New Tool Aims to Make Parks More Resilient to Climate Change

A new tool helps park managers understand the potential impacts of climate change on their parks and plan accordingly, writes Peter Yeung in Next City. "NRPA [National Recreation and Park Association] and design firm Sasaki partnered to develop Climate.Park.Change, an interactive platform that launched last month to allow park professionals to explore the impacts of climate change by region – such as drought, heatwaves and erosion—and to discover proven, effective strategies to fight them."

The platform was developed to help parks find "strategies for mitigating climate challenges" using data specific to their area. According to Kristin Riker, director of public lands for Salt Lake City, the tool is "a really great database of park-specific, climate-related information and idea-sharing opportunities in the park and recreation realm to understand what’s been done, what’s worked and what hasn’t worked." Salt Lake City's Glendale Water Park, one of the case studies for the platform, presents "some interesting challenges" in terms of climate mitigation that Climate.Park.Change helped park officials analyze.

"Over time, the plan is also for the database to become richer and richer thanks to a function that lets park professionals submit their own strategies and experiences in the critical fight against climate change. The team also hopes to, where possible, increase the granularity of the data from country level down to city level."