Losing Paradise: Climate change is changing Mount Rainier by The News Tribune

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Photos by DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

A 16-PAGE SPECIAL REPORT

LOSING PARADISE Climate change is melting Mount Rainierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s glaciers, destroying its roads and natural wonders. The Park Service struggles to find a way forward.

2 | Sunday, December 21, 2014

LOSING PARADISE

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Scientists studying climate change at Mount Rainier say rising temperatures likely will mean a reordering of delicately balanced habitats by the end of the century. Park officials say predicted increases in flooding and debris flows from Rainier’s receding glaciers will threaten public access. Access to Paradise, lower right in photo, is imperiled by debris from the receding Nisqually Glacier, center.

Mount Rainier: Case study of a changing Earth Rising temperatures are bringing wholesale change to the mountain. Public access has been reduced, and scientists fear animals and plants won’t be able to adapt to altered habitat.

A BY ROB CARSON Staff writer

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff file, 2010

After a devastating 2006 flood the park built a 1,200-foot wall to protect Longmire, which lies 30 feet below the Nisqually River. The effort concentrated the river’s energy. Now erosion threatens the main road to Paradise.

At the foot of the Nisqually Glacier, the roar of rushing water and grinding rock is so loud you have to shout to be heard. Water bursts from an ice cave the size of an aircraft hangar, its arched roof dripping in the sun. Flurries of stones clatter down canyon walls. Paul Kennard, a National Park Service geomorphologist here with a team of researchers using laser scanners to locate the volume and sources of rock coming off the glacier, wears a helmet for protection against stones streaking like hot grounders from the glacier’s upper slopes. As the scientists calibrate their equipment, they take turns as lookout, shouting “Rock!” whenever a volley looks as if it might strike.

While they work, two chunks of ice the size of refrigerators break away from the glacier and crunch onto the rocks below. For anyone familiar with the effects of climate change, it comes as no surprise that Mount Rainier’s glaciers are melting. The Nisqually Glacier, the one of Rainier’s 28 named glaciers most accessible to visitors, has been receding rapidly since 1983. It’s at a historic minimum, and this summer it shrank toward the mountain’s summit at unprecedented speed: more than 3 feet every 10 days. Sediment from the glaciers is filling the park’s river beds and wiping out roads faster than the park can repair them, raising the distinct possibility that, before long, visiting the park by private automobile might no longer be possible. “Basically, the whole mountain wants to fall down,” Kennard said. “We have a tremendous amount of sediment coming off our glaciers, and it’s literally filling up our rivers and choking them.” Scientists say the speed at

Historical architect Sueann Brown examines the crumbling remains of a 1920s-era retaining wall along the Westside Road at Klapatche Point. The road is all that remains of a vision to encircle the park with roadways. Lack of money, flagging desire and glacial flooding killed the plan. DREW PERINE Staff photographer

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WHAT’S INSIDE

PART I: CHANGING LANDSCAPE Glacial melt causes worries Receding glaciers aren’t unusual. It’s their speed: Geologic changes that normally take centuries are flitting past like time-lapse photography. PAGES 4-5

Predicting the unpredictable Making accurate predictions for an area as small and unusual as Mount Rainier National Park is beyond the scope of current climate knowledge and computing power. DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

The rising sun helps quicken the pace of researchers hiking to Mount Rainier’s high alpine ponds near Spray Park. They search for answers to the questions that climate models present: How fast is the change? And will species and ecosystems have time to adapt?

For generations, visitors from as close as Fircrest to as far away as Fiji have come to Mount Rainier. They stroll among the wildflowers, sled down the slopes at Paradise and hike among the towering firs. But as the climate around one of the state’s treasures changes will that all someday be off limits?

PAGES 6-7

The struggle to predict outburst floods “It might at least give people enough time to start running,” says National Park Service geomorphologist Paul Kennard. PAGES 8-9

PART II: PLANTS AND ANIMALS Habitat zones on the move

A caravan of White Auto Stages touring Mount Rainier on June 29, 1912. This photo was taken as part of a series produced by Ashael Curtis for the Chicago Milwaukee and Puget Sound Railroad to promote ridership for the railroad lines. ASHAEL CURTIS Washington State Historical Society

which Mount Rainier’s glaciers are melting is clear evidence of climate change — more convincing than any computer model of the effects of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In 2006, Gordon Grant, professor of geosciences at Oregon State University, called floods and debris flows at Mount Rainier “the most dramatic catastrophic effects of climate change in the United States.” Park biologists say rising temperatures could change the current mix of plant and animal species in the park from top to bottom in this century. The magnitude of possible consequences at Mount Rainier is so great that the park has become a magnet for climate-change researchers from around the country. With its melting glaciers and vertically stacked life zones, the mountain is a living laboratory for climate change, they say. It’s a microcosm of changes that scientists warn will reshape ecosystems around the planet during the next several decades. However, if Mount Rainier is a microcosm of climate change, it’s also a microcosm of the difficulty of proving the climate-change case to skeptics and for figuring out what — if anything — to do about it. In the National Park Service, scientists and managers long ago left behind discussions of whether climate change exists and whether it’s caused by humans. “Climate change is clearly human caused,” Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said in an interview with The News Tribune. “It is happening now. We can see the impacts, and we need to step up to the facts and take actions.” It’s also a fact that it’s impossible to say precisely what the effects of climate change have been or will be in the park. The park’s weather varies so widely year to year and decade to decade, it obscures long-term changes. The first weather station in the park wasn’t installed until 1909, so there’s not enough historic data on temperature or snowfall —

especially at high altitudes — to establish trends with those numbers. With rare exceptions, baseline data and monitoring of plant and animal species hasn’t been adequate to establish climate-caused changes. Geologists and biologists are making predictions based on global climate models, but those models were designed for predicting changes on broad, ecosystem-size regions and don’t work well for predicting specific changes on an area as small and unusual as Mount Rainier. That makes it difficult for park officials to communicate their sense of urgency to skeptics in Congress, some of whom still profess to believe that the whole idea of global warming is fiction. U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., is a staunch critic of climate science and in line to become one of America’s most powerful voices on environmental policies. Inhofe is expected to chair the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works in the new Republican-controlled Congress. He bases his objection in part on his Christian faith. Without congressional support, it’s impossible for park officials to do the two things they think are most important. First, cut back on greenhouse gas emissions as quickly and completely as possible. And second, fund research so it’s possible to recognize climate-caused changes and come up with management solutions.

CONTRIBUTORS

Mount Rainier’s meadows are especially vulnerable to changing conditions, but if temperatures continue to rise, life on the mountain will change from top to bottom. PAGES 10-11

Trees fighting a war Sediment surging down Mount Rainier is upsetting the equilibrium between rivers and the giant trees that have helped keep the rivers in their banks for thousands of years. PAGE 12

Vulnerable frogs Amphibian species such as the Cascades frog – already threatened – could be squeezed out of their breeding sites on Mount Rainier. PAGE 13

PART III: MOUNTAIN VS. MAN Policy, conscience collide Climate change is forcing park managers to choose among the many values they are required to protect, including natural and cultural resources and public access. PAGES 14-15

Q&A with National Park Service director Jonathan Jarvis: “Climate change is clearly human caused. It is happening now. We can see the impacts, and we need to step up to the facts and take actions.” PAGE 16

Value judgments Decisions that would be easy elsewhere are complicated by the Park’s need to protect access, natural resources and history. PAGE 16

Writer: Rob Carson Principal photographer: Dean J. Koepfler Design and graphics: Jessica Randklev Contributing journalists: Drew Perine, Kerry Tsukamoto

ONLINE

ON THE COVER: An old-growth Douglas fir holds amid the Carbon River at Mount Rainier National Park. Geomorphology students Rebecca Rossi, left, and Jon Beyeler researched stream aggradation and river channel avulsions on the Carbon River. Tracts of old-growth riparian forest that had held back the river are now being buried by debris and rock.

