The training courses here can help you acquire the tools, skills, and knowledge you need to manage your climate-related risks and opportunities. All courses are free of charge, and are offered in at least one of three formats: online audio-visual presentations ("Online, Self-Guided" and "Tool Tutorial"), training webinars ("Online, Scheduled Lecture Series"), and residence training courses ("Onsite, Instructor-Led"). Each training module is accompanied with a test to help you evaluate your knowledge. These courses feature scientific information adapted from authoritative sources, prepared by recognized subject matter experts. The courses have been pilot tested with users and other subject matter experts and may be updated periodically, as needed.
To plan successfully, communities need to understand the options for addressing flood-related issues and their associated costs. This guide lays out a six-step watershed-based approach for documenting the costs of flooding, projecting increased flooding and associated costs under future land use and climate conditions, and calculating the long-term benefits and costs of a green infrastructure approach. The guide draws from four case studies (Duluth, Minnesota; Toledo, Ohio; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and He‘eia, Hawaii) to provide key considerations, recommended expertise, practical implementation tips, and lessons learned.
Coastal communities increasingly realize the need for adaptation strategies, but many are unsure where to begin. Attend this two-day, instructor-led course to gain a thorough grounding and practical skills for incorporating adaptation strategies into planning processes. Time in class is provided to practice applying what you’ve learned, and opportunities for local collaboration and next steps are emphasized through discussion, participant activities, and local speakers and examples. The course is designed for planners, public works staff, floodplain managers, hazard mitigation planners, sustainability managers, emergency managers, community groups, members of civic organizations, and coastal resource managers. Participants are eligible for continuing education credits through the American Institute of Certified Planners and Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM) professional certifications.
Developed for stormwater and floodplain managers, as well as land use planners, this interactive website incorporates tools and methods to derive critical coastal water-level thresholds, as well as assess the potential impacts of exceeding those thresholds on stormwater infrastructure. Managers can take various actions to address the issue, and this guide introduces planning, policy, on-the-ground, and funding options.
Many communities struggle with how to prepare for hazards. It can be difficult to talk about vulnerability to hazards, and it can be even more difficult to keep people engaged and motivated to take action. This training provides insights into how and why people respond to risk, and helps participants develop new skills to better connect with a variety of audiences. Understanding and connecting with an audience’s diverse values and concerns can lead to a higher level of community engagement and can help motivate action to reduce risk. You will learn how to recognize differing values, and identify how and why people perceive and respond to risks the way they do; apply social science and risk communication principles when faced with challenging questions; respond to difficult questions with more confidence; and develop an effective risk communication strategy that incorporates relevant and proven principles.
This course helps emergency services and communities better prepare for the climate adaptations necessary and system vulnerabilities that may occur from hazard impacts. After the course, participants will be able to describe the principles of climate adaptation planning for emergency management and existing first-response processes and will be able to discuss the impact of weather on critical infrastructure and key resources while explaining the concurrent effects of climate change on those impacts. Participants will also gain an understanding of how to identify and apply adaptation strategies to address local emergency services-sector vulnerabilities. The course is designed to provide opportunities for participants to learn about various resources that can be used to implement local climate adaptation strategies in their communities.
The Climate Learning Network's eLearning program is designed to help Extension professionals, professional crop advisors, and professional foresters incorporate climate change into their existing program areas and become climate literate. Many modules offer Continuing Education Credits from the Society of American Foresters (SAF) and Certified Crop Advisors (CCA). Modules topics include basic climate science, communication, climate variability, vulnerability assessments, agricultural adaptation practices, and resilient land management.
This course will build on the first course of the series, Coastal Hazards Awareness, by supplementing the awareness knowledge with tools and skills for practical use. The one-day, performance-level training course provides training on available tools for the assessment and planning for natural hazards and vulnerabilities that uniquely affect coastal communities. Examples of these hazards include short-term events such as high surf, storm surge, and tsunami inundation or long-term threats from sea level rise and coastal erosion. The goal of this course is to enable participants to identify methods and considerations for assessing hazards and vulnerabilities of coastal communities, compare and select sources and methods for collecting coastal hazard and vulnerability data, and utilize available web-based tools to conduct a preliminary hazard and vulnerability assessment in their community.
