Climate Change & Canada’s National Parks

Assessing the Impacts

A boy in the park How will climate change affect our national parks system and its representation of Canada’s natural heritage? That is the question that scientists at the Meteorological Service of Canada MSC undertook to answer in the Climate Change and Canada’s National Park System study. The study was a first assessment conducted jointly with the University of Waterloo to look at this issue for Parks Canada, in 2000.

Assessing the impacts of climate change on a national system of parks – 38 in total – in a country the size of Canada is a daunting task. MSC scientists developed seasonal climate change scenarios for each of the 38 national parks using the outputs of four general circulation models (GCMS), including the MSC’s GCM. Researchers also conducted an assessment of potential climate change impacts and examined each national park individually. The parks were grouped into six broad geographic regions (Atlantic, Great Lakes - St. Lawrence, Prairie, Western Cordillera, Pacific, and Arctic) for which the range of climate change impacts was similar. The results indicated that the biophysical character of most of the parks would change under the predicted climate scenarios, with the parks located in central and northern Canada at the greatest risk of major change. Man in a canoe A subsequent study for Parks Canada by an MSC scientist, working with faculty at the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto, used two global vegetation models together with four GCMs to examine how vegetation changes could impact the national parks. This modelling exercise revealed that new biome types would emerge in more than half of the parks and that there would be a loss of representative northern biomes (tundra, tundra/taiga, and boreal forest) in the park system.

This assessment of the impacts of climate change on our national parks suggests that Canada’s National Park System may not be adequate to protect the ecosystems for which they were originally established. This underscores the need for Canada to develop and implement adaptation strategies for biome conservation. These results are currently influencing how parks managers plan for the future and how they see the role of our national parks in preserving Canada’s natural heritage.

“The assessment brings impacts and adaptation understanding to the park level. Park scientists can use locally relevant information in ecosystem planning.”
David Welch
Ecological Integrity Branch
Parks Canada

Meteorological Service of Canada - Environment Canada - Government of Canada

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