Responding to Climate Change in One Park: The NPS Toolkit

Climate policy is written in Washington; climate change happens in a particular canyon, on a particular coast, to a particular building. This guide, written by the National Park Service's climate staff, walks a park manager through the tools the Service has built for responding at the level of one park — using the American Southwest's drought as the running example.

In the American Southwest, 2000–2021 was the driest 22-year period since at least AD 800. NPS photo

What the Southwest is facing

• The driest 22 years since at least AD 800 (2000–2021) — call it megadrought or aridification.
• At Lake Powell, water at historic lows closed 11 of 12 large boat launches, let non-native smallmouth bass pass into the Grand Canyon, and exposed cultural sites to theft and vandalism.
• At Bandelier National Monument, more drought, fire, flooding and soil erosion, affecting archaeology and ecology alike.
• Ahead: mean annual temperatures up 5–8 °F this century, with more aridity in La Niña years.

The framework

In 2023 the NPS updated its Climate Change Response Strategy: four cornerstones — Understand, Adapt, Mitigate, Communicate — and twelve goals. A Quick Guide, based on a model from the Intermountain Region, turns them into steps a park can take. Two come first:

1. Coordinate across divisions. Climate touches facilities, rangers, interpreters and resource managers alike. Name a climate change coordinator, form a cross-divisional team, review progress with leadership at least once a year, and bring it to at least one all-employee meeting or training.
2. Put the Strategy into annual work planning.

1. Know how your park's climate is changing

Carlsbad Caverns around 2050 (2035–2065) against 1979–2012: each dot a climate model projection; the circled "warm wet" and "hot dry" futures bracket best and worst cases. NPS

Days over 95 °F each year at El Malpais National Monument: under 1 in 1950–1999, 3 in a Warm-Wet future, 11 in a Hot-Dry one. NPS

2. Know what is vulnerable

A climate change vulnerability assessment (CCVA) weighs exposure, sensitivity and — for living things — the ability to adapt, and says what is at risk and why. There is no single CCVA for a whole park: sagebrush, elk and a water supply each need their own. Few parks have any site-specific ones yet. Sources:

• Forest Service regional assessments and species studies; the USDA Climate Hubs.
• CREVAT, the Cultural Resources Environmental Assessment Toolbox, from the NPS Vanishing Treasures Program with the Universities of Arizona and Pennsylvania and Boise State — six exposures (maximum temperature, extreme rain, dry days, wildfire, erosion, freeze-thaw) matched to the sensitivity of each building material. It informed on-site work at Aztec Ruins and Chaco Culture.
• The Natural Hazards Checklist — 27 climate risks for a facility.
• Above all, park staff and partners who know each site; the program has worksheets to structure what they know.

3. Decide how to manage: resist, accept or direct

The RAD framework gives three distinct choices when an ecosystem — or a building — faces rapid, possibly irreversible change:

Post-fire recovery (BAER and BAR) is a natural moment to apply it. To get from those broad choices to specific actions, Planning for a Changing Climate (P4CC) takes managers through six worksheets: record goals, assess vulnerability, re-examine goals, brainstorm strategies, prioritize, implement and track. The Forest Service's adaptation "menus" offer ready-made lists of actions. For buildings, the Addressing Climate Change and Natural Hazards Handbook — required for any project going to the Bureau Investment Review Board — screens a project for hazards at concept stage and follows it through design.

In action: Big Bend is rebuilding the 70-year-old water system from Oak Spring, the groundwater-fed source that alone supplies the busy Chisos Basin.

4. Build it into ordinary plans

Climate adaptation is not a separate plan. P4CC asks every plan for two things: forward-looking goals based on projections rather than the past, and more than one scenario of the future. It is built into Resource Stewardship Strategies and park workshops; climate belongs in the affected-environment trends of every NEPA analysis; and Policy Memo 15-01 requires facility vulnerabilities to be documented and designed for. The Coastal Adaptation Strategies Handbook covers coastal infrastructure, and more than twenty coastal parks have vulnerability assessments. Scenario planning — what might happen? — has been used in the NPS since 2007.

The NPS adaptation planning cycle; forward-looking goals and multiple scenarios matter most in steps 2–5. NPS

5. Cut your own footprint

The NPS manages more constructed assets than any other civilian federal agency. Its Green Parks Plan (3rd edition, 2023) sets five goals: be climate friendly and climate ready; be energy smart and water wise; buy green and reduce, reuse, recycle; green our rides; foster a sustainability ethic. By FY 2020, NPS greenhouse gas emissions were 32% below 2008. The Climate Friendly Parks program certifies parks through four milestones — application, emissions inventory, workshop, action plan; fourteen Intermountain parks have made it since 2012.

In action: San Antonio Missions joined in 2012, the first in Texas: a bike-share partnership adding eight miles of non-motorized recreation, propane mowers on 270 acres a year at half the fuel cost, an EV charging station, and by 2014, 40% of its fleet on alternative fuels.

6. Talk about it

Parks reach some 800 million visitors a year, in person and online — living laboratories where change can be seen. The National Climate Change Interpretation and Education Strategy sets four goals, from personal relevance to partnership. Support includes audience research, an annual Interpreting Climate Change course, K-12 programs such as A Park for Every Classroom, park climate web pages, waysides and videos.

Saguaro National Park's web pages explore local climate trends and what they mean. NPS / Hannah Schwalbe

In action: the Drawing Connections videos — hand-drawn animations about climate at nine parks, including Organ Pipe Cactus, Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Laramie — won the National Association for Interpretation's top video prize and a Silver Telly.

7. Train people, and 8. work with partners

The Interior Department's Climate Action Plan (2021) calls for a climate-literate workforce; the NPS has a workforce strategy with training road maps by occupation, and climate is now part of NPS Fundamentals. Earth to Sky — NPS, Fish and Wildlife Service and NASA — runs regional courses, such as Florida Squeezed in 2024.

No park can do this alone. USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers and landscape partnerships — the Crown Managers' Partnership, the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee, the Gunnison Climate Working Group and others — share the work. In August 2021, the Southeast Utah Group, USGS, Northern Arizona University and partners held a workshop that helped build and test an adaptation menu for Colorado Plateau arid grasslands.

The point

Parks must prepare for both the sudden — worse fires, storms and floods — and the slow — longer droughts, shifting seasons. That means building climate response into every part of park management, not setting it beside it.

Sources

Written from "Developing Climate Change Strategies and Actions at Your Park," by Tom Olliff, Pam Benjamin, Andrew Erwin, Joel Reynolds, Wylie Carr, Larry Perez, Amber Runyon, Koren Nydick, Gregor W. Schuurman, David Lawrence and John Gross, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. It cites Williams and others (2022), USGCRP (2017, 2023), Runyon and others (2020–2024), Schuurman and others (2019–2022), NPS (2015–2023) and others.