This one-day, awareness-level training course aims to increase the awareness of the hazards facing coastal communities and basic strategies to reduce the risk to those hazards. This course provides training on the basic science of, assessment of, and preparedness for natural hazards and risks that uniquely affect coastal communities. Examples of these hazards are short-term events such as high surf, storm surge, and tsunami inundation or long-term threats from sea level rise and coastal erosion.
This two-day instructor-led course offers a combination of lectures and hands-on exercises to give students a better understanding of coastal inundation issues and mapping methods using a geographic information system (GIS). This course has been designed to: understand the types of inundation; learn about products and terminology; access data; perform datum conversions; understand interpolation methods and create DEMS; explore water level data; and map inundation using GIS. In hands-on exercises, students connect to web map services, access elevation data, convert between vertical datums, create and manage digital elevation models, map inundation model output, develop inundation zones, and map sea level rise using modeled tidal surfaces.
The Coastal Resilience Center of the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus is funded by the Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence with a mission focused on education of the community by transferring state-of-practice knowledge through formal and informal learning experiences to help the community understand coastal infrastructure hazard prevention, preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. Training courses for Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands are programmed and announced monthly.
The National Estuarine Research Reserves, a network of 29 coastal sites along U.S. Coasts and the Great Lakes, host a range of education, outreach, and training opportunities through their Coastal Training Programs. The overarching goal of these programs is to provide current science and skill-building opportunities for decision-makers in coastal communities. The Coastal Training Programs increase audience understanding of the environmental, social, economic, and policy consequences of human activities, and facilitates coordination among stakeholders to support evidence-based policies and actions.
Each Reserve’s program is different, and many sites host trainings related to resilience and climate change. Some sites have the flexibility to meet the needs of specific decision makers at specific times by organizing or developing custom trainings for local or regional decision makers. Reserves also frequently host the NOAA Digital Coast trainings.
To access training opportunities, or find contact information for program coordinators, select a reserve from the national map. View the Reserve page, and then go to the Reserve Website (under Important Links). Check the Reserve Website for Training, Education, and Outreach opportunities.
This course demonstrates how to integrate risk and community-based collaborative strategies into plans and programs and introduces tools that help communities assess individual risks and vulnerabilities, as well as strategies, to become more resilient and better prepared for natural disasters. The one-day training course provides state and local government agency staff and other stakeholder groups with background on natural hazards. In addition, the course will guide an approach to (1) assess community resilience, and (2) develop next steps for improved resilience. The course is designed for national implementation while allowing integration of local concerns through case studies and focused group exercises.
NASA POWER offers solar and meteorological data sets for support of renewable energy, building energy efficiency, and agricultural needs.
This session provides a brief review of the NASA Prediction of Worldwide renewable Energy Resources (POWER) Project web services, tools, and key partnerships that facilitate usage of NASA Earth Observations (EOs) data. Then, illustrative case studies of how POWER data are used for applications in solar energy, wind energy, and energy efficiency will be discussed in depth.
This awareness-level, four-hour course provides participants with a general understanding of the risks associated with natural hazards and disasters, introduces methods of assessing that risk to vulnerable small businesses, and describes the business continuity planning process to help small businesses prepare for, plan for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from any natural hazard or disaster that may occur. Modules include instruction on identifying hazards to business operations through risk assessment and identifying financial disaster assistance programs and business interruption insurance programs.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's National Conservation Training Center is consolidating training opportunities for FWS staff to increase knowledge of climate science and climate change as they relate to resource management. Participants can examine how to refocus their conservation efforts by applying the Strategic Habitat Conservation framework from local to landscape scale through biological planning, conservation design, conservation delivery, decision-based monitoring, and assumption-driven research. Participants will become familiar with new emerging tools, such as structured decision making, adaptive resource management, predictive modeling, and population viability analysis. There are several growing training opportunities available through the NCTC, including instructor-led, online courses and self-paced online training courses. Web conferences are held monthly to get up-to-date information to those needing it and communicating new tools, plans, and approaches in the face of climate change. In addition to formal training and webinars, there are many resources to help you build your knowledge and appreciation of climate science, climate change, global warming, and resources management strategies being developed and implemented to deal with the changing conditions brought on by climate change.
