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Thursday, September 27th, 2018

Vanishing Joshua trees: climate change will ravage US national parks, study says

Author:     Emily Holden
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Tue 25 Sep 2018 06.00 EDT
 Link: Vanishing Joshua trees: climate change will ravage US national parks, study says
Stephan:   Some of my happiest and most important experiences and memories took place in national park, forests, rivers and waterways, and I have always considered our national public lands a precious resource to be protected from one generation to the next. Thus, I take particular exception to the rape of public lands being carried out by the Republican Congress and the Trump administration. Now, because of their neglect to deal with climate change it appears our public lands will particularly suffer. Here is the story

Most of Joshua Tree national park could become uninhabitable for its eponymous trees, according to a new study.
Credit: Eric Lowenbach/Getty/Flickr RF

America’s national parks have warmed twice as fast as the US average and could see some of the worst effects of climate change, according to a new study. (Emphasis added)

Most of Joshua Tree national park could become uninhabitable for its eponymous trees, glaciers will continue to melt away at Glacier national park, and many other of America’s most treasured beauty spots could be rendered virtually unrecognizable by climate change, Patrick Gonzalez, the lead author of the study, writes in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Even the tiniest of creatures are at risk in the worst-case predictions: the American pika, a small alpine mammal, may no longer be able to survive on park land.

“We are preserving the most remarkable ecosystems, and they happen to be in extreme environments,” said Gonzalez, a climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Gonzalez is also the principal climate change scientist for the US National Park Service but conducted and […]

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