Climate change and Canada's national park system

About this book

This report uses climate change models to form a screening level assessment of the impacts of climate change in Canada's national parks and reserves. Seasonal climate change scenarios based on four doubled-carbon-dioxide general circulation model experiments, were assembled for each national park, and implications for abiotic features, ecosystems, individual species, and visitor use of each park were then examined using national park resource inventories and existing climatological & climate change studies. The report begins with an introduction on climate change studies, an overview of the methods used to construct the climate change scenarios, and a summary of how the climate at the parks is projected to change over the next century. This is followed by climate change impact reports for each park, arranged by region. Based on this analysis, the final section discusses management & policy implications and future research needs.