Step 4.1: Identify adaptation approaches and tactics

The Adaptation Workbook helps you brainstorm management actions that can help prepare for changing conditions. You should think how you might address the challenges and opportunities you identified in Step 3, and try to make these adaptation ideas concrete and operational. The purpose of this step is for you to generate a custom set of adaptation tactics. Tactics are prescriptive actions designed for your specific property and your unique management objectives.

For each idea you generate, you'll also evaluate the benefits and drawbacks. You're not committed to implementing any idea at this point, so don't limit your creativity. You'll have an opportunity to review all your suggested tactics during the next step.

The Workbook also helps you create a clear rationale for your suggested tactics by connecting them to broader adaptation ideas. We've created a "menu" of adaptation strategies and approaches for forest management and conservation. This list is derived from the Adaptation Resources for Agriculture document, where a number of adaptation approaches have been summarized and described in greater detail.

As you brainstorm and evaluate ideas for adaptation tactics, you’ll also link these specific ideas to the list of more general adaptation strategies and approaches. These links will provide important context and rationale to justify your adaptation tactics. If you need help brainstorming specific adaptation tactics, you can use the menu of general strategies and approaches as a springboard to develop specific tactics that can help achieve your management objectives.

For example: 

If you’re growing crops in an area that is unsuitable for irrigation and want to maintain or increase your productivity under warmer and drier conditions, you might devise and adaptation action to plant sorghum instead of wheat in spring seasons where the soil moisture is already low. This tactic could be linked to adaptation approaches for adjusting the timing of activities, diversifying systems with new combinations of varieties, and switching to commodities that are expected to be better suited to future conditions.

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