Development and Piloting of the Refuge Vulnerability Assessment & Adaptation (RVAA) Framework

Comparison of two scenarios for the Eastern Shore of Virigina National Wildlife Refuge and DELMARVA context. Virginia & Maryland, USA

Dr. Crist led this project to help the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formalize a landscape approach to planning for National Wildlife Refuges. The RVAA integrates climate change with multi-stressor cumulative effects assessment to understand threats to refuge resources and infrastructure over multiple timeframes and guide the generation of mitigation/adaptation strategies and management alternatives. The work is conducted over a large supporting landscape around refuges or groups of refuges. This project generated the RVAA Technical guide—a large document providing guidance through an eight-step process to conduct the assessments and support planning alternatives generation. A shorter summary Manager’s Guide was also produced along with published reports for the two pilot assessment projects.