For an online documentary examining some of the issues facing Mount Rainier, go to thenewstribune.com or theolympian.com Staff photo illustration

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LOSING PARADISE

Problems increase by the gallon

Photos by DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Once a healthy mid-mountain glacier, the lower part of the Whitman has wasted into a perennial snow field. The dark rock, near center, is an eroded lava flow.

When glacial ice turns to flowing water, worries of park safety, damage rise

O BY ROB CARSON Staff writer

On a geologic scale, there’s nothing unusual about receding glaciers on Mount Rainier. Over the past 12,000 years, they’ve risen and fallen like the tides. What is unusual now, scientists say, is how fast it’s happening. Geologic changes that normally take centuries are flitting past like time-lapse photography. In the past decade, the rate of melting has been six times the historical rate. Geological surveys indicate that the total volume of ice and perennial snow on the mountain decreased as much as 18 percent between 2003 and 2009. The total net loss of water from Mount Rainier’s glaciers since 2003 has been estimated at 200 billion gallons. “The problem is the rate of change in a short period of time,” Kennard said. “If you look at it on a graph, it’s like a pingpong ball just fell off the edge of the table.” Temperatures across the Pacific Northwest are averaging about 1.4 degrees warmer now than they were in 1895. The rise sounds minor, but in a natural system as delicately balanced as Mount Rainier, scientists say, the likely consequences of continued warming are enormous.

Roads built in the park in the early 20th century were designed to provide visitors with a stimulating driving experience, not to withstand flooding.

CARBON RIVER ENTRANCE

According to the latest National Climate Assessment report, released this year, temperatures in Washington will continue to rise through the 21st century, increasing somewhere between 3.3 and 9.7 degrees, depending mostly on the rate at which humans continue to produce greenhouse gases. The Pacific Northwest may get wetter as well as warmer, according to climate models, and precipitation will shift away from snow and toward rain. Evidence suggests, but is not conclusive, that rain increasingly will arrive in sudden, violent bursts, similar to the “pineapple express” downpours in November 2006, when 18 inches of rain fell on the park in 36 hours. That’s bad news for Mount Rainier’s glaciers, Kennard says. The rate of glacial thinning is not directly proportional to rising temperatures, he said. In some cases, it can build exponentially. “Once it starts, it’s like a feedback mechanism,” Kennard said. Running water beneath the glaciers creates space for warm

air, which increases the rate of melting. As the glaciers shrink, they uncover loose material that hasn’t been exposed for thousands of years. Rock walls formerly held in place by ice collapse downward, covering the ice with dark rock that absorbs heat rather than reflecting it. Aside from the melting caused by warmer temperatures, glacial ice could in some cases disappear faster because of a thinner layer of protective snow on its surface, Kennard said. Heavier rains would mean an increased likelihood of Tacoma

Carbon River Road

5 7

MOUNT RAINIER’S GLACIERS Carbon

Russell

Winthrop

Flett

White River

Sunrise Visitor Center

Sources: ESRI, TeleAtlas; Google Earth; Mount Rainier National Park

410

Fryingpan

South Mowich

Sarvent

Puyallup

Ohanapecosh

avalanches, bursts of liquefied mud slurries, and sudden outbursts of trapped water from beneath the glaciers — potentially devastating events called jökulhlaups. Outburst floods occur without warning, and there’s growing concern at the park that water suddenly released from the Nisqually Glacier could race like a tidal wave through the historic settlement of Longmire, heavily populated by park visitors in summer months. The more predictable effect of the melting glaciers, though, is the steady accumulation of sediment in the park’s riverbeds, a process called “aggradation.” “Glaciers act like giant conveyor belts for sediment,” said Scott Beason, a Park Service geologist who works with Kennard at Mount Rainier. More rocks and gravel in riverbeds means less space for water. “You can imagine the riverbeds as big bathtubs,” Beason said. “You can fill a bathtub up to a certain level, but when you take a couple of buckets of dirt and dump them into that bathtub, you can’t expect it to carry the same amount of water.” Sediment from the melting

glaciers is filling Mount Rainier’s river drainages at an unprecedented rate, Beason said, up to 3 feet per decade on average. When riverbeds fill, water finds the next path of least resistance. Lately, that’s been taking it through park roads, campgrounds and trails, causing millions of dollars in damage. Flooding in 2006 alone cost $36 million in damages. Roads built in the park in the early 20th century were designed to provide visitors with a stimulating driving experience, not to withstand flooding. Most were built along old river and stream channels, which now are being filled as glacial meltwater seeks new routes downhill. Since 2001, Beason said, there have been at least six debris flows in three watersheds where there have not been such flows since the park was founded in 1899. “Atmospheric river” flooding in 2005 and 2006 set off 10 debris flows in two days, resulting in such extensive damage that the entire park was closed to the public for six months. All of those debris flows began in areas that had been recently exposed by melting glaciers.

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Puyallup Tahoma River

South Tahoma Westside Van Trump

NISQUALLY ENTRANCE

410

WHITE RIVER ENTRANCE

Emmons

Edmunds

20 MILES

Inter

North Mowich

Road

90 DETAIL

Carbon River

Mowich Lake

706

Mount Rainier’s carefully balanced ecosystem depends on the health of its glaciers. Glacial ice high on the mountain appears robust, but rising temperatures at lower levels are causing glaciers to thin and recede. The Nisqually Glacier has receded an average of 140 feet a year for the past decade. It is at its historic minimum and stagnant at its terminus. Scientists fear a kinematic wave, a bulge of fast moving, heavy ice working its way down from the summit, could trigger destructive outburst floods when it reaches the bottom.

Whitman Ingraham MOUNT RAINIER Cowlitz Wilson

Kautz

Nisqually Paradise

N AT I O N A L PA R K STEVENS CANYON ENTRANCE

Longmire Nisqually River

Cowlitz River

2 MILES

Ohanapecosh Visitor Center Staff graphic

Cascades frogs and other species that live in ponds and lakes depend on water from melting glaciers. Doctorate student Amanda Kissel is doing research on amphibians in the Spray Park area.

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Researchers scanning the receding Nisqually Glacier in July 2014 found an aircraft wheel, the remains of a U.S. Air Force T-33. The plane crashed near Turtle Rock/Wapowety Cleaver near the Wilson Glacier on April 15, 1968. The wheel and other debris traveled under the ice from the Wilson to the Nisqually Glacier, where they were found in a rubble field below the Nisqually terminus.

THE DEBRIS

On the low road This shows a cross section of the elevation of the riverbed of the White River near the northeast entrance to Mount Rainier National Park. Because of aggradation — the build up of rock in the riverbed — state Route 410 is more than 14 feet below the active river channel. ELEVATION: 2,840 FT.

River

ACTIVE CHANNEL

2,834 FEET

14 feet

(DIFFERENCE)

Road

2,820 FEET

Note: Not to scale

Mount Rainier National Park’s Scott Beason, center, studies aggradation in the glacially fed rivers, including the Nisqually River near Longmire. The river bed has risen 39 feet since 1910 and threatens the main road to Paradise.

