Quality parks and green spaces are a fundamental requirement for sustaining healthy, equitable, and climate-resilient communities. Importantly, natural solutions help people translate climate concerns into real, close-to-home opportunities to act on climate. In addition, climate conservation provides a range of other benefits from coastal protection to improving air and water quality to cooling increasingly dangerous temperatures in our communities. During this session, speakers from the Trust for Public Land will use a mix of case studies to highlight the power of natural climate solutions and share lessons learned about how to maximize the climate, health, and equity benefits that these solutions provide. The presenters will also train attendees on how to use a new publicly available geospatial tool called the Conservation Carbon Map. This tool was developed with input from experts around the country and identifies areas with high potential for protecting carbon-rich landscapes. For users in Florida, the map identifies: 1) carbon storage and sequestration by state, county, watershed, and parcels over 100 acres; 2) threats to these carbon stocks from development, disease, and wildfire; and 3) where conservation can deliver additional co-benefits by protecting important habitats, rare ecosystems, and water supplies.
