Adapting the Management of our National Parks for Climate Change
Overview
Our National Parks are vulnerable to climate change in a number of ways, requiring changes in the way we manage our parks. This project uses decision support tools (e.g., scenario planning, vulnerability assessments) and climate science to help park managers adapt their management practices to climate change. Park managers are asking what changes they can expect that uniquely affect their park and to what degree. With this information, they can use Scenario Planning and other decision support tools to consider new management strategies or modifications to existing strategies that help the park face these climatic changes. Other parks need to first identify which of their assets (e.g., natural resources, infrastructure, etc) are vulnerable to climate change, in which case they also need to know how the climate is changing unique to their park in order to conduct a climate change vulnerability assessment.