“In 2006 after the floods it was like an A-bomb went off there,” Kennard said. “The public is getting kind of squeezed in terms of where they can go.” The park is spending $26 million to repair the 17.6-mile Nisqually-Paradise Road, which carries half of the 1.7 million park visitors each year. In November, the first rainstorm of the winter season flooded the road, forcing park officials to shut down the Nisqually entrance and evacuate staff and guests from the National Park Inn at Longmire. The Carbon River Road, in the northwest corner of the park, was washed out in the 2006 flood and now is closed to vehicles at the park boundary. The Westside Road, which has the highest concentration of hiking trailheads in the park, is directly in the path of debris flows from the South Tahoma Glacier and has been closed to the public more often than not since the 1980s. In May of this year, heavy rain sent a barrage of boulders down onto the Westside Road, smashing a pickup truck and leaving several craters, one of them 10 feet across and 3 feet deep. On the other side of the park, increased sedimentation has raised the elevation of the White River 14 feet above heavily traveled state Route 410 for a distance of 3 miles. In 2006, a portion of the White jumped its banks and inundated the highway for several miles. A larger shift could send the entire mainstem of the river flowing down Route 410, said Roger Andrascik, the park’s Chief of Natural and Cultural Resources. “Once a river finds a road, it loves it,” he said. Historic park buildings are also

at risk, most notably at Longmire, the collection of 1920s era buildings along the Nisqually that are collectively protected as a National Historic Landmark District. The cascade of rock tumbling down the Nisqually valley has filled the river channel to a point where the riverbed is now perched more than 30 feet above the buildings. Most of Longmire’s 57 buildings are below the level of

Sediment from the melting glaciers is filling river drainages at a high rate, up to 3 feet per decade on average.

900 FEET (facing downstream) Source: Mount Rainier National Park

the river, including the park’s emergency operations center. Park managers consider the danger of flooding at Longmire so high that in 2002 they moved most administrative offices and permanent employee residences out of Longmire and onto safer ground outside the park. The scale of some of the possible consequences of global warming is so large at Mount Rainier, it’s forcing a reexamination of traditional park

Staff graphic

policies and values once held nearly sacred. More than a cubic mile of snow and ice remains on top of Mount Rainier, high above sea level, and as climate change intensifies it will continue to come down, scientists say, occasionally with extreme force. “At some point, there may come a time when you just can’t do any more,” Andrascik said “But at what point do you stop trying?”

Geomorphology student Rebecca Rossi walks out on a downed old-growth Douglas fir, part of a large “ghost forest” destroyed by stream aggradation and river channel avulsions on the Carbon River at Mount Rainier National Park since 2006.

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LOSING PARADISE

Current models can’t predict Rainier’s climate Though towering, mountain and park are too small to register on global scale

G BY ROB CARSON Staff writer

Global climate models agree that temperatures will rise in the Pacific Northwest through the 21st century. But making specific and accurate predictions for an area as small and unusual as Mount Rainier National Park is beyond the scope of current climate knowledge and computing power. The park is essentially a square that measures about 20 miles on a side, with a mountain in the middle. Global climate models — mathematical representations expressed in computer code — are broad overviews that offer projections on scales many times that size and don’t address such local aberrations. Climate scientists are refining global models to smaller scales, but the complexities in Washington are enormous. Mountain ranges complicate things, and so do the Pacific Ocean and Puget Sound. Washington’s weather varies widely by year — and even by decade — because of the influence of heat circulation patterns in and above the Pacific Ocean, which are not fully understood. Temperature and precipitation patterns flip back and forth on a fairly regular basis because of natural sea-surface temperature shifts called the El Nino-Southern Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Making predictions for Mount Rainier is especially difficult because of its great height. At 14,411 feet, the mountain creates its own weather. Climbing from the bottom of

ASAHEL CURTIS The Northwest Room at the Tacoma Public Library

Early researchers cross a crevasse on the Nisqually Glacier, circa 1905. The glacier and its movements have been studied for more than a century.

the mountain to the top is the climate equivalent of traveling from Washington to the Arctic Circle. So far at least, models can’t resolve the park’s topography with enough detail to predict how the climate of different places within it might change. Rainfall and temperatures on the mountain vary widely from top to bottom and even from one valley to the next, depending on terrain and sun exposure. Paradise, at an elevation of 5,400 feet, gets an average of 126 inches of rain a year. Longmire at 2,761 feet, gets just 87 inches. The eastern side of the mountain is much drier than the western side, making average temperatures for the park as a whole of little use. Downscaled climate models can be crosschecked for accuracy by using historical records, but Mount Rainier’s records don’t go back very far. Eleven weather stations gather data in the park, but only the station at Longmire has been operating long enough (since 1909) to show trends that climatologists say are significant. Data from high elevations is especially scarce. Generally, though, the evidence

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Debris flows have reshaped and widened the Nisqually River channel by forcing it out of its original banks. The channel, upper left, was created by debris flows coming from Van Trump Park. The flows moved rocky moraines that killed off trees and deposited sediment, which appears as the darker area in center. The shifting river caused a 2010 landslide, lower right.

Eleven weather stations gather data in the park, but only the station at Longmire has been operating long enough to show trends.

indicates Mount Rainier will warm along with the rest of the Northwest, with average warming of between 3 and 6 degrees by the end of the century. Some models, but not all, indicate that for the Northwest generally, the amount of precipitation is likely to increase and that more of it will fall as rain and less as snow. That might not be the case for everywhere at Mount Rainier, however. Cliff Mass, atmospheric science professor at the University of Washington, says that while climate change will push the

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Geomorphology student Jon Beyeler studies a LIDAR map of the Carbon River Valley for clues to ancient river channels now covered by forest. Beyeler spent summer 2013 gathering data on stream aggradation and river channel avulsions on the Carbon River.

freezing level higher on Mount Rainier, its upper reaches could very likely get more snow, not less. “Because of its height, snowfall on the upper slopes could increase since precipitation will increase and those slopes will remain cold enough for snow,” Mass said. “The snow level on its lower slopes will rise, as with the rest of Cascades.” Some models but, again, not all, predict more “extreme” weather events — heavy downpours and violent storms. They also predict the number of freeze-free days each year will increase and that less rain will fall in summer months. The number of consecutive days without rain is likely to increase. All models do agree on this: The amount of change will depend to a large extent on the rate at which humans continue to put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions ended immediately, about half of the carbon dioxide would be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years. The rest will stay for centuries. Analyzing how Mount Rainier might react to climate change differently than the rest of the Northwest is a mostly unexplored area. However, according to a draft report prepared this year for the National Park Service by the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group, the historical record contains some surprises. As a whole, the Pacific Northwest warmed by 1.4 degrees between 1920 and 2000. Longmire warmed, too, but only .5 degree.

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DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Mount Rainier National Park has become a climate change laboratory, attracting scientists such as Emily Knoth, right, a geomorphology graduate student at Murray State University in Kentucky, to document emerging impacts and to gather baseline data. Knoth enlisted student John Russell, left, to survey river channel elevation increases in the Carbon River.

Courtesy of Mount Rainier National Park Service

Water flows in a moulin — a glacial stream — on the surface of the Nisqually Glacier in summer 2014. Moulins tend to form on stagnating glaciers with low ice velocities. DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Mitch Haynes, a graduate student at East Carolina University, eats lunch as he prepares a LIDAR scanner during mapping of the Nisqually Glacier terminus and the surrounding areas at Mount Rainier National Park in summer 2014. Hayes protects against falling rocks and boulders by wearing a helmet.

More surprising, while maximum temperatures climbed at Longmire, minimum cold temperatures fell. That was a big surprise to climate scientists, who expected just the opposite, based on models. Evidence of a long-term warming trend at Mount Rainier is obscured by recent periods of lower temperatures and higher than usual snowfall. While Longmire records show a slight warming trend over the past century, records at Paradise show the average temperature dropped — about 1 degree during that time. The park’s weather stations show no significant trends in either precipitation or snow depth since 1970. Many of Mount Rainier’s glaciers either stopped retreating or advanced between the early 1950s and the mid-1980s. In the 1970s, spectacularly high snowfalls on the mountain set two new world records. Eighty-five feet of snow fell at Paradise in 1971. The next winter set a new record of more than 94 feet. Another spectacular snowfall occurred in 1974, with more than 90 feet. In 2010 and 2011, when weather at the park was

influenced by strong La Nina conditions, the Nisqually and Emmons glaciers grew in volume. In 2011, mountain lakes stayed frozen longer than in the previous six years of record keeping. Climate scientists say those conditions were short-term aberrations that are part of natural climate variation and do not change long-term warming trends. Still, they’re enough to provide footholds for those who deny that global warming is a reality. There’s no denying that Mount Rainier’s glaciers are receding over the long term and that very small changes in the climate have big effects on the ice. “Ice volume has been declining since the end of the Little Ice Age (about 1850),” said Thomas Sisson, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist who has studied Rainier’s glaciers. “But there were periods of stasis or modest advance that appear to correlate with strong cool phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. “The glaciers are getting smaller,” Sisson said, “so it looks like near-average temperature and near-average snowfall are insufficient to maintain ice volume.”

