My place is at risk: spatial assessment of climate risk perceptions along the East Coast of Tasmania and related landscape value associations

Abstract Mapping landscape values alongside climate risk perceptions can show how collective values of the local community and their relationship to the landscape interacts spatially with their risk perception. Such geospatial social data could provide critical insight into local socioecological processes and inform successful place-based climate adaptation planning and risk management outcomes. This study builds on existing landscape value and climate risk participatory mapping methods to identify specific landscape value and risk perception associations. By doing so, prioritisation and targeting of management actions could be informed based on the type of landscape values assigned to a given location, and the perceived vulnerabilities of that place. Our approach combined participatory mapping of landscape values and ‘places at risk’ and follow-up interviews with local community members living along a highly climate vulnerable, coastal region in Tasmania, Australia. Results demonstrated that people’s perceptions of risk were strongly associated with their landscape values. Individuals were more likely to perceive risks and respond to risks that they have experience with (e.g. bushfire); and those that they have directly observed as threats to the landscape values that define their relationship with that place. Thus, risks that are unfamiliar (e.g. flooding and storm surge) were less perceived, and related actions were disregarded. Priority management zones were identified based on the spatial co-occurrence or ‘bundling’ of mapped risks and values. This can inform targeted management strategies in the region based on local context and can also indicate the type of actions needed.