{"id":23232,"date":"2017-11-15T00:13:49","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T05:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/climate-change-is-no-walk-in-the-national-parks\/"},"modified":"2017-11-15T00:16:49","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T05:16:49","slug":"climate-change-is-no-walk-in-the-national-parks","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/climate-change-is-no-walk-in-the-national-parks\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change is No Walk in the National Parks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

What if Glacier National Park no longer has glaciers? <\/em><\/p>\n

What if Joshua Tree National Park no longer has Joshua Trees?<\/em><\/p>\n

These are some of the questions the National Parks Service (NPS) now has to ask itself in response to climate change. Climate change is the biggest challenge NPS has faced and is fundamentally altering how it manages the U.S. National Parks<\/strong> [1]. According to the director of NPS, \u201c[climate change] is going to upset the paradigm upon which we\u2019ve been managing for 100 years.\u201d [2] Increased temperatures caused by climate change is not only directly impacting parks\u2019 wildlife and terrain, but also increasing variability across park operations<\/strong>, resulting in the need for NPS to develop new competencies and operational strategies<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Rising temperatures impact each park differently, and, therefore, require individual consideration on the impact and management of climate change<\/strong>. For example, some parks with colder climates are faced with snow melting earlier in the season. This not only causes environmental issues, such as decreased water supply for plants and animals, but also operational and economic changes, like decreased winter sports seasons [3]. Some parks in warmer climates are facing different challenges, such as an increasing number of wildfires [3]. These issues impact the visitor experience<\/strong> and when people choose to visit the parks, lengthening the visitation season and increasing the volume of visitors in some parks while doing the reverse in others [4]. In response, NPS needs to accommodate variability in visitor behavior and develop services<\/strong> to attract visitors in the off seasons and to other open parks.<\/p>\n

Climate change is also altering the core competencies<\/strong> required of NPS. Staff now needs the scientific knowledge to be able to collect, analyze, and interpret relevant data, and then make important managerial decisions related to the data [5]. This creates a talent gap that needs to be filled<\/strong> by hiring staff with the required scientific knowledge or providing their current employees with training and development. NPS also needs to invest in and provide the required resources and analytic and decision-support technologies<\/strong> necessary for scientific analysis and interpretation [6]. Staff then needs to be able to use their findings to make decisions that have not been made previously<\/strong> in NPS history and determine where and how to focus limited resources<\/strong> [7]. For example, should NPS assist in the migration of the thousands-of-years-old, 300-foot Sequoia trees in Sequoia National Park, and if so how? Finally, staff needs to be able to identify and create key partnerships<\/strong>. While previously the NPS could rely on the parks\u2019 own existing resources, due to climate change, parks are now no longer able to be self-sustaining ecosystems [8]. To address this, it is important for NPS to collaborate and develop research and resource partnerships with academic institutions and federal agencies.<\/p>\n

NPS, is responding to climate change in four ways [9]:<\/p>\n