DATA SETS

Mountain makes its own weather How Mount Rainier will react to global warming is still an open question. The mountain is big enough to make its own weather, and lack of historic data makes predictions difficult. The mountain’s glaciers are melting rapidly, yet temperatures appear to have risen only slightly. No significant trends are apparent in either snowfall or total precipitation.

Moving average temperatures for Paradise and Longmire 47˚F

Longmire

45˚F

ELEVATION 2,672 FEET

Temperatures at Longmire have warmed slightly

43˚F

Paradise 41˚F

ELEVATION 5,400 FEET

Temperatures at Paradise have cooled slightly

39˚F 37˚F 35˚F 1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

NOTE: A moving average is derived by using a series of averages of different parts of the full data set

Average annual snowfall at Paradise; rainfall at Longmire 1,100 INCHES

Average annual snowfall at Paradise

900

ELEV. 5,400 FEET

700 500 300 100 1895

Snowfall data not available

Average annual rainfall at Longmire ELEV. 2,672 FEET

1900

1910

1920

Source: U.S. Geological Survey

1930

1940

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1970

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1990

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2009

Staff graphic

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LOSING PARADISE

Rock and boulders surround the stagnant Nisqually Glacier terminus at the park in July 2014, as researchers, lower right, use a laser scanner to map the rock debris entering the Nisqually River. The scientists h

The water is there. When it will burst out is the mystery Scientists are working to find a way to predict outburst floods

O BY ROB CARSON Staff writer

One of the most worrisome effects of glacial melting at Mount Rainier is the increased likelihood of outburst floods — sudden releases of water trapped inside or beneath the glaciers. Large lakes can build up inside glaciers as they melt, and when the water bursts free, the downstream effects can be disastrous. Big outburst floods often morph into debris flows — liquefied masses of water, rock and mud that travel rapidly downhill, destroying or burying everything in their paths.

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff Photographer

Lateral moraines 400-feet high, bottom left, frame the stagnant Nisqually Glacier terminus. A faster moving portion of the glacier, seen as a white tongue of ice shaped like a boomerang, middle. A kinematic wave, a bulge of ice working down from the summit, is seen in the crevassed area within the shadows of passing clouds, top-third of photo.

Geologists sometimes call outburst floods jökulhlaups, the term for the phenomenon in Iceland, where some of the world’s most spectacular outburst floods have occurred. An outburst on Iceland’s Grimsvotn volcano in 1922 released about 1.7 cubic miles of water — more than the total volume of ice and snow on Mount Rainier — in a gusher 10 times bigger than the average flow of the Columbia River. Outburst floods are not unusual at Mount Rainier. They’ve been recorded at four glaciers on the mountain: the Nisqually, Kautz, South Tahoma and the Winthrop. They often initiate debris flows, and in rare cases where they’ve been witnessed, the sound has been compared to that of a freight train. The outbursts often are accompanied by strong local wind, thick dust clouds and violent ground shaking, said Carolyn Driedger, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist who’s studied Rainier’s glaciers extensively. The Nisqually, South Tahoma and Kautz glaciers are the most worrisome, because their likely paths are aimed directly at places in the park that are

Floods from the Nisqually Glacier have wiped out, damaged or destroyed bridges over the Nisqually River four times since the 1920s.

heavily used by visitors. Floods from the Nisqually have wiped out, damaged or destroyed bridges over the Nisqually River four times since the 1920s. A flood in 1955 swamped the Longmire community. An outburst flood from the Kautz Glacier in 1947 triggered a debris flow that traveled more than five miles downstream, burying the Nisqually-Longmire Road under 28 feet of mud and debris. Park managers worry that, as climate change progresses, outburst floods will happen more often, increased by more rapidly melting ice and perhaps heavier

Courtesy of Mount Rainier National Park Archives

Flooding caused by an outburst flood from the Nisqually Glacier in 1932 left Longmire with debris — looking much like a riverbed — covering the grounds.

rainstorms at especially sensitive times of the year. Being able to predict when outburst floods will occur is the holy grail of park geologists, who say early warning would potentially save lives. Unfortunately, there’s been little progress so far. National Park Service geologists Paul Kennard and Scott Beason are experimenting with several theories, hoping to establish an early warning system at Longmire and farther downstream on the Nisqually River, even if it gives only a few minutes’ notice. “It might at least give people enough time to start running,” Kennard said. One theory, Beason said, is that water pressure before an outburst flood is so great that portions of the glacier float. By installing a sensitive GPS device in the right place on the glacier’s surface, he said, the upward movement could be detected and used to trigger alarms. Another theory is that outburst floods might produce a distinctive seismic signature that’s distinguishable from the run-of-the-mill tremblers that constantly rattle the mountain. Seismometers on the glacier might be able to recognize the signal and relay a warning. Evidence suggests some outburst flooding might be caused when a glacier’s terminus, or “snout,” stops moving and is cut off from the ice above – a condition geologists call “stagnant ice.” Kennard and Beason know the lower portion of the Nisqually Glacier is moving more slowly than the upper portions, and they say it is stagnant. Careful monitoring of the movement of the glacier could provide some warning. “We do know that stagnant ice and, specifically, slowing ice on the lower glacier combined with faster ice on the upper glacier, has been associated with these events

Sunday, December 21, 2014 | 9

CHANGES ON THE NISQUALLY

What lurks beneath? Glacial recession is nothing new on Mount Rainier. Its glaciers have been gaining or losing ice mass for thousands of years. What is new is the speed at which recession is currently happening — six times the historic rate. Scientists say that’s a sign of climate change. The changes are most dramatic on the south-facing Nisqually Glacier.

GLACIER RECESSION

2008 1896

Loss of glacial volume While Mount Rainier is the most glaciated peak in the lower 48 states, research shows that the mountain is losing glacier volume at an accelerated rate. This trend is especially pronounced on the Nisqually, one of Rainier’s 28 named glaciers. Its terminus has retreated more than 1.25 miles since the late 1880s. Now at a historic minimum, the Nisqually Glacier terminus recently has shrunk at unprecedented rate — more than three feet every 10 days. Columbia Crest

WE S T CRAT E R

1 MILE

AREA IN DETAIL

Nisqually River

E AS T CRAT E R

CONSTANT MONITORING

Point Success

The Nisqually Glacier is part of a long-term monitoring program run by the National Park Service that checks surface elevation and mass balance.

Camp Comfort KA

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hope to use the information to develop a “sediment budget” that will help predict future aggregation.

Cadaver Gap

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Photos by DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Camp Misery

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Healthy glaciers are in constant movement. On the Nisqually, large sections appear to have become disconnected from the whole and become “stagnant.” Recent measurements indicate that as much as 2,500 feet of the lower glacier could be stagnant. Glaciologists say this increases the likelihood of sudden outburst floods. This is of particular concern on the Nisqually because its outflow is aimed directly at popular tourist areas, including Longmire.

MUI R S NOWFI E L D

Wils

Stagnant ice is a threat

W IL SO

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G L A C I E R

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Meltwater rushes from an ice cave at the terminus of the Nisqually Glacier in summer 2014. Refrigerator-size chunks of glacial ice, middle right, calved off the stagnant glacier as scientists mapped the glacier and surrounding rock debris with a LIDAR scanner.

