by the fact that only two projects pursued a transformative direction. Leading edge thinking calls for new frameworks for conservation that embrace unavoidable and accelerating change (e.g., Harris et al. 2006; Kareiva and Marvier 2007). For example, Harris et al. (2006, p. 175) states about ecological restoration that: To this complexity and lack of understanding, we now have to add the fact that environments are changing, and the rate of change is unprecedented.