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A Review of the Effects of Climate Change on Visitor Use in US Public Lands and Waters
Figure 1. A conceptual diagram of how climate change is affecting visitor use in public lands and waters, and how changes to visitor use can affect operations of public lands and waters. NPS Climate change is affecting recreational visitor use in U.S. public lands and waters, causing changes to visitation levels, timing of trips, activity participation, and visitor safety. This report reviews the literature on how climate change is influencing visitor use in the United States and how visitor use may be affected in the future. Our goal is to provide the current state of the literature for managers of public lands and waters and provide foundational information for the development of a climate change vulnerability assessment methodology for visitor use within the National Park Service (that may be applicable to other federal lands and waters). Specifically, we investigate how seven different climate change factors may affect visitor use on public lands and waters. These factors consist of increasing temperatures; flooding, drought, and increased variability of precipitation; decreasing snowpack and earlier spring runoff; wildfires, smoke, and air quality; coastal hazards: hurricanes and sea level rise; harmful algal blooms (HABs); and zoonotic and vector-borne disease. The current research indicates that these factors are already affecting visitors to public lands and waters and continued effects in the future are likely as the climate warms. Additionally, we summarize existing research on how visitors to U.S. public lands and waters are adapting to climate change. Throughout the review, we note where there are substantial gaps in the literature and more research would help managers respond to the effects of climate change on visitor use.
Read moreAdapting Visitor Use Management Under a Changing Climate Across the U.S. National Park System Author Links Open Overlay Panel
Research shows that climate change is already affecting both resources and visitors in U.S. National Parks. We sought to better understand if and how park staff across the National Park Service are adapting to climatic changes that affect visitor use, as well as barriers and challenges to adaptation and information needs. We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 63 staff from 31 representative national park units across the United States. We qualitatively coded interviews for themes using deductive and inductive coding approaches. Results indicate that park staff are already taking action to adapt to changes that are affecting visitor use, including efforts to increase resiliency of infrastructure and to support the health and safety of visitors (e.g., increased communication, preventative search and rescue, changes to programming). Common barriers and challenges include institutional factors (such as funding, staffing capacity, and shifting priorities), uncertainty about future conditions, and difficulties with prioritizing climate adaptation. Park staff relayed varied needs for data, tools, and information, but commonly indicated a need for social science data and tools to help synthesize, standardize, and translate climate information. These results provide insights into current actions park staff are taking to adapt to climate change and what resources may be helpful in the future to lower the challenges and barriers to adaptation. Highlights Climate change is affecting visitor use in U.S. National Park Service (NPS) units. NPS staff are taking actions to respond and adapt to the effects on visitor use. Actions are related to visitor infrastructure, safety, and services, among others. Challenges to visitor use adaptation include funding, staffing & future uncertainty. Staff report needing social science data and tools to translate data to action.
Read moreCharting a Path to Health for All at Net-Zero Emissions
Climate change is the defining health challenge of the 21st century, with record-breaking temperatures and extreme weather events already exacting an unprecedented toll on human health and wellbeing. Scientific consensus is clear: rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 are needed not only to reduce the risks of exceeding climate tipping points beyond which irreversible damage occurs to natural systems, but also to safeguard human health, wellbeing, and equity. Despite growing awareness of the climate–health nexus, climate interventions often fail to consider opportunities to maximise co-benefits.
Read moreNational Park Service Staff Perspectives on How Climate Change Affects Visitor Use
Three bikers traveling through the Swan Lake area at Yellowstone National Park in the spring. As temperatures increase due to climate impacts, shoulder seasons in parks may allow for more warm-weather activities. Credit: NPS / Jacob W. Frank. Many public lands, including those managed by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), have the purpose of conserving natural and cultural resources and providing opportunities for visitors to recreate in and enjoy these areas. Achieving this mission becomes more challenging as drought, flooding, increasing temperatures and other climatic change effects are impacting NPS lands and visitors and affecting factors such as visitation, recreation access and health and safety among other aspects of park operations. However, the literature lacks insights from staff dealing with on-the-ground climate impacts to visitor use. To address this gap, we held semi-structured interviews with 63 staff from 31 NPS units across the United States (U.S.) to better understand the effects of climate change on visitor use. We qualitatively analysed the interviews using both deductive and inductive methods to identify key themes. Interview participants consistently noted that climate change is already affecting visitor use at their parks. For instance, increasing temperatures are negatively affecting both staff and visitor safety at parks nationwide, whereas all coastal parks within our sample are already experiencing impacts from sea-level rise or more frequent and severe coastal storms and hurricanes. Other impacts include reduced recreational access, damaged infrastructure and cultural resources and diminished visitor experiences due to fire and smoke. Similarly, concerns about future impacts often revolved around the health and safety of visitors and staff—particularly related to wildfire and smoke, water quality and availability, and increased heat—and climate change forever altering parks. Our research shows staff in parks and protected areas are noticing effects of climate change on visitor use; some of these impacts have not been previously documented in the scientific literature. Study results highlight future visitor use management research needs and key topics to consider for visitor use planning processes.
