Case Studies | U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit

Communities, businesses, and individuals are taking action to document their vulnerabilities and build resilience to climate-related impacts. Click dots on the map to preview case studies, or browse stories below the map. Use the drop-down menus above to find stories of interest. To expand your results, click the Clear Filters link.

Photo of pararescueman Staff Sgt. Lopaka Mounts receiving a hug from a resident after Hurricane Ike, Sept. 13, 2008.

A Climate for Resilience

The City of Houston faces an array of climate vulnerabilities: flooding, drought, tropical cyclones, and extreme heat can all affect the city's population and industries. Government and non-profit agencies in the region combined their resources in a pilot project to plan for climate resilience.

Assessing a Tropical Estuary's Climate Change Risks

Puerto Rico's San Juan Bay Estuary faces multiple threats, including heavy use by urban populations and impacts of climate change. A workbook from the EPA's Climate Ready Estuaries program helped them catalog, prioritize, and address their climate risks.

Assessing the Timing and Extent of Coastal Change in Western Alaska

An interactive map based on four decades of satellite images helps residents, resource managers, and stewards of the land anticipate and plan for coastal change.

Tropical vegetation along white sand beach

Collaborating for Success: Sustaining Water Supply on a Pacific Island

As El Niño can bring severe drying conditions to the islands of American Samoa, groups collaborated to ensure that decision makers have access to the local climate and water data they need to recognize—and prepare for—the threat of drought.

Skyline of highrise buildings and shipping cranes with mountains in the background

Creating a Model Climate Resilient City

The City of Long Beach, California, sees signs of climate change on land and in the ocean. After compiling the City's official climate assessment report, local stakeholders also produced a more accessible and user-friendly summary version and shared it broadly to stimulate informed discussion and decision making across the city.

Our Spirits Remain Tied to This Land

The Puyallup Tribe conducted a climate change impact assessment for their ancestral lands along the Puyallup River and the coasts of Puget Sound—and improved tribal and regional adaptive capacity.

Pago Pago Harbor, American Samoa with fuel tanks in foreground.

The Pacific Islands Climate Storybook

To empower community climate adaptation in the Pacific Islands, a multi-island coalition expanded upon a 2015 comprehensive template for writing climate stories and the collection of case studies. The new Storybook is a roadmap to predict, prepare, and adapt, to a changing climate.