Climate‐change vulnerability assessments of natural resources in U.S. National Parks

Abstract

Climate change poses significant challenges to protected area management globally. Anticipatory climate adaptation planning relies on vulnerability assessments that identify parks and resources at risk from climate change and associated vulnerability drivers. However, there is currently little understanding of where and how protected area assessments have been conducted and what assessment approaches best inform park management. To address this knowledge gap, we systematically evaluated climate-change vulnerability assessments of natural resources in U.S. National Parks. We categorized the spatial scale, resources, methods, and handling of uncertainty for each assessment and mapped which parks have assessments and for what resources. We found that a few broad-scale assessments provide baseline information-primarily regarding physical climate change exposure-for all parks and can support regional to national decisions. However, finer-scale assessments are required to inform decisions for individual or small groups of parks. Only 10% of parks had parkspecific assessments describing key climate impacts and identifying priority resource vulnerabilities, and 37% lacked any regional or park-specific assessments. We identify assessment approaches that match the scale and objectives of different protected area management decisions and recommend a multiscaled approach to implementing assessments to meet the information needs of a large, protected area network like the National Park system.

A habitat‐centered framework for wildlife climate change vulnerability assessments: Application to Gunnison sage‐grouse

“…First, we identified (1) the extent of assessed range and any relevant management units (e.g., population boundaries), (2) focal threats to habitats for the species, and (3) multiple divergent “narrative scenarios” that describe future changes (e.g., “hot and dry scenario: temperature increases exceed 5°F and precipitation declines”), which were used in Step 3 to group projections according to similar climate pathways and assess uncertainty over a range of possible outcomes (Michalak et al, 2022). Land managers participated in this step to ensure the CCVA can inform their management (Foden et al, 2019; Miller et al, 2022; Rowland et al, 2011).…”

“…Where current conditions meant a given threat is not relevant (i.e., masked out as described above), the NA values exclude these from the weighted mean. The resulting scenario‐specific maps identify hotspots of species vulnerability to future changes that integrate multiple habitat needs and threats (equivalent to an ensemble model, which increases confidence; Gardali et al, 2012; Michalak et al, 2022; Triviño et al, 2018) to identify the most imperiled populations in need of management and/or triage.…”

“…Our approach falls under the umbrella of “synthesis assessments,” which leverage multiple exposure datasets and merge them with existing knowledge about species. Synthesis assessments are particularly suitable for regional planning because they can more comprehensively assess multiple effects across the range of key natural resources, using multiple lines of evidence to identify areas of consensus for habitat shifts (Glick et al, 2011; Michalak et al, 2022; Pacifici et al, 2015). We leveraged published spatially explicit projections of vegetation changes or risk of loss, and weighted them based on species–habitat relationships to represent a wildlife species' differing sensitivities to these changes.…”

“…To be effective, wildlife CCVA approaches need to forecast the complex effects of climate change across the full suite of a species' habitat needs (e.g., for different life stages; LEDee et al, 2021; Michalak et al, 2022). CCVAs for vegetation have been conducted, but they generally model direct effects of climate on only a single vegetation group (Michalak et al, 2022; Small‐Lorenz et al, 2013).…”

“…To be effective, wildlife CCVA approaches need to forecast the complex effects of climate change across the full suite of a species' habitat needs (e.g., for different life stages; LEDee et al, 2021; Michalak et al, 2022). CCVAs for vegetation have been conducted, but they generally model direct effects of climate on only a single vegetation group (Michalak et al, 2022; Small‐Lorenz et al, 2013). In contrast, estimating vulnerability at the local scale of populations requires assessing climate effects on the full set of vegetation groups a species requires to persist, but this remains a key omission from many CCVAs (Dawson et al, 2011; Pacifici et al, 2015; Rowland et al, 2011).…”