I S

GLACIER MOVEMENT

NISQUALLY ICEFALL (Where the glacier flows over a steep gradient)

WI L SO N H E A DWALL

Camp Hazard

When a mobile snowpack meets a stagnant glacier

in the past,” Kennard said. Also, Kennard and Beason are carefully watching a “kinematic wave” on the Nisqually Glacier, a bulge of heavy ice working its way down from the summit. They think that when the bulge reaches the bottom, it might trigger an outburst flood. Andrew Fountain, a glaciologist and Portland State University professor who has studied and written about Mount Rainier’s glaciers, said he doesn’t think kinematic waves and outburst floods are related. “I suppose it’s possible,” he said, “but I don’t see how.” Fountain said he thinks finding as way to predict outburst flooding at Rainier could well be a lost cause. Predictions are especially difficult at Rainier, he said, because the high altitude and

steep slopes make analysis so difficult. “Glaciers on Rainier are tough,” Fountain said. “They’re hard to measure, and there’s a lot of rock on top of a lot of them.” “A lot of stuff is going on on Rainier,” he said, “but it’s very complex and difficult to draw conclusions.” Even in the most structurally simple glaciers, Fountain said, where it’s possible to determine where hidden water is located, there’s still no way of telling what will trigger a release. “At Mount Rainier, things get more difficult from there,” he said. “Water accumulates, but we don’t know where and we don’t know how much. It suddenly comes out, and it surprises everybody.” “Why today, and not yesterday or tomorrow?” he asked. “We don’t know.”

Terminus

Boomerang

Glacier

1 Accumulation zone Higher than normal snowfall builds into a bulge on the glacier.

NISQUALLY’S MOVING TERMINUS Some years saw the Nisqually Glacier grow downward as kinematic waves extended the terminus. But for the most part, the glacier has been in retreat.

Cornice Terminus

2 Kinematic wave

Hangover

The bulge then begins to move down the slope, forming what’s called a “kinematic wave.” New terminus

HISTORIC MINIMUM

Glacier Vista

GLACIER SNOUT IN 2014

3 New glacier snout The wave moves faster downhill than the glacier itself and reaches the bottom, forming a new terminus or glacier snout.

2009 2006

Rocks and large boulders called “erratics” are carried down the glacier as the ice moves. Ridges of rock, or “moraines” build up at the edges and make their way into the downstream river bed.

1980

Melt-water streams

1946 1941

Rock debris

1936

CUTAWAY DETAIL

1926

Bedrock Water and rock

1918

Nisqually River Bridge

Visitor Center

1910

1870 1857

Pa ra di se Rd .E .

Once a glacier starts melting, Crevasses the process can build on itself. Melt water flowing beneath the ice creates space for warm air, which accelerates Glacier snout melting. Rock walls, formerly held in Outwash plain place by ice, collapse onto the glacier’s surface, turning it dark and Terminal moraine increasing solar heat absorption.

GLACIER SNOUT IN 1840 Frog Heaven

D RA

Nisqually Vista

1896

FEEDBACK

Staff graphic

Alta Vista

1951

ANATOMY OF A GLACIER

Made up of rock, silt and water, a debris flow can travel at 10-20 mph as it rolls downhill and can reach 30-60 feet in height.

GLACIER SNOUT IN 1976

1956

Streams are formed by rain and glacial meltwater on the glacier’s surface and get to the interior of the glacier through crevasses.

Lateral moraine

Debris flows

1963

Nisqually River

These sudden releases of water, also referred to as jökulhlaups (you-kul-h-lips), cause flooding and can trigger devastating debris flows. Scientists compare the process to turning a hose onto a pile of gravel. As melting increases, so do the chances of outburst floods.

Rock debris

Crevasses in glaciers normally run perpendicular to the ice flow. Stagnation on the Nisqually has caused some crevasses to run parallel to the flow.

Glacial outbursts

Wrong way

INSIDE THE GLACIER

. E. ise Rd rad Pa

Paradise

NOTE: This graphic is based on a topographic map created by USGS in 1976 with updated glacier recession shown

Narada Falls

Sources: ESRI, TeleAtlas; Google Earth; U.S. Geological Survey; U.S. National Park Service; Portland State University; Paul Kennard; Scott Beason; Mount Rainier National Park

10 | Sunday, December 21, 2014

LOSING PARADISE

Will hotter, drier landscape replace lush meadows? If temperatures continue to climb as predicted, life on the mountain will change from top to bottom

T BY ROB CARSON Staff writer

There’s a reason they call it Paradise. The wildflowers on Mount Rainier’s upper meadows are heavenly. Butterflies drift from bloom to bloom, and shy little rabbit relatives called pikas play hide-and-seek among the rocks. In the distance, mountain ridges fade to the horizon in ever paler shades of blue, making it easy to imagine you’re looking down on all creation. Elli Theobald spends a lot of time in Paradise, lying in perfumed beds of flowers, counting blooms and using tiny pipettes to extract nectar.

For the past five years, she’s spent every summer there, from the time the snow melts in the spring until it arrives again in the fall. Theobald is a University of Washington biologist doing research on the effects of climate change. She monitors changes in pink heather, lupine, phlox, avalanche lilies and 45 other meadow plants in 75 research plots on the mountain. Her mother and father brought her to Paradise as a child, Theobald said, and they were the ones who first got her interested in the flowers. Now she’s building her career on them. “In many ways it’s a dream job,” she said. “I’m in the lucky position to be able to call documenting these changes ‘work.’ ” The bad part of the job, she says, is that she’s almost certainly documenting the meadows’ demise. Theobald expects the data that she’s recording to become a baseline for climate changes that, in the next several decades, will force the meadows out of existence. Research indicates that higher temperatures are drawing trees upward into the meadows. When the forests shade the meadows out, the flowers and butterflies and pikas will have nowhere to go but up, where there’s not enough soil for them to survive. “By the end of the century, I picture this being more like some California landscapes that are

Skyline Trail Glacier Vista

Dead Horse Creek Trail

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Panorama Point

Golden Gate Trail Alta Vista

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RAINIER’S MEADOW TRAILS

Sluiskin Falls

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MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK

di ra Pa 2,000 FEET

r The popular Pa Louise trail system is Reflection Lake Lakes also used by researchers studying the Wonderland Trail Source: Mount Rainier National Park meadows.

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

A bumblebee gathers nectar from heather flowers in a subalpine meadow near Paradise. University of Washington biologist Elli Theobald says she imagines that in the future the area will be “hotter and drier — mostly rock with little vegetation.”

After flushing its prey into the open, a Cascade fox — a species found only on Mount Rainier and Mount Adams — pounces on dinner in the meadows near Paradise. While alpine firs growing at higher elevation threaten the park’s wildflower meadows, the Cascade fox might face competition from lowland species of foxes or coyotes. DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff file, 2008

brown in the summer,” Theobald said. “The snow will probably melt a month and a half earlier, and it will be hotter and dryer — mostly rock with little vegetation.” HABITATS VULNERABLE

Alpine and subalpine meadows are among the habitats in Mount Rainier National Park that are most vulnerable to climate change, according to Theobald and other researchers. But if temperatures continue to rise as predicted, scientists say, life on the mountain will change from top to bottom. The predicted temperature increases don’t sound like much — just 3.8 degrees by the 2040s and 6.8 degrees by the 2080s. But researchers say even such small changes will upset the delicate timing on which plants and animals depend, leading to extinctions, invasions of non-native species and disease outbreaks. Temperature effects as subtle as changing a bird’s breeding schedule could have consequences that ripple through the ecosystem, they say. As the timing of winter freezes and spring thaws shifts, some plants and animals evolved for specific climatic niches on the mountain could face extinction.

The commonly held idea that animals will be able to simply pack up and move to more suitable habitat elsewhere on the mountain is not realistic for many species.

