Climate Change

Food system activities—cultivating crops and raising livestock, land use changes, energy and resource use throughout supply chains, and the generation of waste—are major drivers of climate change. Climate risks vary between and within the 6 New England states. Extreme rainfall is likely to be most problematic in mountainous regions (i.e., the Green Mountains in Vermont, the White Mountains in New Hampshire and Maine, and the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts). Hurricanes pose a high risk to nearly every county, while sea level rise is a risk for coastal counties. Perhaps surprisingly, water stress is evaluated to be a high risk for almost all of southern New England.

Projected Climate Change Risks by County
Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Events
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Note About Connecticut Maps: Although Connecticut has not had county governments since 1960, county boundaries have historically been used to depict data. For example, all USDA Census of Agriculture data for Connecticut is collected at a county-level. In 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau shifted to using Connecticut's nine planning regions as county equivalent geographic units for data collection. This has presented a challenge for depicting data for Connecticut's planning regions in Tableau. This mapping challenge has not been resolved yet, but when a solution is available, we will update Connecticut maps.