Read moreWhole-Earth: A Conservation-Planning Paradigm for a Changing Climate
Figure 1: Framework for successful biodiversity conservation in the face of climate change. Conservationists have called for conserving 30%–50% of the earth’s surface to address the ongoing biodiversity and climate crises. To be successful, such an expansion of the global reserve network must meet climate-intensified challenges of species movements, ecological transformations, increasing human needs, and environmental injustices. These challenges will not be overcome by simply doubling or tripling the footprint of protected areas. Instead, successful biodiversity conservation will re- quire planning for conservation mosaics—large, integrated landscapes, and seascapes composed of areas with different levels of protection and types of management—that cover the entire earth. Such mosaics can (1) increase landscape-scale coordination of conservation efforts, (2) increase landscape permeability, (3) sustain healthy human populations, and (4) reduce environmental injustices. We describe this more holistic spatial conservation paradigm and provide a framework for planning for conservation mosaics that addresses growing biodiversity conservation and human needs.
Read moreCollective Co-existence, Climate Apocalypse, and a Nature-Relational Way Forward
We begin by looking into the future – not too far in years to be too far-fetched, but far enough to point to a critical time in terms of our collective coexistence. 15 years ahead. If we were writing this in the early 1900’s, our time frame would have been around 100 years. Our timeframe is shorter now because in technological terms the rate of change has been increasing exponentially. As an example of an exponential function, take a dollar and double it every day. After a week you have 64 dollars, which is a nice amount but nothing too surprising. But after a month you have over a billion dollars. That is part of the experience of exponential functions: They can start out looking rather modest, if not linear, but at some point shoot skyward, at which point it is difficult for the human mind to comprehend even the next iteration. So, it has been in our evolutionary history (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2008). About 1.6 million years ago, Homo erectus is believed to have first controlled fire. About 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens deliberately used bone, ivory, and shell objects to shape projectile points, needles, and awls, and engaged in cave painting and sculpture. About 10,000 years ago, with the rise of agriculture, rudimentary tools were invented to domesticate land and animals. By about the middle of the third millennium b.c., blast furnaces in China were invented to cast iron. By the sixth century there was the iron plow, and by the thirteenth century the spinning wheel. The Western Renaissance emerged in the 1700’s, and then after that was the Industrial Revolution. The greatest amount of technological innovation in the shortest period of time has occurred in the last fifty years, and even in the last twenty years, especially with those technologies that build on digital computation. Back in 1965, Moore’s (2006) law was that the number of transistors in microchips doubles about every two years, which pretty much continues to this day. In turn, exponential technological growth has spurred equally fast social transformations. It took 70 years for the landline telephone to become pervasive in modern societies and transform modes of communication. It took seven years for the cellphone to do the same thing; and now, more recently, for social media by means of smartphones to create “information echo chambers” where falsehoods are amplified, social life splintered, and democracies threatened.
Read moreHealth Professionals and the Climate Crisis
Health professionals from every corner of the health sector—from allergy to vascular surgery, from epidemiology to environmental health, from nursing to hospital administration—have recognized the magnitude and urgency of the climate crisis. A growing literature provides guidance on how to conceptualize and meet the vast challenges we face and on how to keep our spirits up as we do so.
Read morePromoting Health Through Nature-Based Climate Solutions
Nature-based climate solutions represent a set of strategies and tools that can help mitigate carbon emissions, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, promote adaptation to climate change, and build resilience. They need to be implemented as part of an integrated set of climate actions. They aim to accomplish specific mitigation and adaptation goals effectively, economically, and safely. They deliver a wide range of co-benefits, including co-benefits for health and well-being. Nature-based climate solutions can cause unintended and even harmful consequences, and therefore need to be carefully planned, implemented, and managed. This chapter explores nature-based climate solutions in cities as well as in rural and wildland areas. It discusses tradeoffs, policy levers, economic levers, communications, and equity considerations that arise in implementing nature-based climate solutions. The chapter also includes a textbox on ecosystem services and nature’s services to people, and a textbox on the number of trees that the world can support.
