Approach
Climate change will substantially affect the availability and quality of snow. As a result, snow-based winter recreation has been listed as one of the most vulnerable industries to climate change. At the same time, it can be reasonably assumed that recreationists will adapt their own activities to changing conditions and find ways to take advantage of new opportunities when they are made available. Examples under this approach include removing rocks and vegetation to reduce the snow depth required for skiing or installing non-snow surfaces in some areas.
Tactics
- Remove rocks and shrubby vegetation and flush-cut stumps in summer months on ski runs and winter-use trails in order to reduce the snow depth required to use the terrain.
- Provide for non-skiing winter activities such as ice-skating or fat tire biking on low-snow trails.
- Install non-snow ski surfaces for high-traffic runs, small training slopes, snowboarding parks, or snow tube/toboggan runs.
Strategy
Strategy Text
Climate change will impact recreational opportunities and infrastructure such that it may become untenable to retain those opportunities and infrastructure without modification. Many of these opportunities and infrastructure are highly dependent on their setting within a natural area or within a specific context. Ski areas in particular represent an investment in infrastructure that is long-term, place-based, and highly compromised by the effects of a changing climate. This strategy seeks to provide options for re-evaluating past design concepts and for adapting existing opportunities and infrastructure in a way that allows for modification but retains the character of the current recreational experience.
O’Toole, D.; Brandt, L.A.; Janowiak, M.K.; Schmitt, K.M.; Shannon, P.D.; Leopold, P.R.; Handler, S.D.; Ontl, T.A.; Swanston, C.W. Climate Change Adaptation Strategies and Approaches for Outdoor Recreation. Sustainability 2019, 11, 7030.