Training Courses | U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit

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.

Forest Adaptation Planning and Practices

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.

GIS for Climate Resilience

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.

Responses to Climate Change: What You Need to Know

This educational module provides a brief overview of three adaptation options to climate change—resistance, resilience, and transition—and how to incorporate these ideas into natural resource planning. A friendly and neutral approach presents feasible ways to respond to climate change through animations, examples, and outward links to more information. There is a regionally relevant 11-question activity following the main material, and and users who complete the activity will receive a printable certificate with their name and the date completed.