Unpredictable and Unprecedented: Understanding Potential Climate Change Impacts to the Irreplaceable and Invaluable Collection of Heritage Resources in the National Parks of the Intermountain West

Understanding the potential impacts of a changing climate on the irreplaceable, immovable, and highly susceptible heritage resources of the Intermountain West is a difficult prospect, to say the least. With factors that include the projected, yet unprecedented changes in temperature and precipitation leading to changes in drainage patterns (including flooding), soil chemistry, fire regimes and vegetation, and considering physical maintenance cycles, structural stability and material thresholds, determining effects and designing mitigation strategies must begin by first taking a broad- or landscape-level view. Once we are able to develop a general understanding, we can downscale predictions, determination of potential effects, and design of monitoring approaches and mitigations to a sub-region, a particular cultural landscape, a building or archeological site, an architectural feature and, further, to specific building materials. The Vanishing Treasures Program is in the first phase of a multi-year, multi-disciplinary project to look at climate projections in the region, identify those cultural resources and resource types that are high-risk due to location, condition and material composition, and develop monitoring and mitigation strategies that might assist parks in caring for those resources in the face of change.