This awareness-level, eight-hour course addresses the current science of the causes of floods (both meteorological and otherwise), flood forecasting, flood risk assessment, and best practices for preparation and mitigation for both short- and long-fuse flooding events. Key concepts and discussion topics are reinforced with facilitator-led group activities that utilize real-world flood scenarios that illustrate the diverse challenges and complexities that can occur during actual flood events while building participants' experience and confidence in anticipating, heeding warnings, and responding to floods. The goal of this course is to prepare participants to recognize the conditions that lead to flood events, evaluate their community's risk, and prepare appropriately.
This is an active, hands-on training to help natural resources managers incorporate climate change considerations into their own real-world ecosystem management projects (not only forests). Participants are guided through the steps of the Adaptation Workbook to define their management objectives, identify relevant regional and local effects of climate change on forest ecosystems, identify challenges and opportunities for management, and develop actionable steps to adapt ecosystems to changing conditions. Participants are encouraged to access post-training support from the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science, and to share their stories online as “adaptation demonstrations” at www.forestadaptation.org.
This series consists of two recorded webinars that intend to build foundational knowledge about funding and financing approaches used to support coastal resilience activities. Learn from experts, who will demystify this complex topic by sharing traditional and emerging approaches, project examples, and lessons learned. The first webinar explores options for funding and financing coastal resilience projects and provides the foundation for future trainings on this topic. The second webinar discusses the use of Environmental Impact Bonds to finance coastal resilience efforts. Experts provide an overview of these bonds, how one was developed to finance coastal resilience efforts in Hampton, Virginia, and lessons learned throughout the process.
An ArcGIS Tutorial Series to help users apply the geographic approach for climate resilience planning.
Using a climate resilience planning process—the Steps to Resilience documented in the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit—this curriculum is designed to help you use geographic information systems to document climate hazards that could harm the people and places you care about, decide which situations you most want to avoid, and come up with workable solutions to reduce your climate-related risks.
Communities experiencing increasing incidents of coastal flooding are looking for relief. This online guide shows spatial analysts how to incorporate nature-based solutions, or green infrastructure, into their GIS work. A GIS work plan is provided, along with examples, process guidance, case studies, and templates.
The practices described in this handout can be used to reduce flooding and help communities design a green infrastructure strategy. It should be noted that while green infrastructure practices make communities more resilient, flooding might not be totally alleviated. Topics explored in this training include green infrastructure practices, considerations for planning and implementation, and guidance on estimating storage potential and costs. This document is a companion piece to the NOAA's Process Guide for Assessing Costs and Benefits of Green Infrastructure for Flood Mitigation.
Gulf TREE is a climate resilience tool search engine that allows users to access relevant tools quickly, easily, and confidently. The site walks users through a series of questions that help them identify the best climate tool for their needs. This Gulf TREE training kit allows you or a small group of people to complete the training and become a power user on your own or you can use this kit to train others to become power users.
Thousands of workers are affected by heat illness each year—environmental heat is a recognized hazard. Workers have the right to receive information and training about hazards and their prevention, and it is the employer's responsibility to provide this. In a training, it is important to include the health effects of heat, how and when to respond to symptoms, and how to prevent them from occurring. This OSHA Heat Illness Prevention Training Guide, in PDF format, includes information in short, interactive lesson plans that can be completed in a tailgate or toolbox talk. Training should be in a language that the worker can understand.
The goal of this training is to improve the practice of climate resilience planning by incorporating the needs and perspectives of populations that are especially vulnerable to changing climate conditions, many of whom are historically underrepresented in civic decision-making. The target audience is any professional, elected, or appointed official or community leader engaged in climate planning at the state or local level. While this training focuses on climate resilience planning, the approach is applicable to resilience planning in any geographical context.
This course covers a step-by-step approach that can be used to create a new conservation plan or update an existing one that incorporates climate change information. It is suitable for anyone working to manage or conserve lands in coastal areas. This includes wetland, floodplain, or emergency managers, planners, or conservation organizations. The course's six iterative steps draw from existing strategic conservation planning frameworks; however, the steps here focus on climate considerations and key resources relevant to the coastal environment, including coastal watersheds.
When communities reduce flood risk, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can offer discounts on flood insurance premiums for policyholders. Participant communities in FEMA’s Community Rating System receive credits to determine the amount. One way to earn credits is by preserving floodplains. Conserving this open space and implementing land use policies that encourage development away from wetlands, dunes, and other naturally protective features allows a floodplain to serve its natural function and absorb excess water during a flood event. This “how-to” provides a step-by-step approach for earning this credit in areas that are already protected, and identifying places where additional credit could be earned through future preservation efforts. It also provides templates and worksheets to compile verification information. The steps draw from FEMA’s Community Rating System Coordinator’s Manual, and reference related elements in other Community Rating System activities, such as floodplain mapping.
