Increasing humidity and precipitation and rising extreme temperatures are having negative impacts across the Midwest. Integrating climate adaptation into planning processes can help build adaptive capacity to increase climate resilience. The U.S. Climate Resiliency Toolkit for the Midwest Region is an excellent resource to find case studies, tools, expertise and steps to resilience to plan adaptation to a changing climate in many sectors, including agriculture.
Trends toward warmer, wetter, and more humid conditions provide challenges for agricultural field work, increased pressure from disease and pests, and reduce agricultural yields. These challenges may reach the extent that they can be only partially overcome by technology. These trends also amplify the effects of existing stressors such as invasive species, insect pests, and plant disease on the region’s natural resources. Natural resource managers are taking steps to address these issues by increasing the diversity of trees and introducing species suitable for a changing climate.
About the U.S. Resiliency Toolkit
The U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit is a website designed to help people find and use tools, information, and subject matter expertise to build climate resilience. The Toolkit offers information from all across the U.S. federal government in one easy-to-use location.
Purpose
The goal is to improve people’s ability to understand and manage their climate-related risks and opportunities, and to help them make their communities and businesses more resilient to extreme events.
Management
This inter-agency initiative operates under the auspices of the United States Global Change Research Program. The site is managed by NOAA’s Climate Program Office and is hosted by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
Development
The Toolkit is built in the Drupal content management system. It was developed over a six-month period by a partnership of federal agencies and organizations led by NOAA and initially launched on November 17, 2014. Version 1.5 of the site—with a mobile-friendly design—was launched in July 2016.