About NBCAI

Who We Are

• The North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative (NBCAI) is a coalition of natural resource managers, policy makers and scientists committed to working together to create positive solutions to the problem of climate adaptation for the ecosystems and watersheds of Sonoma County.
• Members are experts and conservation leaders drawn from natural resource science and management organizations throughout the region.
• Since climate adaptation is ultimately a regional issue, our goal is to pilot an approach in Sonoma County that can be extended throughout the North Bay as a whole.
• NBCAI’s vision is that the San Francisco North Bay will retain resilient, biologically diverse natural systems that provide lasting ecosystem functions and services into the future.

Key Aspects of our Approach

1) Collaborative

Meeting the challenge of climate change requires that specialists “leave their silos” and work together to effectively leverage results with limited available resources. One way we are responding to the challenge is to create an innovative, flexible and effective collaborative structure for working together and sharing resources. Since NBCAI’s inception, last fall, we have created an organizational structure and charter to support our activities. A coordinating committee oversees three active working groups that represent the science, policy, and stewardship dimensions of responding to climate change at a local scale. Collaboration within and between these working groups will enable us to craft more effective solutions to the climate challenge. We will also collaborate with County leaders and representatives from state and federal adaptation strategies. We will create a model of how local conservation entities can maximize their impact by working together via our countywide Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) process.

2) Science-Based

NBCAI is unique in its connection between the scientific and climate modeling community on the one hand and the county land and water use decision makers on the other hand. By tightening linkages between cutting edge climate science and on-the-ground management solutions, NBCAI will ensure that its approaches are not only scientifically sound, but that they are in fact at the leading edge of emerging approaches to climate adaptation. As we improve our understanding of the problem and better refine solutions, this progress will be captured in updates to Sonoma County’s BAP.

3) Local Action

The fate of local land and water resources are essentially in the hands of Sonoma County land and water managers, local businesses, and private citizens. By working at this grass roots level, NBCAI has the potential to make the greatest impact on the resource. By facilitating constructive exchanges between technical experts, land managers and policymakers, we will realize effective local scale climate adaptation strategies that preserve natural resources, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Just as Sonoma County led the way for the nation in innovative approaches to climate mitigation, we strive to lead the way as a model in adaptation approaches using the BAP process that other counties throughout the nation may follow.

Active Working Groups

Grown out of a three day 2009 conference on watershed climate change adaptation in Sonoma County, the North Bay Climate Adaptation Initiative is based on the goals of three active working groups aimed at the implementation of climate change adaptation strategies identified by conference participants.

The working groups are:

• Habitat Conservation and Stewardship Working Group
• Science, Technology and Land Management Nexus Working Group
• Public Policy Working Group

These working groups work to address the needed actions towards implementation of specific climate change adaptation strategies. Each working group has a dedicated section on this site, where members can participate in discussions, learn about in-person meetings, and share supporting materials and documents.

Additionally, the individual working group goals are aligned into a larger combined vision to further all aspects and dimensions of NBCAI’s mission by the:

• Coordination Committee