Read the full paper of the climate change
impacts upon outdoor organizations, just published in the Journal
of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine special issue on climate change.
You can link to the publication here and full
paper here (tbd).
We
surveyed 127 outdoor recreation and education organizations assessing the
impact of climate change on their operations. Some take aways:
·
Less than half of operations have established criteria to
aid in decision making when it comes to weather/climate events, yet most had to
revise operational plans in 2023 due to extreme weather.
·
Extreme heat and air quality were of primary concern,
with storm event flooding, wildfire, snowpack, and changes in range of disease
carrying insects top concerns.
There was pervasive uncertainty regarding decisions involving extreme heat and air quality, particularly the short-term health impacts upon clients and long-term health impacts upon workers.
·
There was uncertainty regarding trusted sources for
guidance, and the many overlapping or contradictory jurisdictional
recommendations.
This
work was also presented at the Adventure Risk Research Symposium and a short
version of the paper is available in those proceedings.