Climate change is one of the greatest threats in the 21st century to all inhabitants of the planet. Conservation organisations in the UK are interested in understanding this risk to their sites, and in integrating climate adaptation into management plans. This research assesses the use of high resolution UKCP18 projections for three case studies managed by the National Trust in Wales. The case studies cover a range of expected climate impacts to, bird species distributions, wind on parkland trees and fire in peatland areas. Predictions are at a range of scales from a single property through to the UK scale. Results are presented for three time frames of 20-year averages; 1980 to 2000 (1990s), 2020 to 2040 (2030s) and 2050 to 2080 (2070s).

Bird species in the UK uplands, especially habitat specialists, are vulnerable to climate change. For the species distribution study current and future distributions of five bird species found in the uplands of Britain were modelled using the Maxent model. Results at 2.2 km and 12 km scales were compared, with baseline and projected habitat layers included to investigate land cover change. Species-specific, local scale species distribution models outperformed those at the larger spatial scale. Habitats were found to be more limiting than climate, with all species increasing ranges under climate change alone.

Fire risk on peatlands is increasing, with risks to important habitats and carbon stores. The Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) was tailored to an upland peatland and predicted three metrics of future fire risk: 1. Fire Weather Index (FWI), a measure of fire risk, 2. Head Fire Intensity (HFI), the strength of a potential fire and 3. fire season length. The metrics were validated using dates of known fire at the site. All metrics of fire risk increase from the 1990s to 2070s with reductions in risk in the 2030s. Validation results suggest FWI is a better predictor of fire risk than HFI. Current conservation and farming practices may need to adapt to consider risk from fires all year round.

High wind speeds have a direct impact on tree health and lifespan in forests and parklands, and consequently affect visitor safety. Tatter flags were used to quantify the exposure of individual parkland trees to wind speeds and direction, with baseline data gathered from a year-long fieldwork study. The number of times the site may have to close due to high winds above pre-determined thresholds were also calculated. Trees are more likely to become more exposed to high winds in autumn and winter seasons, with a decrease in exposure in the spring and summer months. Wind directions are predicted to continue as a prevailing south-westerly, but likely to experience more wind from the north-west. Closures are predicted to increase, especially around Christmas and Easter holidays. The current site plan may not be viable in the future, with exploration around new access routes and species a potential next step.

Finally, we conducted a feedback study with staff at each site to explore understanding about the results from the data chapters. We developed all chapters and outputs iteratively with staff using an online questionnaire. Staff found that results presented about their case study site would be useful when thinking about conservation planning and adaptation for the future.

Overall, most results suggest a decrease in risk from climate change in the 2030s, and an increase in the 2070s compared to the 1990s. We found that, as expected, tailoring models to a site or species produces results of a greater degree of accuracy, and therefore are a greater useful contribution to conservation. Finally, we have demonstrated the versatility of high-quality local scale climate data in a range of scenarios as useful data to explore future risk at the site scale.