Adapting to climate change in US coastal parks

Over the next century, warming global temperatures will present many challenges for the National Park Service (NPS) and public land managers. Rising sea level will be one of the most obvious and most challenging impacts of this warming. Even a minor increase in sea level will have significant effects on coastal hazards, natural resources and assets within national parks. To begin addressing these issues, the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines (PSDS) at Western Carolina University (WCU) has partnered with NPS to begin an assessment of the level of exposure that park owned assets will face during a period of rising sea level.

Credit: Katie McDowell Peek, Robert S. Young, Rebecca L. Beavers, Cat Hawkins Hoffman, Brian T. Diethorn, and Shawn Norton, Adapting to climate change in US coastal parks, U.S. Department of the Interior/National Park Service/Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, 2015, Public domain publication

Curated by Lea Rekow for BifrostOnline