Climate Change and Cultural Landscapes

A Landscape View

Cultural landscapes offer a unique lens through which to understand the threat of climate change. Learn more about how the Cultural Landscapes Program contributes to the National Park Service’s efforts to address climate change in parks across the country.

Cultural landscapes are historically significant sites within national parks that showcase how people have engaged with their natural environments over time. By documenting and managing cultural and natural resources together within defined geographical areas, the cultural landscape approach helps us to better understand the contemporary world. It provides a view of the past in which people and nature are shaped through dynamic interactions.

By portraying environmental change as a product of climate, ecology, and cultural practice, cultural landscapes offer a way of understanding resources that informs the complex challenge of changing climate. Our understanding can be limited, however, by constructs such as social bias, perceived division between humans and nature, and the delineation of a boundary around a cultural landscape. It is important to recognize limitations and strive for the most holistic approach to understanding.

The resources on this page provide information on the National Park Service’s climate change response strategy, introduce the frameworks of resilience and sustainability, provide data on park-level climate exposure, and present case studies on climate change assessment and adaptation projects.

Climate Change Resources

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  Cultural Landscapes

  Climate Impacts in Parks

  Discover research, planning tools, and articles about climate change and park cultural landscapes.

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  Cultural Landscapes

  Climate Change Response Strategy

  How do cultural landscape stewards understand the impacts of climate change and prepare for a changing future?

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  Learn More

  Climate Change References and Reports

  Resources, policy, and studies on climate and cultural landscapes.

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  Withstanding Change

  Resilient Systems

  Learn more about how components of resilient systems are integrated into cultural landscape management practices.

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  Enduring Landscapes

  Sustainability

  Preservation is closely tied to achieving sustainable stewardship, which includes economic, environmental, and social dimensions.

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  National Parks on a Changing Planet

  Climate Change

  Climate change threatens the natural and cultural resources in many of our national parks. See what the NPS is doing and how you can help.