To address the impacts of climate change, land managers need techniques for incorporating adaptation into ongoing or impending projects. We present a new tool, the Climate Project Screening Tool (CPST), for integrating climate change considerations into project planning as well as for developing concrete adaptation options for land managers. We designed CPST as part of the Westwide Climate Initiative project, which seeks to develop adaptation options for addressing climate change through science/management partnerships. The CPST lists projected climate trends for the target region and questions to be considered when designing projects in different resource areas. The objective is to explore options for ameliorating the effects of climate on resource management projects. To pilot the CPST, we interviewed 13 staff members and line officers of the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in the Sierra Nevada region of California. We found that a major value of the CPST was the process-with the activity of conducting the questionnaire being as important as the answers received from the staff. The CPST also serves as a priority-setting tool, allowing managers to consider effects of different actions. Finally, the CPST helps to reduce uncertainty by identifying the range of impacts that both climatic changes and management actions may have on resources. The CPST could also be modified to devise mitigation options for resource managers.

Sustainable development is a major goal of the 21st century, and there are many ways to ensure that one generation’s lifestyle and consumption habits do not comprise those of a future generation. It can be overwhelming to look at the many ways sustainable development can be achieved. In this paper, I focus on sustainable stormwater management practices, called Best Management Practices (BMPs). There are many different types of BMPs, and in this paper, I look at explore several popular options. I also look through several policies that impact sustainable water management and look to possible policy solutions for the future.

The U.S. Forest Service is responsible for managing over 35 million acres of designated wilderness, about 18 percent of all the land managed by the agency. Nearly all (90 percent) of the National Forests and Grasslands administer designated wilderness. Although the central mandate from the 1964 Wilderness Act is that the administering agencies preserve the wilderness character in these designated areas, the concept of wilderness character has largely been absent in Forest Service efforts to manage wilderness. The purpose of this document is to help National Forest planners, wilderness staff, and project leaders apply in a practical way the concept of wilderness character to forest and project planning, the National Environmental Policy Act process, on-the-ground wilderness management, and wilderness character trend monitoring that is relevant to an individual wilderness.

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