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Using a refractometer, Elli Theobald, a biologist from the University of Washington, analyzes a sample of nectar extracted from a heather flower growing in one of 75 research plots that she studies. She monitors changes in pink heather, lupine, phlox, avalanche lilies and 45 other meadow plants.

Mount Rainier’s high meadows support seven of the 12 imperiled or rare plants in the park. Gerald Rehfeldt, an ecological geneticist with the U.S. Forest Service, concluded in 2006 that because of climate change, most of the park will have a different mix of plants and animals by 2090, a conclusion accepted by a panel of scientists studying likely consequences of climate change at Mount Rainier. The report, titled the Mount Rainier National Park Natural Resource Condition Assessment, calls Rehfeldt’s conclusion “general enough to be accurate.” “The point is that the changes that are coming with the rates of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere will have a profound effect on the native vegetation,” Rehfeldt said. “In most cases this means that the communities will shift greatly.” As the mix of plants changes, the animals that depend on them will have to change, too. “It’s all about habitat,” said Mason Reid, a wildlife ecologist at the park who retired this year. “For most terrestrial animals, it won’t be the case that they are unable to withstand a few degrees of change one way or another, but that the habitat they depend on will change.” The commonly held idea that animals will be able to simply pack up and move to more suitable habitat elsewhere on the mountain is not realistic for many species, he said. “In many cases, there’s nowhere for them to go,” Reid said. Because of its great height, he said, Mount Rainier is essentially a habitat island in the Pacific Northwest. As elevation on the mountain increases, temperatures fall, which creates rings of different life zones encircling the mountain. Reid says climate change will push the rings higher on the mountain. “At the upper end, as the snow and ice retreats, you don’t have soil, basically,” he said. “The advance of trees will probably outpace the soil-formation process.”

ANIMAL LIFE

In the Arctic, the polar bear is the poster child for global warming. On Mount Rainer, the pika is a good candidate for the role. Pikas are warm and fuzzy fur balls about the size of guinea pigs. They’ve evolved to thrive at high altitudes and are highly sensitive to air temperature. Exposure to unusual heat for just a few hours can cause them mortal stress. “They depend on vegetation in the high meadows,” Reid said. “If that changes, it will reduce their food supply.” Another animal that depends on mountaintop conditions is the white-tailed ptarmigan, a chicken-size bird that changes color with the seasons. Ptarmigans camouflage themselves by turning white in winter to blend with snow and gray in the summer to blend with rocks. Scientist believe Mount Rainier’s ptarmigan might be a distinct subspecies, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering adding them to the threatened species list. The Cascade red fox, a candidate for the state’s endangered list, is at risk as well. Mount Rainier has its own subspecies of red fox and its existence is tenuous. Scientists believe higher temperatures will bring a competitor — lowland red foxes — into their range and also coyotes, which are fox predators. “If their range changes and there are interactions between the two,” Reid said, “the foxes are going to lose.” AQUATIC LIFE

Lower on the mountain, warmer weather and changes in the timing of rainfall will disrupt life in ponds, wetlands and rivers, researchers say. Climate models suggest that by mid-century, snow in the park will melt three to four weeks earlier than now, and that the amount of water in rivers and streams will be substantially lower. “That’s likely to cause earlier drawdown and reduced water

Sunday, December 21, 2014 | 11

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Elli Theobald, a biologist from the University of Washington, extracts nectar using a pipette from a Mount Rainier lousewort growing in one of 75 research plots. She gathers baseline data on wildflowers in the subalpine meadows. Theobald says warmer temperatures already are helping sub-alpine fir trees move upward into the meadows, shading out wildflowers.

FLORA AND FAUNA

A delicate balance A female spruce grouse peers around lupine, foreground, and sitka valerian wildflowers at Mount Rainier. Global warming is causing the habitat for animals, such as the spruce grouse, to change. DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

level, which would cause loss of habitat for some amphibian and wetland plant species,” said the park’s plant ecologist, Lou Whiteaker. Birds rely on wetlands for food and nesting habitat, as do beavers, muskrast, skunks, minks, river otters and shrews. “The climate change they’re predicting, along with storms of bigger intensity and precipitation at different levels, are all going to affect aquatic species — including fish and invertebrates — because of changes in water quality, temperature and sediment loading,” Reid said. More sediment in streams, caused by debris flows or heavier rains, will interfere with fish breeding. Changes in freezing and thawing patterns will change the mix of algae, bacteria and other tiny organisms in lakes, Reid said. “We’ll see a changing distribution of nutrients in lakes, which will also affect anything that’s dependent on these nutrients,” he said. Mount Rainier is home to eight species of native fish, two of which — Chinook salmon and bull trout — are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Another two — coho salmon and coastal cutthroat trout — have been proposed for listing.

protection under the Endangered Species Act, are especially at risk. As temperatures rise, stands of white bark pine on Mount Rainier are increasingly being infected by blister rust, an invasive species to which they have little resistance. Also, mountain pine beetles, previously restricted by temperature to lower elevations, have begun infecting trees higher on the mountain. Researchers worry that warmer weather will let the beetles produce two generations in the same growing season, a situation already occurring in Canada. “When hit twice in a season, more trees would die,” Reid said. “The combination of rust and the beetle would put more stress on species that’s now a candidate for Endangered Species Act.” The effects wouldn’t stop there, Reid said. Unlike most conifers, whitebark pine seeds don’t spread by floating through the air. Instead, they depend on animals to disperse them. If the trees disappear, so will the birds and squirrels that depend on them for high-energy food. “Clark’s nutcracker are totally dependent on white bark pine,” he said. “If we lose the whitebark pine, then we lose the Clark’s nutcracker. It’s all interrelated.”

FOREST AND FIRE

ACCELERATED CHANGE

Mount Rainier’s iconic forests also are at risk, according to plant ecologists. Higher temperatures and longer dry seasons will increase insect infestations and disease and create longer and more intense fire seasons. Warmer winters will allow more insects to survive the cold season. Forest fires, currently rare at Mount Rainier, could become much more common. Studies at the University of Washington indicate that by the 2080s, the area of forest burned in the Northwest each year will quadruple from the average of 2 million acres burned each year over the past century. On Mount Rainier, whitebark pine trees, a candidate for

The issue with global warming is not change, said park biologist Barbara Samora. Mount Rainier is a dynamic environment and change is constant. What has researchers concerned, she said, is that this episode of climate change is not natural and that it’s happening at an unnaturally high speed — too fast for normal adaptive processes. “With climate change, theoretically, changes will be accelerated,” she said. “Native species won’t have time to evolve quickly enough to adapt.” That makes it difficult to watch, even for scientists trained to maintain a detached perspective. “It would be a different thing if

Mount Rainier is ringed with temperature-dependent habitats in which plants, animals and weather are intricately interconnected. The national park has never been commercially logged, and more than half is old-growth forest. Some trees have stood for more than 1,000 years. Animal species in the park include 182 birds, 65 mammals, 11 amphibians, 4 reptiles and 12 native fishes. There are 1,250 known plant species in the park, including more than 100 non-native exotics.

Montane Forest

RAINIER’S VEGETATION ZONES

2,700 to 5,000 feet

Mid-elevation forests containing Pacific silver fir, Alaska yellow cedar, western white pine and noble fir.

Lowland Forest 1,700 to 2,700 feet

Low-elevation forests are made up of western hemlock, Douglas fir, grand fir and western red cedar.

Subalpine Zone

Alpine Tundra

5,000 to 7,000 feet

Hardy varieties of vegetation, such as heather, live here. Some heather species have survived in the park for up to 10,000 years.

At these high elevations, trees become more sparce and clumped together as the forest transitions to subalpine meadows which includes heather, lupine, sedge communities, fescue, mosses and other species in the 5,000 to 7,000 feet range.

