Increasingly uncertain and limited fiscal environments for natural resource management demand methods for conducting vulnerability assessments that require minimal resources and are easily replicable across time and space. This presentation introduces - and reports the results of - a novel approach to socio-economic vulnerability assessments that can be replicated across diverse contexts and with limited resources. Specifically, the proposed approach focuses upon incorporating socio-economic information into vulnerability assessments that can assist natural resource managers in formulating adaptation strategies for climate change impacts. 
The approach uses resource dependency as a proxy for sensitivity to climate change impacts and focuses upon the key agricultural sectors in seven natural resource management regions on the east coast of Australia. Five variables associated with socioeconomic vulnerability (significance of the agricultural sector, economic diversity, socio-economic advantage/disadvantage, geographic remoteness and age) function as individual lines of evidence that, when combined, help to identify where potential vulnerabilities might be revealed at the sub-regional scale. Sub-regional variation and inter-regional differences identified will be demonstrated using a series of maps and commentaries. All data is accessed from freely available, national data sets meaning that the approach can be replicated when data is updated in the future.
The project is part of a larger initiative (East Coast Cluster) consisting of six research partners (University of Queensland, University of the Sunshine Coast, Griffith University, University of Wollongong, CSIRO, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, and Queensland Herbarium) funded by the Australian Government's Natural Resource Management Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Research Grants Program.