This course provides a basic understanding of hurricane science, forecasting, warning, and preparedness to help emergency managers, responders, government administrators, and community members make better, more informed decisions in hurricane planning and preparedness. The course enhances the ability of participants to identify and describe the conditions of tropical cyclone formation, provide official watch and warning definitions, and to make recommendations in preparation for a hurricane and the associated hazards such as high winds, heavy rain, and storm surge. The goal of this course is to provide participants with the basics of hurricane science, forecasting, warning, and preparedness.
This session includes an introduction to the energy sector and climate resilience, including how NASA Earth Observations (EOs) can support efforts in improving climate resilience and sustainability for improved energy management. A demonstration of an ESRI StoryMap for Electric Utilities will be offered to explore various energy-specific data parameters and variables.
This course, designed for those curious about what lidar is and why it is useful for management decisions, provides quick and flexible access to several topics needed to understand the lidar landscape. The course features engaging video and audio, optional knowledge checks, a final quiz with certificate, and assistive services for those with disabilities.
EPA’s Local Government Climate Adaptation Training helps local officials, municipal staff, and community leaders understand the changing climate and threats posed by climate change to local government services. The module covers climate impacts to water and wastewater services, air quality, public health, contaminated site management, and emergency response. The training also highlights some communities that have taken adaptation actions and provides a list of resources to support climate adaptation planning and implementation in local communities.
The United Nations Development Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations joined in 2017 to launch an online course on climate change and agriculture. The six-week course in partnership with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research featured leading global experts on climate change, finance, agriculture, and communications. The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) happened in parallel with the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany. The learning materials are now presented as part of the joint effort between all parties involved in the MOOC.
This course will help to enhance community leaders' understanding of natural disasters, risk assessment in the context of disaster management, prevailing emergency management procedures and operations, and the different vulnerability factors that exist within their local community. The course will also provide participants with an understanding of the necessary plans and tools needed in planning for natural disasters and will help them to better understand and identify the personnel best equipped to address response and recovery requirements in the case of an actual disaster. The goal of this course is to provide community leaders with information on natural hazards and disasters, improve community disaster preparedness, and strengthen community partnerships.
This course prepares coastal planners and managers for planning and implementing green or natural infrastructure projects to reduce coastal natural hazards in their communities. The course consists of two parts: a 45-minute, self-guided online module that covers foundational concepts; and an in-person, one-day event that allows participants to interact with their peers and local experts to develop a green infrastructure strategy. You will learn how to describe how green or natural infrastructure contributes to reducing the impacts of hazards and building resilience; analyze considerations for choosing and planning green or natural infrastructure projects; identify and assess approaches for successful implementation; and identify local green or natural infrastructure projects and connect with local experts who can provide additional information and guidance. This course offers six hours of certification maintenance credits through the American Institute of Certified Planners, as well as five core continuing education credits for certified floodplain managers through the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
Learn an approach for identifying your community’s coastal hazard issues, ecosystem services that can reduce hazard impacts, and green infrastructure practices that can provide those services. Develop the beginnings of a community green infrastructure plan.
This Implementation Guide is designed to help transportation practitioners understand how and where nature-based and hybrid solutions can be used to improve the resilience of coastal roads and bridges. Upfront, it summarizes the potential flood-reduction benefits and co-benefits of these strategies. From there, the guide follows the steps in the project delivery process, providing guidance on how to consider nature-based solutions in the planning process, how to conduct a site assessment to determine whether nature-based solutions are appropriate, key engineering and ecological design considerations, permitting approaches, construction considerations, and monitoring and maintenance strategies. The guide also includes appendices with site characterization tools, decision support for selecting nature-based solutions, suggested performance metrics, and links to additional tools and resources.
This training course for water utility managers and consultants, developed by the Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA), covers methods for including climate science in water supply planning processes.
The course is delivered via video: it contains recorded presentations delivered in May 2019 as part of a two-day technical training course held in Tampa, Florida. The course was attended by drinking water and wastewater utility managers and consultants from across the United States.