Tundra

33.4% Subalpine forest

54.9%

lowof the park is tion va le -e id m and st re fo n ee evergr

PARK BOUNDA

N: 1,700 FEET

RY ELEVATIO

THREATS TO MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK’S VEGETATION AND SPECIES

Glacial ice and snow.

10.6%

NOTE: Drawing is representative and not to scale

ArcticAlpine

7,000 to 7,900 feet

Alpine meadows

Watersheds and wetlands

Old-growth forests

Invasive species

The park’s most popular visitor destination and home to several endangered plant and animal species may be squeezed out of existence by rising temperatures.

Wetlands and seasonal streams throughout the park will dry up as temperatures rise, eliminating habitat for frogs and other amphibians.

Longer, hotter summers will dry the parks old-growth forests, increasing fire danger and susceptibility to insects and disease.

Higher temperatures will draw in exotic plants and animals — such as the barred owl — from outside the park, setting up competition with natives.

Sources: U.S. National Park Service; Mount Rainier National Park

If the trees disappear, so will the birds and squirrels that depend on them for food.

you could say, ‘This is natural. This happens. It gets warm and it gets cool,’ ” said Theobald, the flower researcher. “But the rate at which it’s warming now, there’s no way it’s naturally caused.” “I try to keep a scientific distance,” she said, “but sometimes I get kind of a panicky feeling and wonder, ‘What are we doing to this earth?’ ” “I can’t help feeling bad that my baby’s kids won’t be able to experience this.”

Staff graphic

U.S. Geological Survey, file

Mountain-dwelling pikas may become the first known North American mammal to fall victim to warming, according to wildlife officials.

12 | Sunday, December 21, 2014

LOSING PARADISE

Trees are losing ‘War of the Woods’

Photos by DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Multiple river channels and areas of deforestation along the Carbon River in the Falls Creek area show how the main stem of the Carbon has shifted, or avulsed, wiping out old-growth forest that protected the road.

Park’s oldest residents can keep surging rivers in check only for so long

T BY ROB CARSON Staff writer

The rush of rock and gravel cascading down from Mount Rainier’s melting glaciers is making a mess of man-made infrastructure in the park. Roads, trails, bridges and buildings are costing millions to repair, and they’re expected to cost many million more as climate change intensifies. But the large volume of sediment coming down the mountain also is upsetting the equilibrium between rivers and the park’s oldest living species — giant Western red cedar, Douglas fir and hemlock trees that have helped keep the rivers in their banks for thousands of years. In some river drainages, most notably the Carbon River in Mount Rainier National Park’s northwestern corner, the riverbed is so loaded with sediment the entire mainstem of the river is flip-flopping across the valley, seeking new routes well away from its historic territory.

For centuries, the roots of big trees and their giant fallen trunks created effective barriers to the water, forcing the rivers to turn aside and find easier paths. Now the rivers may be winning.

In places, the Carbon has inundated acres of old growth trees, leaving them standing dead in what National Park Service geomorphologist Paul Kennard calls “ghost forests.” “The river beds are building up, and in the Carbon it’s happening at an alarming rate,” Kennard said. “It gets to be where the bed of the river is much higher than the surrounding forest.” For centuries, the roots of the big trees and their giant fallen trunks created effective barriers to the water, he said, forcing the rivers to turn aside and find easier paths. “That’s beginning to unravel here at the Carbon,” Kennard said. “We’re beginning to think that, where for centuries there’s been a balance between the river and the forest, now the river is winning. And the forests are being decimated by the river.” Kennard characterizes the longstanding struggle as “The War of the Woods.” He and a group of other geologists, summer interns and graduate students he’s recruited from across the country have turned the upper Carbon River valley into an outdoor laboratory, where they’re working to better understand the balance between the erosive forces of a river and the ability of a forest to hold it in place. Kennard and his band, who sometimes call themselves “river rats,” hope their findings will help them understand the mechanics of how forests control sudden river-channel shifting, or “avulsions,” erosion, debris flows and flooding — not only on the

Fallen trees and cobbles pushed up against the eroded bank along the old Carbon River Road to Ipsut Campground demonstrate the destructive force of recent floods and the futility of trying to rebuild the road after it was washed out in the historic storm of November 2006.

Once forested with old-growth cedar and fir trees, the Carbon River trail now is often a jumble of twisted and shattered trunks, boulders and silt on the way to the Carbon Glacier.

Carbon but throughout the park and elsewhere. In many areas of the park, Kennard said, river bottoms are higher than the surrounding forest, and the presence of large trees at the river’s edge is all that prevents catastrophic flooding. That’s a big threat to roads, trails and bridges, but it also threatens forest habitat that supports endangered species, including spotted owls and marbled murrelets, and salmon and bull trout. Mount Rainier’s forests have never been commercially logged, and some stands are estimated to be as much as 1,000 years old. More than two-thirds of the old-growth forests in Washington have been cut since the 1930s, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which makes the park’s stands increasingly valuable as ecological refuges. The work of Kennard and his river rats already has shown results. Thanks in part to their findings, park managers are better able to figure out where wandering rivers pose the biggest threats and how to design more effective flood protection structures. Taking cues from the old-growth trees, they’ve found that in many cases, natural timber does a better job than concrete or rock in keeping rivers in their channels. Another plus for the cash-strapped park: Wood flood-control structures generally are cheaper. On the Carbon, four massive engineered log jams not only provide flood protection but also

are fish friendly. Like icebergs, most of the structures are below the surface, with logs buried 15 feet or more below river bottoms. As climate change intensifies, more effective, environmentally sensitive ways of controlling rivers are of increasing interest beyond park borders. On the Nisqually and White rivers particularly, Pierce County and downstream towns are concerned about the increasing amount of sediment leaving the park and clogging the downstream rivers, increasing flooding risks. In the upper Carbon valley, the river is winning the war of the woods. “This forest, which took centuries to create, was destroyed in just years,” Kennard said. “Now there’s going to be a tremendous lag. “We’re going to be in this intermediate area where we don’t get the benefit of a robust forest,” he said. “The river’s going to be extremely dynamic, and it’s going to take centuries to get the trees back here.”

Graduate student and “River Rat,” Rebecca Rossi drives Mount Rainier National Park’s region geomorphologist Paul Kennard in an ATV on the Carbon River trail during a “War of the Woods,” research expedition in 2013.

Sunday, December 21, 2014 | 13

Photos by DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Amanda Kissel, who is working on her doctorate from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C., right, and research assistant Zach Monteith wade into a montane pond in the Spray Park area at Mount Rainier National Park in search of Cascades frog tadpoles. Kissel believes the frogs may be in danger of extinction as hotter summers dry out wetlands.

Frog acts as a barometer of ecosystem health Amphibian species such as the Cascades frog – already threatened – could be squeezed out of their breeding sites on Rainier

P BY ROB CARSON Staff writer

Pikas and ptarmigans inspire more public sympathy, but frogs might have an even tougher time with climate change. As summers get longer and hotter in the next few decades, scientists say some of Mount Rainier’s smaller ponds and wetlands will dry up. That means amphibian species such as the Cascades frog — already threatened — could be squeezed out of their breeding sites. The Cascades frog has coloring that roughly resembles an overripe banana. They measure about 2 1⁄2 inches in length and can live for as long as seven years. Male Cascades frogs are distinctive for the low chuckling sounds they make during mating season. Cascades frogs are found in only three states — Washington, Oregon and California — and they are narrowly adapted to high, subalpine conditions. Because their larvae can’t survive through the winter, they’re restricted to developing in a single summer season. “They are one of the most sensitive resources we have,” Mount Rainier National Park biologist Barbara Samora said. “They’re dependent on surface water bodies for breeding areas. If they don’t have them, their populations will decline.” If Cascades frogs go extinct, that would be a great loss, Samora said. But their significance goes far beyond that. Because frogs and other

Researchers are tagging some Cascades frogs so they can be identified. They’re also using sensors to track water content in the soil.

