Final Report: Refining Guidance for Incorporating Climate Science and Scenario Planning into National Park Service Resource Stewardship Strategies
Dates
Publication Date
2019-12-30
Citation
Morgan Elmer, and Brian W Miller, 2019, Final Report - Refining Guidance for Incorporating Climate Science and Scenario Planning into National Park Service Resource Stewardship Strategies: .
Summary
One of the biggest challenges facing resource managers today is not knowing exactly when, where, or how climate change effects will unfold. To help federal land managers address this need, the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) has been working with the National Park Service (NPS) to pioneer an approach for incorporating climate science and scenario planning into NPS planning processes, in particular Resource Stewardship Strategies (RSS). These strategies serve as a long-range planning tool for a national park unit to achieve its desired natural and cultural resource conditions, and are used to guide a park’s full spectrum of resource-specific management plans and day-to-day management activities. To support [...]
Summary
One of the biggest challenges facing resource managers today is not knowing exactly when, where, or how climate change effects will unfold. To help federal land managers address this need, the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) has been working with the National Park Service (NPS) to pioneer an approach for incorporating climate science and scenario planning into NPS planning processes, in particular Resource Stewardship Strategies (RSS). These strategies serve as a long-range planning tool for a national park unit to achieve its desired natural and cultural resource conditions, and are used to guide a park’s full spectrum of resource-specific management plans and day-to-day management activities.
To support adaptation planning within national parks, a previous NC CASC project designed an approach for integrating climate science and scenarios into the RSS process using Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming as a test case. Building on these efforts, the present project applied the lessons drawn from the Devils Tower experience to a different NPS unit and context – Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. This additional work was important to ensure that findings are relevant to multiple contexts, because RSSs are a cornerstone of NPS planning and are being completed for all NPS units.
Not only did this work result in climate-informed resource management goals and actions for Wind Cave (documented as part of the RSS summary document and dynamic RSS database), but it also enabled researchers to refine and publish guidance for incorporating climate science and scenario planning into the RSS process (“Supplemental Guidance: Integration of Climate Change Scenario Planning into the Resource Stewardship Strategy Process”, NPS in press). This RSS supplemental guidance will inform upcoming RSS efforts, including those for Yellowstone National Park and Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
