Tools & Products
Climate Assessment Tool
The Climate Assessment Tool (CAT) is one of the original and flagship projects initiated by the Alliance and was made possible thanks to the collaboration of Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, and the University of Tasmania, with additional funding provided by the International Association of Botanic Gardens.
The purpose of the CAT is to provide tailored information to support decision-making regarding the protection and management of living collections with a current focus on long-lived assets – such as trees.
By selecting a species or uploading taxa lists, the user can gauge the potential for these plants to perform under the future climate conditions of their location. The CAT does this by looking at the climates of where a species is currently observed to be growing. These climates are then compared with the projected future climate of the user’s chosen location, which is derived from emission scenarios laid out by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This enables landscape managers and curators to safeguard their living collections and bolster the resilience of their landscapes with proactive decision making and management strategies. The CAT can also be used for informing plant selection, the development of new living plant collections, and support plant conservation programs that network the curation of threatened species in different locations for meta-collections.
The CAT is publicly available online and is free to use. It can be accessed here.
Landscape Succession Toolkit
Thanks to generous support from Botanic Gardens Australia & New Zealand, the Climate Change Alliance of Botanic Gardens is very pleased to release the Landscape Succession Toolkit.
The Landscape Succession Toolkit is a first-of-its-kind and offers botanic gardens and arboreta a framework by which to adapt to the climate crisis and transition their living landscapes and plant collections so that they will continue to thrive in the future climate.
This free Toolkit contains the distilled learnings from the RBGV Melbourne Gardens’ Landscape Succession Strategy and insight from members of the Alliance and seeks to generalise those lessons in order to be applicable to all botanic gardens and arboreta, in all contexts and climates, around the world.
Contained within are the many benefits of landscape adaptation and succession, how to build your knowledge and understanding of climate, the practical applications of adaptive management, and guidance on how you might structure and draft your own strategy or planning document.
The Landscape Succession Toolkit is free and publicly available for download here.
Menu of Adaptation Action for Botanic Gardens & Arboreta
In collaboration with the Alliance, the team at the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden (Canada) have put together a great resource for people wanting to take action to adapt their living collections and landscapes to climate change, but are unsure how or where to begin. A survey of the Alliance membership has been instrumental in the Menu’s structure, as well as workshops held at the 8th Global Botanic Gardens Congress in Singapore (2024) and the Alliance’s own Horticulture Forums. The Menu offers a selection of actions for you to peruse and customise to your needs and is a great starting point for sparking new ideas.
“We are hoping to update it with more examples of gardens taking action towards adaptation. We would love to highlight initiatives in gardens across the world, so please get in touch with us and share your work and best practices with us.”
The relevant contact information can be found in the Menu, available here.
