Planning for Climate Change is multifaceted and requires effort across all scales. Green Infrastructure networks of green spaces, natural lands, reserves, working lands, core habitat, riparian corridors, parks, open spaces, private conservations lands, and other complementary land uses work together to support life on earth and human existence through the ecosystem services provided. Clean air, clean water, carbon sequestration, food production, recreation, pollination, and spiritual and cultural benefits are only a few of the services that natural lands provide society. With climate change occurring due to human actions such as land use, development, and energy use, to name a few, society must adopt adaptive measures and implement adaptive mechanisms in order to bolster and increase local community resilience. The benefits of Green Infrastructure provide communities with greater resilience to disturbances and climate risks.
This research looks at the consistency of GI-focused plans at the landscape scale and assesses the manifestation of consistency with local-level policy administered in comprehensive plans. The results of this study can give local governments a better understanding of where policy and implementation improvement can occur to create more robust communities facing climate changes, disturbances, and extremes that will occur in this century. Two different landscape-scale Green Infrastructure plans from different geographies, with different guiding landscape ecology principles, were used to closely investigate these concepts and better understand how local governments understand or acknowledge Green Infrastructure as a form of resilience to climate change
