Supporting the National Park Service in Climate Adaptation Planning

Natural and cultural resource managers across the country have begun to use a tool known as "scenario planning" to help prepare for climate change effects that may unfold in the future. In this process, scientific projections are used to identify different plausible, relevant, and divergent climate conditions for a particular area, and then through a participatory process, scientists and resource managers develop "scenarios" which describe the implications of these different conditions for resources and management. The North Central CASC has been working with the National Park Service (NPS) Climate Change Response Program (CCRP) to encourage and support national parks in incorporating climate science and scenario planning into their park management and planning processes. These efforts have helped resource managers to better prepare for the uncertainty of how climate will affect their resources and wild lands. To enhance the capacity and scope of these engagements, the North Central CASC brought on two new individuals with expertise and technical skills related to ecological responses to climate.



Over the next two years, these individuals will serve as liaisons between the North Central CASC and the NPS CCRP, and as resources in the development and application of climate change scenarios with NPS and other resource management partners. They will help to plan and facilitate scenario planning workshops, synthesize scientific literature on the climate sensitivities of priority resources, develop and apply ecological response models to enhance scenario planning applications, co-produce reports and literature on the outcomes of scenario planning engagements, and evaluate the efficacy of scaling up scenarios from the individual park level to the regional level to broaden their use and applicability for resource managers.