From the National Park Service series "Climate Change Response Strategy and Cultural Landscapes".
The National Park Service responds to the effects of a changing climate, and also works to reduce the effects of its own operations. Mitigation means measuring and shrinking its carbon footprint: using resources more efficiently, cutting waste, reusing materials, and conserving ecosystems that store carbon.
A resilient landscape resists climate impacts and needs fewer resources. Healthy, balanced landscapes sustain themselves better and need less care. Building them means improving the soil, adding organic matter and natural nutrients, encouraging healthy roots, and keeping plants and trees vigorous and free of disease.
Staff and volunteers mulching newly planted trees in a historic orchard. NPS.
Landscape maintenance uses a great deal of a park's energy and produces much of its waste, so it is a big opportunity. Managers can use environmentally responsible practices, match the level of care to what each area needs, and build healthier, more self-supporting systems. Treatment recommendations for a landscape weigh environmental effects in both routine maintenance and long-term management.
Mowing less, in keeping with history
Mowing turf is one of the largest maintenance jobs across the park system, using fuel, water, fertiliser and herbicide and producing greenhouse gases. A Cultural Landscape Report, which sets goals for a landscape's appearance based on its history and uses, might recommend mowing less area or less often to reflect its significant period.
Glenmont, Thomas Edison National Historical Park. The south lawn was once a meadow of daisies, black-eyed Susans, buttercups and wildflowers, grazed by cows and horses and cut for hay, but had been kept as mown turf. The report recommends turning part of it back into meadow, with more species and less frequent mowing — cutting energy use and restoring historic character at once.
Cows grazing Glenmont's south meadow (undated). NPS / Thomas Edison NHP Archives.
Focusing the work
Concentrating care where it matters reduces the resources a whole landscape needs.
- ‘Āinahou Ranch, Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. Horticulturist Herbert Shipman developed the property from 1941 to 1971 as a showcase for plants he collected worldwide, set among lava features and native trees. Today care focuses on the ornamental garden around the house; areas tied to historic views or paths are mowed periodically, and the rest only when needed.
- Fort Baker, Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Part of the parade ground's turf was converted to meadow to reduce mowing.
Better-adapted plants
Substituting species or varieties better suited to today's conditions — when supplementing, replacing lost plants or replacing non-historic ones — can cut water, pesticide, pruning and mowing needs.
At Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site in New York, the formal gardens, laid out in 1875 and altered by the Vanderbilts in the early 1930s, are a defining feature of this Gilded Age estate and the work of several notable landscape architects and horticulturists. A Cultural Landscape Report guides the character, size, colour, texture and arrangement of their annuals, perennials, vines and roses, while leaving staff and volunteers flexibility over what to plant, depending on availability and upkeep.
The Lower Perennial Garden at Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site. NPS.
Reviving historic practices
Old practices, revived or adapted, can save resources while adding historic character and something to interpret. Water-wise irrigation — drip lines, solar pumps and controllers, watering at night and only when needed — keeps historic plants alive while using less water.
Ditches carry water from Rainbow Creek to Buckner Orchard, North Cascades National Park. Work on the system began in 1911, the family obtained water rights in 1912, and the historic orchard is still watered this way. NPS.
Mulch, equipment, weeds and compost
- Mulch cuts evaporation. It must suit the site as well as its history: at Manzanar National Historic Site, larger chips of wood were needed to stay put in frequent high winds.
- Equipment bought or converted to run on propane, biofuels or electricity cuts emissions.
- Chemicals — herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers — can harm natural and cultural resources alike, from the petroleum used to make and ship them to polluted runoff and damage to historic materials. Non-chemical weed control can work well.
- Compost spread on the landscape returns nutrients to the soil, reduces chemical fertiliser and waste leaving the park, and stores carbon on site; compost mulch also holds in water.
Shredded bark mulch out to the dripline of the trees in Manzanar's historic orchard, where it resists the wind and reduces watering. NPS.
Carefully tended historic landscapes are better able to endure. Managed as whole systems, they are healthier and more resilient to pests, disease, drought, invasive plants and high winds.
Sources
- National Park Service, "Climate Change and Cultural Landscapes: Mitigation", in Climate Change Response Strategy and Cultural Landscapes. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/climate-change-response-strategy-cultural-landscapes-mitigation.htm
- Rewritten in hubnx's own words.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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