In the summer of 2011, NPS initiated a focused program on cultural resources and climate change by establishing the position of Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for Cultural Resources. This position serves as a link between the NPS Climate Change Response Program and the Cultural Resources, Partnerships, and Science Program.
This Coordinator furthers the Call to Action by creating a new basis for NPS to address impacts of climate change on cultural resources from park to landscape scales as outlined in action #21, Revisit Leopold, and #22 Scaling Up, and engage with the wide range of information and perspectives cultural resources provide about how human societies can respond to changing environments, as part of action #3, History Lesson.
Several cultural resources and climate change projects are now underway. These include a cultural resources climate change impact handbook outlining the projected effects of climate change on the major types of cultural resources across different ecological zones; a geodatabase of observed effects on cultural resources across the NPS; cultural resource sections of a coastal adaptation handbook to assist parks in developing responses to sea level rise and associated storm surges; and a companion volume to the NPS Climate Change Response Strategy that lays out the dual cultural resource components of climate change—impacts and information about past adaptations—of the four pillars of the Strategy, which are science, adaptation, mitigation, and communication.
Call to action items: Revisit Leopold, Scaling Up, History Lesson
State: Washington, DC
Year accomplished: 2011-onward