This manual is for extension professionals, tribal planners, community organizers, local planning officials, teachers, or anyone else whose task is to help individuals, families, businesses, communities, tribes, and local governments think through the meaning of climate change on the local scale, assess vulnerabilities, devise strategies for improving resilience, locate tools and resources that will help, and develop and implement plans for adaptation.

Appendices include an adaptation checklist, talking points for leading adaptation discussions, a checklist of items to take to a community meeting, a rough‐draft sample community adaptation plan, selected resources, sample preparedness measures, and samples of goals, objectives, and measures. The final appendix contains a set of worksheets with spaces for stakeholders to enter answers to questions about observed climate‐related changes, adaptation measures, risks, and others.

This manual has two companion documents:

1. The Alaska Climate Change Adaptation Planning Tool, an abbreviated version of the eight steps to adaptation planning outlined in the manual, and
2. The Shaktoolik Adaptation Plan, an example of how the manual was developed and employed in community planning.

The Planning Tool is intended to be used in community planning sessions and is the document stakeholders are likely to work with directly. Also available as part of this climate change adaptation project are an Alaska‐specific climate change introduction video, Alaska‐specific climate change fact sheets, and a related website.