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The potential impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems are well recognized, and a wide variety of adaptation measures have been proposed. However, little is known about whether and how adaptation is occurring among people in these ecosystems. Understanding adaptation at the level of individuals, including members of households and extended families, is especially important because it is the level at which people most directly experience climate change impacts and engage in behavioral change. I offer a framework for characterizing the responses of individual landowners to climate change impacts in terms of adaptation behavior, and distinguishing adaptation from coping. The framework expands existing typologies of adaptation behavior to include a hierarchy of three analytical units of behavior: activities, practices, and strategies. I illustrate the framework by applying it to landowners' responses to climate change impacts in temperate forests, a biome that is undergoing dramatic change. Individuals own and rely on large proportions of land in many temperate forest countries and are therefore exposed and sensitive to climate change impacts. Through management, they also influence how forests and their own well-being are affected by climate change. By improving characterizations of behavioral responses to climate change, the framework I propose can help researchers and practitioners evaluate progress toward adaptation with greater rigor.