An Evaluation of the Climate Change Preparedness of Terrestrial Protected Areas

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dc.contributor.advisorHurrt, George
dc.contributor.advisorLamb, Rachel
dc.contributor.authorPanday, Frances Marie
dc.date.accessioned2022-11-04T12:48:09Z
dc.date.available2022-11-04T12:48:09Z
dc.date.issued2022-05-01
dc.descriptionUndergraduate honors thesis as part of the Environmental Science and Policy Honors program. Frances Marie Panday successfully defended her thesis with high honors on April 14, 2022.en_US
dc.description.abstractThe rate at which the climate changes and the direction of these shifts is highly variable across the landscape. As proposed by Loarie et al. (2009), the concept of a climate change velocity (CV) adds a spatial component to the rate at which the temperature increases across the landscape. Identifying where regions will experience the most significant changes in climate conditions is highly valuable for the management of areas with high ecological and societal value, such as protected areas (PAs). To examine the relationship between climate velocity and protected areas, Loarie et al. (2009) proposes the concept of a climate residence time (CRT), which estimates the length of time current climate conditions will remain in a given spatial location before shifting. Current infrastructure design managing protected areas is outdated and may be ill-equipped to handle future changes in climate. Current work examining the relationship between protected area and the CV is relatively new, but results are promising. Here, we evaluate the climate-change preparedness of terrestrial protected areas in MD by first, quantifying the magnitude of future changes using the climate residence time, and second, evaluating their capacity to manage changes by qualitatively scoring their associated management plans for climate adaptation and/or mitigation language. This two-fold approach showed that most PAs have climate residence times less than or equal to 1.5 years and had plans with little to no language addressing climate change and its associated impacts. This suggests that PAs in MD are poorly prepared for future changes in climate. Given these results, including CVs and CRTs within PA management plans would improve a park’s adaptive capacity but also signal the need for a cross-coordinated management effort that transcends different management and governance scales.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/ynl5-zyxb
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/29457
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.relation.isAvailableAtCollege of Behavioral & Social Sciencesen_us
dc.relation.isAvailableAtGeographyen_us
dc.relation.isAvailableAtDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_us
dc.relation.isAvailableAtUniversity of Maryland (College Park, MD)en_us
dc.subjectclimate changeen_US
dc.subjectMarylanden_US
dc.subjectprotected areaen_US
dc.subjectterrestrialen_US
dc.subjectclimate velocityen_US
dc.subjectclimate change velocityen_US
dc.subjectclimate residence timeen_US
dc.subjectclimate change preparednessen_US
dc.subjectbiodiversityen_US
dc.subjectconservationen_US
dc.titleAn Evaluation of the Climate Change Preparedness of Terrestrial Protected Areasen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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