Read moreStreet Trees Provide an Opportunity to Mitigate Urban Heat and Reduce Risk of High Heat Exposure
Figure 1. Study area for this work, which is part of the Greening Research in Tacoma (GRIT) project, is located in South Tacoma, Washington, USA, shown by the black square on global map, where solar radiation shields (photographed) containing temperature loggers were installed on utility poles. Here we report on temperature data from loggers at 46 locations throughout the neighborhood (blue dots) during summer 2022. Climate change is exacerbating the need for urban greening and the associated environmental and human well-being benefits. Trees can help mitigate urban heat, but more detailed understanding of cooling effects of green infrastructure are needed to guide management decisions and deploy trees as effective and equitable climate adaptation infrastructure. We investigated how urban trees affect summer air temperature along sidewalks within a neighborhood of Tacoma, Washington, USA, and to what extent urban trees reduce risks of high summer temperatures (i.e., the levels regulated by state outdoor heat exposure rules intended to reduce heat-related illnesses). Air temperature varied by 2.57 °C, on average, across our study area, and the probability of daytime temperatures exceeding regulated high temperature thresholds was up to five times greater in locations with no canopy cover within 10 m compared to those with 100% cover. Air temperatures decreased linearly with increasing cover within 10 m, suggesting that every unit of added tree cover can help cool the air. Our findings highlight the value of trees in mitigating urban heat, especially given expected warming with climate change. Protecting existing urban trees and increasing tree cover (e.g., by planting street trees), are important actions to enhance climate change resilience of urban areas.
Read moreLeveraging Neuroscience for Climate Change Research
Figure 1: Reciprocal relationships between the brain and a changing environment. Anthropogenic climate change poses a substantial threat to societal living conditions. Here, we argue that neuroscience can substantially contribute to the fight against climate change and provide a framework and a roadmap to organize and prioritize neuroscience research in this domain. We outline how neuroscience can be used to: (1) investigate the negative impact of climate change on the human brain; (2) identify ways to adapt; (3) understand the neural substrates of decisions with pro-environmental and harmful outcomes; and (4) create neuroscience-based insights into communication and intervention strategies that aim to promote climate action. The paper is also a call to action for neuroscientists to join broader scientific efforts to tackle the existential environmental threats Earth is currently facing. Related Media Call for Action: The Power of Neuroscience to fight against Climate Change (November 13, 2023)
Read moreHope, Health, and the Climate Crisis
Hope has been viewed since ancient times as a bedrock of human thriving, and contemporary evidence suggests that hope is a determinant of health. However, the climate crisis, in addition to its many direct and indirect threats to human health, erodes hope in many people. This article describes medical aspects of hope and hopelessness, including clinical definitions, measurement methods, and treatments. It then touches on literary and philosophical perspectives on hope, from both ancient and modern sources, emphasizing the centrality of hope to human thriving. Finally, it applies these clinical and cultural perspectives to the climate crisis, arguing that health professionals should propel hope in themselves, their patients, and the broader society, and drawing on clinical insights to propose concrete ways of doing so.
Read moreClimate Adaptation Actions for Urban Forests and Human Health
Urban areas can be particularly vulnerable to climate change due to extensive impervious cover, increased pollution, greater human population densities, and a concentration of built structures that intensify impacts from urban heat, drought, and extreme weather. Urban residents are at risk from a variety of climate stressors, which can cause both physical and mental harm. Urban forests and tree cover provide a critical role in helping cities address climate change by supporting greenhouse gas mitigation, reducing the impacts of extreme heat and altered climate that impair human health, and helping communities to adaptively respond through engagement with nature. At the same time, urban forests are vulnerable to changes in climate and in need of robust strategies to adapt to those changes. As climate change impacts increase, efforts to “green” cities and adapt urban forests to changing conditions take on greater importance to support human health and well-being. Urban forest managers and allied professionals are looking for information to reduce climate risks to urban forests and secure their benefits for people and ecosystems. This report, Climate Adaptation Actions for Urban Forests and Human Health, synthesizes adaptation actions to address climate change in urban forest management and promote human health and well-being through nature-based solutions. It compiles and organizes information from a wide range of peer-reviewed research and evidence-based reports on climate change adaptation, urban forest management, carbon sequestration and storage, and human health response to urban nature. This report includes the Urban Forest Climate and Health Adaptation Menu, which presents information and ideas for optimizing the climate and human health outcomes of urban forestry projects and provides professionals who are working at the intersection of climate, public health, and urban forestry with resources to support climate adaptation planning and activities. Notably, it does not provide specific recommendations or guidance for any particular place; rather, it offers a range of action opportunities at different scales that can be incorporated into either comprehensive or specific climate adaptation initiatives. The Menu can be used with an existing, tested adaptation process to help managers consider climate risks and explore the benefits and drawbacks of potential adaptation actions within the context of a particular situation or project. It also can be useful for generating productive discussions about community needs and values to guide planning, education and outreach, research, or changes in policy or infrastructure within communities.
