CLIMATE CHANGE: WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR PARKS AND RECREATION MANAGEMENT?

Scientists agree that climate changes occurred during the 20th century. The Earth's surface temperature rose 1 [degrees] F, with most of that warming happening at night. Spring came earlier and fall left later. The higher temperatures caused sea level to rise, mountain glaciers to recede, and permafrost to melt. The warmer air held more moisture, so cloud amounts, precipitation totals, and heavy downpours increased.

Scientists also agree that the rate and magnitude of climate change will increase in the coming century. Temperatures could rise as much as 8 [degrees] F worldwide by 2100. Some areas will get much wetter, while others will get drier. Snowlines will move to higher latitudes and higher altitudes. Shorelines will continue to advance inland. Winter seasons will be shorter and dominated more often by rain than by snow. Summers will be warmer and often wetter. Streams will rise in many areas, fall in others, and change the times of high flow and low flow in most places.

In response to these changes, scientists expect plant and animal species to migrate poleward, upslope, and inland, either moving familiar ecosystems or -- more likely -- changing their composition. Some will not be able to migrate through large urban areas and will diminish or disappear. Warm-water fish will replace cold-water species in many lakes and streams. Some plants and animals will die off and others -- most notably nuisance species -- will thrive.

While climate change becomes stronger and more noticeable, society will be changing. Global population should double during the 21st century, increasing the demand on global food systems and water resources. Yet, experts expect average wealth to rise, increasing the demand for goods and services. Urban development will continue to swallow small towns, farmland, and rural areas. Scientists think that in many--if not in most--areas, climate change will be much less important than social and economic change.

Despite the importance of social change, people will have to adapt to climate change. On the one hand, if adaptation is simply a reaction to the impacts of climate change, then climate change will probably be costly. On the other hand, if people and places plan their adaptation strategies carefully, then they will be able to minimize costs and take advantage of opportunities provided by climate change. Climate change will make some people, some areas, and some sectors of society rich.

This article explores the likely positive, as well as the negative, impacts of climate change on parks and recreation. It acknowledges that climate change is just one source of stress that managers will have to deal with in the coming decades. It also emphasizes the need to develop management strategies that lower the costs of adapting to climate change and that increase the chances of benefiting from climate change.

Climate Change Impacts

Climate will become more important to outdoor recreation activity, lessening predictability of outdoor events, reshaping outdoor dress, behavior, and duration of activity, and ultimately altering attitudes toward being outdoors. Table 1 shows how climate change will negatively and positively affect a range of recreation activities. For example, wetland loss from sea-level rise will reduce habitat and limit hunting, fishing, and bird watching in coastal areas. Many areas of the country will lose cool-water fisheries because of rising water temperatures. Hikers and mountain bikers may find meadows with fewer wildflowers, and forests will be damaged by pests, diseases, and nuisance species. Ski seasons will be shorter in many areas and eliminated in others. In contrast, tennis players, golfers, boaters, and other participants in outdoor summer sports will enjoy a longer season. Warm-water fishermen will find more places to fish.

TABLE 1. CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON LEISURE ACTIVITIES

                    Possible Positives       Possible Negatives

Winter Recreation   winter hiking, outdoor   shorter ski season,
                    sports more tolerable    elimination of ski
                                             season in some areas

Summer Recreation   longer warm season in    warm regions could
                    cooler areas             have more hot days
                                             that interfere with
                                             golf, tennis, other
                                             outdoor sports

Water Recreation    less snow, longer warm   coral bleaching
                    weather days             affects snorkeling,
                                             scuba; reduced cool
                                             water fishing;
                                             flooding and droughts

Biodiversity                                 loss of wildflowers,
                                             forests; species
                                             loss affects hunting,
                                             fishing, birdwatching

Source: What's Fair? Consumers and Climate Change, K. Ansje Miller with Gautam Sethi and Gary H. Wolff, Redefining Progress April 2000

There will be similarities in climate change impacts on parks and recreation across the United States. Still, regional differences will be important. For instance, water will be critical in all regions, but the impacts (and subsequent responses, adaptation measures, and management strategies) will be markedly different in, say, the Southeast and Alaska. The regional sketches presented here illustrate likely climate change impacts and suggest the need to consider them in planning and decision-making.

