Responding to climate change: A toolbox of management strategies: Chapter 11

Climate change and its effects are writ large across the landscape and in the natural and cultural heritage of parks and wilderness. They always have been and always will be. The sculpted walls of Yosemite National Park and the jagged scenery of the Sierra Nevada wilderness would not be as spectacular if periods of glaciation had not been followed by periods of deglaciation. High biodiversity in forests of the Great Smoky Mountains reflects a legacy of climate change, migrating species, and isolated climatic refugia. Fossils unearthed at Dinosaur National Monument reflect a time when the climate was very different than it is today, as do ruins left by peoples who practiced agriculture in places in the American Southwest where food production is not possible today. Over eons, climate change has molded the diversity of life and landscape in areas now protected as parks and wilderness.