Read moreSustaining Life: Human Health–Planetary Health Linkages
Our beautiful planet has been profoundly altered by human activities. Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, land use changes, and disrupted cycles of water, nitrogen, and phosphorus, to name several alterations, in turn have far-reaching impacts on human health, especially targeting the most vulnerable. Planetary Health approaches the health of people and the health of the planet as inextricably linked. This chapter introduces the Planetary Health framework by exploring four examples: climate change, chemical contamination, land use changes, and biodiversity loss. It concludes by considering innovative ways of thinking, and novel ethical considerations, raised by the current crisis of planetary degradation.
Read moreManaged Retreat as a Strategy for Climate Change Adaptation in Small Communities: Public Health Implications
Table 1. Characteristics of selected case studies of managed retreat in small communities In coming decades, sea level rise associated with climate change will make some communities uninhabitable. Managed retreat, or planned relocation, is a proactive response prior to catastrophic necessity. Managed retreat has disruptive health, sociocultural, and economic impacts on communities that relocate. Health impacts include mental health, social capital, food security, water supply, sanitation, infectious diseases, injury, and health care access. We searched peer-reviewed and gray literature for reports on small island or coastal communities at various stages of relocation primarily due to sea level rise. We reviewed these reports to identify public health impacts and barriers to relocation. We identified eight relevant small communities in the USA (Alaska, Louisiana, and Washington), Panama, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Affected populations range from 60 to 2700 persons and are predominantly indigenous people who rely on subsistence fishing and agriculture. Few reports directly addressed public health issues. While some relocations were successful, barriers to relocation in other communities include place attachment, potential loss of livelihoods, and lack of funding, suitable land, community consensus, and governance procedures. Further research is needed on the health impacts of managed retreat and how to facilitate population resilience. Studies could include surveillance of health indicators before and after communities relocate due to sea level rise, drought, or other environmental hazards. Lessons learned may inform relocation of both small and large communities affected by climate change.
Read moreSafeguarding Human Health in the Anthropocene Epoch
Figure 1: Services provided by natural systems. Adapted from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Far-reaching changes to the structure and function of the Earth’s natural systems represent a growing threat to human health. And yet, global health has mainly improved as these changes have gathered pace. What is the explanation? As a Commission, we are deeply concerned that the explanation is straightforward and sobering: we have been mortgaging the health of future generations to realise economic and development gains in the present. By unsustainably exploiting nature’s resources, human civilisation has flourished but now risks substantial health effects from the degradation of nature’s life support systems in the future. Health effects from changes to the environment including climatic change, ocean acidification, land degradation, water scarcity, overexploitation of fisheries, and biodiversity loss pose serious challenges to the global health gains of the past several decades and are likely to become increasingly dominant during the second half of this century and beyond. These striking trends are driven by highly inequitable, inefficient, and unsustainable patterns of resource consumption and technological development, together with population growth. We identify three categories of challenges that have to be addressed to maintain and enhance human health in the face of increasingly harmful environmental trends. Firstly, conceptual and empathy failures (imagination challenges), such as an over-reliance on gross domestic product as a measure of human progress, the failure to account for future health and environmental harms over present day gains, and the disproportionate effect of those harms on the poor and those in developing nations. Secondly, knowledge failures (research and information challenges), such as failure to address social and environmental drivers of ill health, a historical scarcity of transdisciplinary research and funding, together with an unwillingness or inability to deal with uncertainty within decision making frameworks. Thirdly, implementation failures (governance challenges), such as how governments and institutions delay recognition and responses to threats, especially when faced with uncertainties, pooled common resources, and time lags between action and effect. Although better evidence is needed to underpin appropriate policies than is available at present, this should not be used as an excuse for inaction. Substantial potential exists to link action to reduce environmental damage with improved health outcomes for nations at all levels of economic development. This Commission identifies opportunities for action by six key constituencies: health professionals, research funders and the academic community, the UN and Bretton Woods bodies, governments, investors and corporate reporting bodies, and civil society organisations. Although better evidence is needed to underpin appropriate policies than is available at present, this should not be used as an