Climate change could make national parks across the United States drier and hotter than other parts of the country, a new study published Monday finds, putting many rare animals and plants at risk of extinction.The analysis, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters by the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examined the impacts of global warming on all 417 areas including in the national parks system — from parks and monuments to battlefields and historic sites — including territories in the Caribbean and Pacific. Under the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists expect temperatures in the “most exposed” national parks to increase by as much as 9°C (16°F) by the end of the century.
“This rate of change is faster than many small mammals and plants can migrate or ‘disperse’ to more hospitable climates,” a statement from UC Berkeley accompanying the study’s release explains.
The authors may be conservative in their expectation of a rate of warming in excess of 1 degree C per decade, as the 0.8 degree warming of thelast entury has enormously epanded the range of the coyote, a keystone predator whose emissions dwarf those of human visitors to national parks:
