You’re probably aware that this year the National Park Service (NPS) is celebrating 100 years of protecting and managing natural treasures across the country for our exploration, enjoyment, education and reverence.  More than 84 million acres of widely varying ecosystems across all 50 states and more, are included in the National Park System.

National park visitation is expected to increase with a warming climate, as the “shoulder season” extends, allowing more people more time for camping, hiking, lodging and viewing these incomparable sites of natural splendor —  which we feel assured will forever remain “unimpaired”.  However, in the same way that our private forests and farms are vulnerable to climate change impacts, our 59 national parks (and over 350 other monuments and vital sites of American natural history and culture) are at risk.

Records from Glacier National Park show a vast decline in glacial area. But other changes are occurring, some much more subtle. In fact, climate change is the National Parks’ biggest challenge. Rangers and visitors are seeing fires burn longer, arrival of exotic species, sea level rise impacts, and generally more unpredictability in ecosystem response to disturbance. Similar to private landowners, the NPS is faced with managing lands with an uncertain future.  To learn more, follow Climate Central‘s summer series on Climate Change Impacts to the National Parks by Brian Kahn.

NOTE: The idea for this blog post comes from the June 2016 Newsletter of the SE Climate Science Center.