excuse for inaction. Substantial potential exists to link action to reduce environmental damage with improved health outcomes for nations at all levels of economic development. This Commission identifies opportunities for action by six key constituencies: health professionals, research funders and the academic community, the UN and Bretton Woods bodies, governments, investors and corporate reporting bodies, and civil society organisations. Depreciation of natural capital and nature’s subsidy should be accounted for so that economy and nature are not falsely separated. Policies should balance social progress, environmental sustainability, and the economy. To support a world population of 9–10 billion people or more, resilient food and agricultural systems are needed to address both undernutrition and overnutrition, reduce waste, diversify diets, and minimise environmental damage. Meeting the need for modern family planning can improve health in the short term—eg, from reduced maternal mortality and reduced pressures on the environment and on infrastructure. Planetary health offers an unprecedented opportunity for advocacy of global and national reforms of taxes and subsidies for many sectors of the economy, including energy, agriculture, water, fisheries, and health. Regional trade treaties should act to further incorporate the protection of health in the near and long term. Several essential steps need to be taken to transform the economy to support planetary health. These steps include a reduction of waste through the creation of products that are more durable and require less energy and materials to manufacture than those often produced at present; the incentivisation of recycling, reuse, and repair; and the substitution of hazardous materials with safer alternatives. Despite present limitations, the Sustainable Development Goals provide a great opportunity to integrate health and sustainability through the judicious selection of relevant indicators relevant to human wellbeing, the enabling infrastructure for development, and the supporting natural systems, together with the need for strong governance. The landscape, ecosystems, and the biodiversity they contain can be managed to protect natural systems, and indirectly, reduce human disease risk. Intact and restored ecosystems can contribute to resilience (see panel 1 for glossary of terms used in this report), for example, through improved coastal protection (eg, through wave attenuation) and the ability of floodplains and greening of river catchments to protect from river flooding events by diverting and holding excess water. The growth in urban populations emphasises the importance of policies to improve health and the urban environment, such as through reduced air pollution, increased physical activity, provision of green space, and urban planning to prevent sprawl and decrease the magnitude of urban heat islands. Transdisciplinary research activities and capacity need substantial and urgent expansion. Present research limitations should not delay action. In situations where technology and knowledge can deliver win–win solutions and co-benefits, rapid scale-up can be achieved if researchers move ahead and assess the implementation of potential solutions. Recent scientific investments towards understanding non-linear state shifts in ecosystems are very important, but in the absence of improved understanding and predictability of such changes, efforts to improve resilience for human health and adaptation strategies remain a priority. The creation of integrated surveillance systems that collect rigorous health, socioeconomic, and environmental data for defined populations over long time periods can provide early detection of emerging disease outbreaks or changes in nutrition and non-communicable disease burden. The improvement of risk communication to policy makers and the public and the support of policy makers to make evidence-informed decisions can be helped by an increased capacity to do systematic reviews and the provision of rigorous policy briefs. Health professionals have an essential role in the achievement of planetary health: working across sectors to integrate policies that advance health and environmental sustainability, tackling health inequities, reducing the environmental impacts of health systems, and increasing the resilience of health systems and populations to environmental change. Humanity can be stewarded successfully through the 21st century by addressing the unacceptable inequities in health and wealth within the environmental limits of the Earth, but this will require the generation of new knowledge, implementation of wise policies, decisive action, and inspirational leadership.
Read moreClimate Change: Anticipating and Adapting to the Impacts on Terrestrial Species
Table 1. Example approaches for anticipating and adapting to climate impacts on terrestrial species. Addressing the impacts of climate change on terrestrial species requires knowledge of how climates will change, how species will respond, and what is the scope of actions that can be taken to help species and systems adapt. There is a rapidly growing understanding of how species will respond to projected climatic changes with changes in their phenologies, distributions, population dynamics, interspecific interactions, and disease dynamics. Many management strategies have been proposed for addressing these changes, including general principles such as fostering resilience, practicing adaptive management, and expanding the scale of management as well as more specific recommendations such as increasing landscape connectivity and increasing the extent of reserve networks.
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