Climate Change Planning for Military Installations: Findings and Implications

Abstract : The Department of Defense (DoD) recognizes climate change as an emerging issue with potential national security implications. As a result of these concerns, the DoD Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) is establishing a research and development program to address climate change effects on DoD installations and associated missions. To help establish the program, SERDP tasked Noblis to identify potential climate change effects on military installations and their missions and operations. This report presents the findings portion of this study and discusses some implications on policy and practice. These findings were gathered during June 2009 through February 2010. To accomplish the task, Noblis examined how climate change could affect all aspects of installation infrastructure and facility operations, environmental concerns, training and test ranges, missions, military training activities, and community and regional dependencies. As part of the study, we visited two DoD installations within the United States in different environmental regions that are representative of various military missions and training requirements that have a diverse infrastructure and that may be susceptible to projected climate change impacts. We carried out eight specific tasks.