NPS Climate Change Response Strategy
The NPS Climate Change Response Strategy (2023 Update) provides a framework for addressing the challenge of climate change across the National Park System, including in cultural landscapes. The goals and actions of the strategy are organized around four integrated cornerstones:-
Understand
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Adapt
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Mitigate
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Communicate
The 2023 update superceded the 2010 National Park Service Climate Change Response Strategy. The accompanying Climate Change Action Plan outlines specific high-priority actions that directly address climate change impacts to NPS units.
NPS Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy
Specific to cultural resources, the 2016 strategy identifies major directions of actions and collaboration for the NPS, including:
- Goal 1: Connect Impacts and Information
- Goal 2: Understand the Scope
- Goal 3: Integrate Practice
- Goal 4: Learn and Share
NPS
Under Goal 3, Intergrate Practice, the NPS Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy outlines Directions for Action, including:
1) Merge cultural resources with major climate change approaches,
- sustainability and mitigation
- disaster risk reduction and response
- scenario planning
- climate communication
2) Integrate climate change into ongoing cultural resource management practices in the broad categories of research, planning, and stewardship.
According to the NPS Climate Change Response Program, climate change response strategy for cultural resources, including cultural landscapes, includes:
- baseline inventory of cultural resources,
- conducting vulnerability assessments,
- monitoring the condition of cultural resources as they are stressed by a changing climate, and
- identifying appropriate actions for vulnerable resources before the threat from climate change becomes acute.
Climate Change and Cultural Landscapes: A Guide to Research, Planning, and Stewardship
Cultural landscapes, a combination of both human and natural systems, will be affected in many ways by climate change, and current impacts the potential to be expanded or exacerbated in the future as air temperature rises.
This guide is intended for managers of cultural landscapes to address current and projected climate change impacts, and includes a decision framework that tiers off of the NPS Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy. The framework is organized broadly around the NPS cultural resources model of research, planning, and stewardship.
Each section of the guide includes an overview of the process, recommended tools and resources, and guiding considerations in addition to specific cultural landscape examples at eight NPS units in the northeastern and western continental United States and Hawaii.
Study of Climate Change Impacts on Cultural Landscapes in the Pacific West Region
The project responds to the growing need to understand the potential effects of projected climate trends and events on cultural resources, with specific emphasis on cultural landscapes. With their historical variability, cultural landscapes of the Pacific West Region will be affected differently by changes in temperature, precipitation, storm frequency, and, in some cases, sea level rise. This study aims to provide a systematic assessment of these changes, and serves as a case-study model for assessment the projected effects of climate change on cultural landscapes.
Included in this study are 164 cultural landscapes in 43 parks within the states of Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and the territory of Guam. Using both NPS and USGS climate data, the CLRG consolidated the historical and projected climate exposure of each of the 164 cultural landscapes. The team then assessed the current condition of six cultural landscapes through site visits, and analyzed the historical climate events and trends that have impacted the sites in the past.
In the second phase of the project, the CLRG assessed the sensitivity of the six case studies to historical and projected climate exposure and identified the sensitivity of the cultural landscape’s character-defining features. This analysis involved on-site workshops with NPS staff including archeologists, biologists, climate scientists, ecologists, fire technicians, historians, landscape architects, and orchardists, among others.
In each case study, the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity were identified. The NPS Pacific West Region Cultural Resources Program will use this vulnerability assessment to develop recommendations toward the agency's goal of ensuring that cultural landscapes are resilient to climate change and ultimately preparing holistic management strategies for highly vulnerable cultural landscapes.
Both parts of the project can be downloaded from the NPS IRMA website:
Slideshow of Climate Change Impacts on Cultural Landscapes
For a brief overview of climate change and cultural landscapes, view the presentation Climate Change Response and Cultural Landscapes.
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Withstanding ChangeResilient SystemsLearn more about how components of resilient systems are integrated into cultural landscape management practices.
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Enduring LandscapesSustainabilityPreservation is closely tied to achieving sustainable stewardship, which includes economic, environmental, and social dimensions.
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National Parks on a Changing PlanetClimate ChangeClimate change threatens the natural and cultural resources in many of our national parks. See what the NPS is doing and how you can help.
Last updated: April 1, 2024