Series: Using Science to Preserve the Past

Conserving our nation’s rich cultural heritage – the stories, places, traditions, and artifacts that make up the fabric of our shared history – is an important part of the NPS mission. Throughout the Pacific West Region, park archeologists and paleontologists, museum curators, historic preservationists, and more are using scientific practices to better steward the cultural resources they protect. Explore these articles to learn more about their work.

• Channel Islands National Park

  Article 1: Compliance Inspires Science on Santa Cruz Island

  

  In May 2020, the Scorpion Fire burned 1,395 acres on eastern Santa Cruz Island in Channel Islands National Park. Burned Area Emergency Response funding supported emergency stabilization, including environmental compliance and an inventory of burned archeological sites. With park staff, researchers, and Chumash tribal partners working together, the compliance project became one of discovery and science that provided insight on Chumash lifeways across hundreds of generations. Read more

• Honouliuli National Historic Site

  Article 2: Outside Science (inside parks): Archaeological field school at Honouliuli National Monument

  

  Join University of Hawaii - West Oahu's archaeological field school at Honouliuli National Monument. The monument, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was the site of Japanese civilian and Prisoner of War internment during World War II (1943 - 1946). Read more

• Article 3: Climate Change and Cultural Landscapes: Research Planning and Stewardship (2015-02)

  

  With a grant from NCPTT, the University of Oregon created a draft manual for management response to the impacts of climate change on cultural landscapes. This is a work in progress and the manual is projected to be available in the fall of 2016. Read more

• Fort Vancouver National Historic Site

  Article 4: Women in Archaeology at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site

  

  Since the 1940s, women have been an important part of archaeology and cultural resources at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Learn more about their impressive contributions to our knowledge of this special place! Read more

• Article 5: Fire & Redwoods—What Does the Future Hold for this Ancient Species?

  

  Coast redwood trees’ evolutionary adaptation to fire–sprouting–means they can survive. What does this mean in the age of climate change and mega-fires? Read more

• Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument

  Article 6: The Importance of Paleontology Collections

  

  Museum technician Alexander Kim provides an overview of the functions and purposes of museum collections in paleontology. Read more

• War In The Pacific National Historical Park

  Article 7: Guam: A Biogeographic and Maritime Cultural Landscape Exploration of a WWII Amphibious Battlefield

  

  From January 27-February 25, 2023, a team of researchers will begin their search for submerged shipwrecks, aircraft, amphibious vehicles, artillery and other artifacts related to the 1944 invasion of Guam during World War II (WWII). Read more

• Whiskeytown National Recreation Area

  Article 8: Orchard Rehabilitation Planting at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area

  

  In November 2021, NPS staff and partners met at the Tower House Historic District to re-establish an apple orchard that had been damaged by the 2018 Carr Fire. Many of the trees that were lost dated to the late 1800s. This effort involved many individuals, through the process of genetic testing, planning, grafting, re-planting, and establishing irrigation from historic and modern systems. The re-planting helps to recreate the historic character of the orchard. Read more

• John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

  Article 9: Thirty-five-years of partnership: How the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service Co-manage Paleontological Resources in Eastern and Central Oregon

  

  A successful partnership between the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management has helped enhance fossil stewardship in the John Day Basin, Oregon. This partnership spans 35 years and serves as a model of interagency cooperation to support paleontology. Read more

• Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument

  Article 10: From the Ashes: how volcanologists can help paleontologists reconstruct the ancient past at Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument

  

  Although the fossils of Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, Idaho, are sometimes treated as a single “snapshot” of geologic time, they actually represent more than a million years. U.S. Geological Survey geologist Laura Walkup has been working to uncover ash beds in the deposits to provide better age control. Read more

• Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument

  Article 11: The Hagerman Paleontology, Environments, and Tephrochronology (PET) Project Expands its Scope

  

  Paleontologist Kari Prassack outlines the components of a multi-disciplinary effort to understand the prehistory of Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument. Read more

• John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

  Article 12: Using GIS Data to Improve Fossil Collection Practices at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

  

  John Day Fossil Beds National Monument protects geologic formations that contain one of the longest, most continuous fossil records on Earth. Staff were scheduled to prospect for fossils in each of the park's five most productive areas, every four years. Yet the areas were large, and staff availability varied. They were almost never able to stick to the schedule. So they started to wonder: was a four-year cycle really the best way to find the most fossils? Read more