​Climate Change in America's National Parks: George Melendez Wright Initiative for Young Leaders in Climate Change

Meeting Date: 10/8/2015

- 10/8/2015

Location: Webinar


Thursday, ​October 8, 2015
2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. EST

REGISTER HERE

Overview: ​During the summer of 2015, twelve undergraduate and graduate students participated in the George Melendez Wright Young Leaders in Climate Change (YLCC) internship program. Internship projects supported a wide array of climate change efforts across national parks, including mapping archaeological sites, incorporating resilient designs into historic structure rehabilitation, monitoring vegetation shifts, and facilitating information sharing and outreach.

About the Speaker​s​:
Adam Griffith ​- Resilience to Climate Variation in Great Lakes National Parks

Remote sensed primary productivity data coupled with precipitation and temperature data can yield clues about how specific areas may respond to altered rainfall and temperature patterns. My analysis identifies specific areas that maintained stable primary productivity from 2000-2010 in five Great Lakes National Parks despite substantial fluctuations in rainfall and temperature. This method can be used for higher spatial resolution data and allow managers to make more informed decisions that promote the success and expansion of species assemblages in areas with stable productivity.

As a PhD student in Geography at UNC-Charlotte, his studies include computer programming, WebGIS, and spatial statistics. His research interests include sea-level rise, policy, resilience, and sustainability. His current academic track marries his undergraduate and master's degrees in Biology with six years of professional experience as a coastal research scientist.

Jonathon Jones - Characterizing Ocean Acidification in the North Coast and Cascades Network

The intertidal resources of Olympic National Park (OLYM) and San Juan National Historic Park (SAJH) are both particularly diverse and particularly susceptible to the effects of the climate change phenomenon, ocean acidification (OA). OLYM has taken steps to better understand this threat by implementing an ocean acidification monitoring program at two sites on the Olympic Coast and one site at American Camp in SAJH to complement on-going biological monitoring. Through my YLCC internship, I was principally responsible for implementing a recently developed, more accurate, OA technology (ISFET) in the intertidal zones of OLYM and SAJH as well as assessing the potential impact of OA on regional intertidal biota.

Jonathon is a third year graduate student at the University of California Santa Barbara, the YLCC intern for Olympic National Park this past summer, and the recently hired coastal ecologist at Cabrillo National Monument. He began working for the National Park Service as a student hire in 2010 and have worked in nine parks and three networks since then. From start to finish, he has enjoyed his experience in Olympic National Park and the greater Park Service as a whole and look forward to transferring his skills to a new position at Cabrillo this fall.

Molly Tedesche - Perennial Arctic Alpine Snow and Ice Patch Archaeology in the Central Brooks Range, Alaska

Perennial snow and ice patches in the central Brooks Range Mountains of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in Alaska are melting and retreating at an unprecedented rate as average annual air temperatures in the Arctic continue to rise. Globally significant discoveries have been made recently as archaeological and paleoecological specimens have been recovered from melting snow and ice patches all over the world. The potential for archaeological discoveries in the Brooks Range has led scientists at Gates of the Arctic National Park to initiate the development of an interdisciplinary model which will couple snow patch melt prediction with archaeological potential. Currently, we are working on investigating how old these snow and ice fields are, as well as mapping their geometry, and estimating how they have changed over millennia to inform the model.

She is a Snow Hydrologist and an Engineering PhD student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), affiliated with both the International Arctic Research Center (IARC), and the Water and Environmental Research Center (WERC) at UAF. She is also the Northern Alaska Chapter Leader for the American Water Resources Association (AWRA), and I work in science teaching and outreach for UAF with underrepresented K-12 students in rural and remote Native Alaskan villages. She is a yoga instructor and loves everything you can do in the snow, including skiing, snowboarding, and skijoring. In the summer she mountain bikes, climb mountains, trail runs, fish for salmon, garden, pick berries, analyze my winter field work data, and wait for the snow to fall again.

About the Webinar Series

This monthly climate change webinar series is presented by the NPS Climate Change Response Program. The purpose of the series is to connect NPS employees, volunteers, and partners with scientists and experts in the field of climate change research. The webinar series is a Service-wide forum where researchers can share credible, up-to-date information and research materials about the impacts of changing climate in national parks and provide participants the opportunity to engage with them in discussion.

Presentations begin at 2 PM EST, on the second Thursday of the month, and last about 90 minutes. They are viewed by logging into GoToWebinar on-line at the time of the presentation. Audio is available via a call-in number (toll charges apply) or through your computer’s speakers (free, but may be limited by connection speed).

For more information about this webinar series contact: