Climate Change Projects

Pack rats' middens are climate time capsules. Learn what scientists learned from the middens about the Chaco people and their surroundings as they adapted to climate change.

Climate change may have direct and/or indirect effects on many elements of Southern Plains network ecosystems, from streams and grasslands to fires and birds.

Fireflies in Arizona? At Tumacácori NHP, dark skies and special environmental circumstances create habitat for a variety of glowing insects. Across the US, the dark, protected landscapes of the National Park System are crucial to invertebrate conservation. Learn more about our most ubiquitous and most important—but probably also most overlooked and maligned—wildlife, and why our future depends on theirs.

Across the Intermountain Region, Inventory & Monitoring Division ecologists are helping to track the effects of climate change, provide baseline information for resource management, evaluate new technologies, and inspire the next generation of park stewards. This article highlights accomplishments achieved during fiscal year 2021.

The climate inventory documented past and present climate monitoring efforts, focusing largely on identifying weather and climate stations in and near Southern Colorado Plateau Network parks.

The National Park Service's Sonoran Desert Network Inventory and Monitoring Program is monitoring several vital signs that will likely show the effects of climate change. This article offers a summary of the network’s local-scale findings to date, as well as some examples of how monitoring will detect future change.

Under the effects of climate change, the Sonoran Desert is expected to become hotter and drier. These changes are likely to have strong impacts on the abundance and distribution of the region's plant species. A recent study used long-term vegetation monitoring results across two national parks and two research sites to determine how Sonoran Desert plant species have responded to past climate variability.

Bandelier National Monument tells the story of over 10,000 years of Ancestral Pueblo and Spanish history, the evidence of which is threatened by unsustainable land use exacerbated by climate change. Hundreds of ancient cultural sites are endangered as a result. How did Bandelier get this way?

In this project, USGS and NPS scientists used the range of variation in historical climate data to provide context for assessing the relative impact of projected future climate on soil water availability. This report provides the results of modeled SWP generated for 11 ecosystems in nine Southern Colorado Plateau Network parks.

The combination of high. elevation and a semi-arid climate makes the Colorado Plateau particularly vulnerable to climate change. Climate models predict that over the next 100 years, the Southwest will become warmer and even more arid, with more extreme droughts than the region has experienced in the recent past.