Explore our interactive mapping tool designed to help farmers assess the potential impacts of climate change on your current or prospective farm properties. Alongside your own past experiences with climate-related risks on your farm, farmers can use information from this tool as a starting point for creating climate adaptation plans for your farm business, and it can also help farmland seekers compare different farm locations in terms of their future risks and potential for supporting their farm plans.
Search using a farm’s address and then draw property and field boundaries to:
Project weather-related changes on the farm: See projected changes in annual average temperature, accumulated precipitation, accumulated growing degree days, and growing season length.
See changing water availability and flood risks: See the farm’s current water availability from surface waters and aquifers, projected risks posed by sea level rise, and how the current 100-year floodplain impacts the property.
Understand how erosion might affect the farm: See erosion risk on each of a farm’s fields based on an adaptation of the Universal Soil Loss Equation. This calculation doesn’t account for crop type or management practices.
This mapping tool combines the best available climate science from the Maine State Climate Office and national resources to give you a snapshot of possible climate impacts on a given farm property, and a weighted score to help you gauge the severity of the potential impacts.
Mapping a farm property: To locate a property, you can search using a farm property’s address (or, if you’re savvy with GIS mapping, you can upload a GeoJSON file).
Once the location that you searched for appears on the map, draw the farm property boundary by clicking each corner, point by point (think: connect the dots, instead of clicking and dragging). Next, draw field boundaries in the same fashion in green - you can draw as many fields as you like, and name them. When you’re done mapping the boundaries, you will receive your climate impact assessment report on the property.
Understanding your score and the data in your report card: You can click on the question mark next to each factor in your report card to learn more about what it means and where the data comes from.
Each of the factors displayed in your report card receives a weighted score, adding up to your overall score (out of 100). Risk factors that are projected to impact all Maine farmers to similar degrees, such as temperature and precipitation, are given less weight, while significant risk factors with higher variability between different farm properties, like sea level rise, floodplain presence, and erosion, are weighted more heavily. Factors like surface water and aquifers, if present, will have a negative score, accounting for the positive impact these resources can have on the property’s climate resiliency.
The Climate Impact Assessment Tool was developed by Maine Farmland Trust and Perch Design Studio. This resource is made possible by support from TD Bank through a TD Ready Challenge grant and from the Land Trust Alliance and Open Space Institute’s Land and Climate Grant Program.