NORTHEAST

Warmer summers will shape on-site visitation to parks and recreation areas, perhaps resulting in more visitations early in the morning or after dark when temperatures are less extreme. City populations are expected to experience a high rate of heat-related illnesses and deaths in response to increased summer temperature. At the time, summer recreational activities involving beaches, lakes, or rivers will have extended seasons. Consequently, the Northeast's waterways will attract more people wanting to escape from the summer heat for longer periods, driving up the cost of tourism to coastal zones. Population pressures combined with sea-level rise will decrease wildlife habitat, reducing opportunities for hunting, fishing, and birding. In the fall, higher temperatures in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States will mute foliage colors, while in the winter, ski areas will find it hard to maintain an adequate snow-pack. To balance this loss, outdoor visitation will begin earlier in the spring and extend later into the fall due to higher average temperatures.

SOUTHEAST

The Southeast will experience many of the problems cited for the Northeast, but the Southeast is prone to weather disasters, mostly associated with hurricanes and flooding. For example, rising sea level, more frequent and stronger storms, and ever-growing numbers of visitors will increasingly stress barrier islands. Tourism supporting coastal communities is likely to be negatively affected (e.g., loss of beachfront property) by flood and erosion damage stemming from sea-level rise coupled with storm surges. Increasing rainfall may save some habitats, however, supplying more water to presently stressed ecosystems.

MIDWEST AND GREAT PLAINS

In the Midwest and Great Plains, increased evaporation due to higher summer air temperatures is likely to reduce water levels in lakes and rivers, affecting water-based transportation and recreation. Favorite winter activities, such as skiing, snowmobiling, ice-skating, and ice fishing will decrease. Summer recreation activities, such as swimming, hiking, and golf, will increase, but excessive heat during mid-summer is likely to affect the time of participation and the age of participants in these activities.

WEST

Higher temperatures in the West will mean an extended season for summer activities such as hiking and backpacking, but will shorten the duration of winter activities such as skiing. The summer mountain experience will be different as lower-elevation species and non-native invasive species replace alpine meadow plants and animals. The shortening of the snow season and rising of snowlines will put low-elevation ski areas at risk. Overall, increased precipitation will increase water recreation, but more-frequent droughts will severely limit summer recreation in many years.

ALASKA

Reduction or displacement of marine mammals, fish, and seabirds, as well as boreal, tundra, and alpine wildlife due to climate change, will make recreational hunting and fishing more difficult and less productive. Massive habitat shifts will move the centers of most inland activities.

Adaptation to Climate Change

Future social conditions -- economic stability, technological capability, and the location and character of the population -- in large part will control the overall nature and magnitude of climate change impacts. Within this big picture, however, individual decisionmakers will need to respond to the challenges and possibilities of climate change. Smart managers will adapt successfully, minimizing the costs and risks, maximizing the benefits, and taking advantage of the opportunities.

The ski industry illustrates this point. Resort managers used to rely solely on fickle winter snowfalls for their profits. No longer -- snowmaking is a basic part of operations at most resorts. Improvements in climate forecasting now give ski resort managers the information needed to plan snowmaking operations months to seasons in advance. Furthermore, diverse activities, ranging from hang-gliding to music festivals to business conventions, fill resorts during the summer. This diversification means that bad winter seasons are seldom the financial disaster that they once were. Although projections of climate change show shifts in the length of the ski season and even in the location where ski slopes can exist, the recent business and technological innovations and the willingness to plan suggest that most ski resorts will continue to thrive.

