Seventy-Seven Percent Of Parks Are Highly Vulnerable To Climate Change, Study Finds

Seventy-seven percent of U.S. national parks are highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, according to a March 2026 study (attached) funded by the National Park Service. The study looked at vulnerability to fire, drought, pests and diseases, and sea-level rise across the parks. Parks most exposed to climate change were in the Midwest due to projected temperature, precipitation, moisture, and snow, as well as in the Southwest where drought frequency and fire hazard are both expected to increase.

According to the study, “in addition to exposure to simple physical climatic changes (e.g., changes in temperature), parks face multiple cascading impacts that are amplified by climate change, including extreme weather events, forest insect outbreaks, more frequent and severe wildfire, and other novel disturbance regimes that occur both individually and simultaneously.” This can all lead to irreversible changes across the parks, underscoring a need for park managers to plan for inevitable transformations caused by climate change.

Despite efforts to conduct analyses related to climate change vulnerability, most parks lack comprehensive assessments, in part due to gaps in spatial data. A 2022 study found that although a few limited regional assessments have been done, only 10 percent of the parks had park-specific assessments and 37 percent had no assessments at all. This makes it difficult to measure potential climate change impacts.

The current study helped to fill in some of these data gaps and found that climate change sensitivity was the highest for parks in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast due to the combination of higher air pollution levels, non-native species invasion risk, and high levels of forest pests and diseases. Several parks in California had high sensitivity scores due to high numbers of at-risk species.

Despite vulnerability to increasing temperatures, parks with the highest adaptive capacity scores were predominantly in the western United States, especially in areas with complex topography and/or a low human footprint. Parks in the eastern United States tell a different story, as many are located in landscapes that have already been altered by humans, which may impede movement of native species while worsening ongoing invasions of non-native species and pathogens.

One hundred and seventy-four parks (67 percent) scored high for at least one potentially transformational impact: fire, drought, forest pests and diseases, and/or sea-level rise. Furthermore, many western parks scored high for multiple, interacting, transformational threats despite relatively low cumulative vulnerability scores.

Thirteen parks in the West scored high for a “trifecta” of fire, drought, and forest pests and disease, with potentially transformational consequences. Parks in the West and Northeast are most vulnerable to pests and diseases; parks in the West and Southeast to fires; and parks in the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts to sea-level rise.

Sea-level rise is already reaching places like Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, and Statue of Liberty National Monument in New York. Dry Tortugas National Park in southern Florida could be inundated with approximately 9.4 inches water by 2050 and two feet by 2100 under mid-range scenarios, Maria Caffrey, a climatologist working with Gro Intelligence, told the Traveler in 2023.

Similarly, about 44.4 percent of Everglades National Park might be inundated by 2100. By 2050, the mangroves in the park “are expected to be overtaken” by sea levels, John Kominoski, lead principal investigator of the Florida Coastal Everglades Long Term Ecological Research Program, told the Traveler in 2023.

Gro Intelligence also estimated that almost 75 percent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina will be inundated by 2100. The seashore is already experiencing house collapses from storm surges and coastal erosion.

Another 2018 study found that, "in Yellowstone National Park, climate change could increase area burned by wildfire three to ten times from 1990 to 2100, far above natural levels. In Joshua Tree National Park, climate change could cause extensive mortality of Joshua trees by 2100 and loss of up to 90 percent of areas with suitable climate. In Lassen Volcanic National Park, American pika, a small alpine mammal, is vulnerable to extirpation."

The study pointed out that a greater percentage of the National Park System is located at higher elevations than most U.S. landscapes, making them more vulnerable to a changing climate. 

“Although the precise consequences of the changes parks will experience remain difficult to predict, it is clear that the goal of conserving parks as a ‘vignette of primitive America’ is incompatible with the trajectories of change that are underway,” wrote the researchers of the 2026 study.