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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.

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Recent trends show that in the coming decades, Kenya's natural resources will continue to face significant pressure due to both anthropogenic and natural stressors, and this will have greater negative impacts on socioeconomic development including food security and livelihoods. Understanding the impacts of these stressors is an important step to developing coping and adaptation strategies at every level. The Water Towers of Kenya play a critical role in supplying ecosystems services such as water supply, timber and non-timber forest products and regulating services such as climate and water quantity and quality. To assess the vulnerability of the Water Towers to climate change, the study adopted the IPCC AR4 framework that defines vulnerability as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. The historical trends in rainfall indicate that the three Water Towers show a declining rainfall trend during the March-April-May (MAM) main rainy season, while the October-November-December (OND) short rainy season shows an increase. The temperature patterns are consistent with the domain having a common rising trend with a rate in the range of 0.3˚C to 0.5˚C per decade. Projection analysis considered three emissions scenarios: low-emission (mitigation)