Similarly, parks and other recreation areas will need to prepare for shifts in recreational activity as people consider alternatives in the types, locations, and seasons of their activities. Parks and recreation areas will need to plan, acquire, develop, maintain, and retrofit areas and facilities with greater concern for higher temperatures and for increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather and climate. In addition, they need to account for concurrent social changes, such as older, more urbanized, and more ethnically diverse populations. Tourism and recreation adaptation strategies will need to involve diversification of the revenue base. As in the case of ski resorts, recreation areas will need to adapt their facilities to accommodate both summer and winter activities.

Still, not all parks and recreation areas will adapt successfully to climate change. Smaller, resource-deficient recreation areas will not have as many options as larger, well-funded areas. Some areas that are marginal geographically or economically today will be even more marginal in the face of climate change. Most important, parks and recreation areas that lack experienced managers, who are aware of the range of negative and positive possibilities associated with climate and social change, will find it difficult to survive.

Bibliography

Clarkson, J., Wilson, J., and Roesler, W. (1995). Urban areas. In N. North & J. Schmandt & J. Clarkson (Eds.), Impact of Global Warming on Texas. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Houghton, J. T., Meiro Filho, L. G., Callander, B. A., Harris, N., Kattenberg, A., and Maskell, K. (1996). Climate Change 1995 -- The Science of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group I to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Fisher, A., Abler, D., DeWalle, D., Knight, G., Najjar, R., Rogers, C., Rose, A., Shortle, J., and Yarnal, B. (2000). The Mid-Atlantic Regional Assessment of Climate Change Impacts: Overview Report. Washington, DC and University Park, PA. The US Environmental Protection Agency and The Pennsylvania State University. Also available at http://www.essc.psu.edu/mara/results/overv iew_report/index.html.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC (2001). IPCC Working Group I Third Assessment Report: Summary for Policymakers (Shanghai Draft 20-01-2001). Accessed at http://www.ipcc.ch/on 23 January, 2001.

Miller, K., Sethi, G., and Wolff, G. (2000). What's Fair? Consumers and Climate Change. San Francisco, CA: Redefining Progress.

National Assessment Synthesis Team (2000). Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. Washington, DC: US Global Change Research Program.

Watson, R. T., Zinyowera, M. C., and Moss, R. H. (1996). Climate Change 1995 -- Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of Climate Change: Scientific-Technical Analyses. Contribution of Working Group II to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.

Relevant Web-Sites

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): http://www.ipcc.ch/

Pew Center on Global Climate Change: http://www.pewclimate.org/

United States Global Change Research Program/National Assessment of Climate Change: (USGCRP) -- http://www.usgcrp.gov/

United States Environmental Protection Agency: (EPA) -- http://www.epa.gov/ globalwarming/

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/

United States Global Change Research Information Office: (GCRIO) -- http://www. gcrio.org/

Geoffrey Godbey is professor of leisure studies at The Pennsylvania State University, where he is currently completing a study, along with the other authors, of trends that will affect the National Park Service in the Northeast Regions. In April, he will visit the People's Republic of China, where he serves as an advisor to the federal government's research project on Economic Development and the Leisure Industries. Their article "Climate Change: What Does It Mean for Parks and Recreation Management?" on page 54 discusses the environmental changes we may see in the future.

Vinod Sasidharan is a Ph.D. candidate and an instructor in leisure studies at The Pennsylvania State University. His primary research focus includes urban recreational resource planning and management and sustainability issues in tourism planning and management. He has published papers in the areas of recreation and tourism trends in response to global climatic change, urban wildlife, and environmental values of ethnic minorities in urban park interpretation, and sustainable development of coastal and marine tourism resources.

Brent Yarnal is professor of geography at The Pennsylvania State University. His research involves the local and regional dimensions of global environmental change, including climate change, and is funded by the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency. He is Editor of the journal Climate Research, which is devoted to the interactions of climate, nature, and society.

Careen Yarnal is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Leisure Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. Her interests lie at the interface of leisure, tourism, and philosophy in addition to her work with the National Parks Service. Currently, she is involved in research with the Centre County Visitors Bureau and also in a funded study examining qualitative approaches to understanding loyalty.