I love national parks and lucky me I live in a state with four national parks and a whole bunch of other cool national park sites, trails and monuments (check 'em out here). Now just last month I went up to Glacier National Park in Montana and got to thinking about climate change and how it will effect these parks. Glacier National Park estimates that by 2030 they will no longer have any glaciers in the park ("Glaciers/Glacier Features"). (The picture to the left is of Grinnel Glacier covered with a little bit of snow.)Paul Ollig, who blogs on science at Glacier National Park, just posted on a new program from NASA and the National Park Service ("NPS") on climate change and how it will effect national parks. The first episode is on Glacier National Park and the second is on Everglades National Park. To learn more about this program, check out the Earth to Sky web site which is a collaboration of NPS and NASA.
If you want more information on climate change, check out the library's guide.
Excuse me, in the park service's eyes, although obviously not that of bloggers and visitors, a monument is equivalent to a park. You need to increase the number of parks by 4. Monuments are distinguished by having one major features of interest, while a park has more. However, that didn't stop politicans from changing Black Canyon and Great Sand Dunes into national parks so they'd get more visitors. I'm willing to let you separate out the historic sites if you must, but a monument is a park is a monument is a park is a monument is a park. I was a seasonal at Great Sand Dunes and at Mesa Verde back in the 80s--one a monument back then (and it should still be a monument now according to the rules).
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