Kissel and Monteith look for evidence in a dried out pond that Cascades frog tadpoles might have died before fully maturing.

amphibians live both in the water and on land and because they are super-sensitive to changes in environmental conditions, they make excellent barometers of an ecosystem’s overall health. Though they keep a low profile, amphibians make up a major portion of animal biomass in many habitats. In some forested areas, amphibians exceed the combined weight of all other vertebrates. Their population declines have an outsize effect on the larger ecosystem because not only are they a food source for many other animals, they also eat algae and countless insects, which helps keep aquatic habitats in balance. Cascades frogs already are squeezed because of a well-meaning mistake fishing enthusiasts made more than 100 years ago. Thinking they were doing a good deed, fishermen carried nonnative trout to Rainier’s high lakes in canvas bags filled with water beginning in the 1890s. Wildlife managers continued the practice, stocking Mount Rainier’s lakes and others throughout the Cascade range with nonnative trout that happened to be voracious feeders that gobbled up all the frog larvae and drove them to smaller, marginal ponds. Already hurting for suitable habitat, the frogs might be pushed to extinction by the increased stress of climate change, said researcher Amanda Kissel at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. Kissel and colleagues, including Maureen Ryan from the University of Washington, are working at Mount Rainier to predict what might happen to specific wetlands under various climate change scenarios so managers will better understand how to deal with the problem. Their work includes tagging

Cascades frog tadpoles and frogs were gathered to be weighed and photographed at the Spray Park area.

frogs with transponders and using remote sensors to track temperature and water content in soil. They also are using new computer modeling techniques that analyze digital imagery to identify wetlands and classify them by characteristics. Their work could have broader usefulness. “This is an important test case for assessing the potential for climate mitigation strategies,” Kissel said. Among the options for the frogs: Remove the nonnative fish in lakes and try to make the ponds more amphibian friendly. Removing the fish would be labor intensive, expensive and controversial. Gill netting is a possibility, but studies in Sequoia National Park and North Cascades National Park indicate it would require netting once a year for as long as eight years. Killing the fish with poisons, such as rotenone, which occurs naturally in the seeds and stems of some plants, is another option. But rotenone also is toxic to immature amphibians and has negative effects that can last years. Such drastic measures horrify many environmentalists and national park managers, who traditionally have tried to keep a hands-off approach when dealing with natural processes. “Taking proactive action is scary,” Samora said. “But if you don’t take any action, it could be just as scary.” “It’s baby steps right now — as it should be,” she said, “because we don’t want to make mistakes.”

Cascades frogs and other amphibians make excellent barometers of an ecosystem’s health because they live both in water and on land and because they are especially sensitive to changes in environmental conditions.

14 | Sunday, December 21, 2014

LOSING PARADISE

Managers struggle to balance nature’s needs, policy demands Problems have reached the point where old fixes won’t cut it

W BY ROB CARSON Staff writer

Warned by geologists that the South Tahoma Glacier is aimed like a fire hose at the main entrance to Mount Rainier National Park, the National Park Service responded this summer with a traditional approach. Just past the log archway at the park’s Nisqually entrance, where outfall from the glacier crosses the main entrance road, contractors replaced a big culvert with a bigger one. The new culvert is enormous — tall enough inside for a regulation-height basketball hoop with room left over for dunks. The park camouflaged the new culvert with 1920s-style stonework to match that used in the rest of the park — right down to using a historically authentic recipe for grout. As the reality of climate change sinks in, it’s becoming increasingly obvious — to scientists and managers in the park and the public as well — that such traditional approaches no longer are adequate.

Big as it is, the new culvert is miniscule compared with the surges of mud, rock and gravel that geologists say will periodically be released from the South Tahoma Glacier and others during the next several decades. Even if the next outburst crosses the road at this particular point — which geologists say is far from certain — it easily could wipe out the entire road, culvert and all, with barely a pause. The scale of problems presented by climate change is so overwhelming, the old ways don’t work any more. Global warming will change the park from top to bottom, scientists say, forcing managers to choose among the many values they are required to protect, including natural and cultural resources and public access. The situation is not unique to Mount Rainier. Other national parks are similarly threatened, including some that are in danger of losing the features they were set aside to protect. If climate change continues as predicted, scientists say Glacier National Park will have no glaciers in about 30 years. Joshua Tree National Park will have no Joshua trees. Jonathon Jarvis, the former Mount Rainier superintendent who’s now director of the Park Service, calls climate change “the greatest threat to the integrity of our national parks that we have ever experienced.” The situation has led to hand-wringing and head scratching in the parks. When nature is no longer natural, how far should park managers go in resisting its

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

Only hikers and park vehicles are allowed to cross Fish Creek on the Westside Road. Vehicle access was closed in 1989 after numerous washouts made the cost of repairs prohibitive.

effects? As entire ecosystems change along with the climate, what is it exactly that the parks are supposed to be protecting? TRIAGE NOT POSSIBLE

When nature is no longer natural, how far should park managers go in resisting its effects? As entire ecosystems change along with the climate, what is it exactly that the parks are supposed to be protecting?

JEFFREY P. MAYOR Staff file, 2012

Climate change is forcing managers to deal with competing demands, including protecting the environment and maintaining public access to places such as the Paradise Visitors Center and the mountain’s wildflower meadows, pictured.

The environmental laws and policies that guide the Park Service were written before climate change became an issue, and now, ironically, they could turn out to be impediments to intervention that could save species and preserve access. “Some of the obstacles in trying to manage these resources is that current federal law and policy are going to come to loggerheads at some point,” said Roger Andrascik, chief of natural and cultural resources at Mount Rainier. “Triage isn’t really possible,” he said. “There isn’t one value that’s supreme. You have to balance them all. “From a policy standpoint, we have to decide: What do our current policies allow us to do? Will those laws and policies keep up with what we have to do?” At Mount Rainier, the most immediate dilemma, and the most controversial at this point, involve the park’s roads. A central part of the park’s mission is “providing for public enjoyment,” but the melting glaciers are destroying roads faster than the park can repair them. Two of the park’s most popular roads, the Carbon River and the Westside, are closed — most likely permanently — because of floods and debris flows. In 2006, flooding shut down the entire park for six months. In places outside the park, dredging rivers or moving the roads to higher ground would be options, but at Mount Rainier, neither is practical nor permissible. Except for existing road corridors and building sites, the entire park is designated a National Wilderness Area, which carries heavy restrictions on development. Building roads outside of existing corridors would literally take an act of Congress and also would put federally protected resources at risk. “You’ve got old-growth forests, trees several hundred years old to a thousand years old,” Andrascik said. “You’ve got endangered fish species, the northern spotted owl. All the values that we’re trying to protect would be compromised.” Building elevated roads

supported by piers could be an option, but the National Historic Preservation Act prohibits changing the look and feel of current roads. The Federal Highway Administration, which funds most park road repair, has a policy of “replace-in-kind” after floods. It pays only to replace existing roads, not to design and build new ones. If the planet continues to warm as scientists say it will, the option of visiting the park by private automobile might go away. “Access is a value to be protected, but not access at all cost,” said Mark Wenzler, senior vice president of conservation programs for the National Parks Conservation Association. “It’s very clear that’s not the mandate. “When access becomes not economically viable to maintain, in an era when Congress is not funding the Park Service adequately, park managers are obliged to make those hard calls,” Wenzler said. “Some things can’t be repaired; some things can’t be moved, can’t be rebuilt.” Park managers try hard not to reduce access because “providing for the public enjoyment” is part of their mission and also because they know it helps build political support. The more people there are who visit and appreciate national parks, the more likely it is that Congress will fund them. “Public access is important for a lot of reasons,” said Sueann Brown, historical architect at Mount Rainier. “The early planners wanted everyone to be able to access the park, not just the elite. “We want the average Joe to be able to drive in,” Brown said. “It gives a broader segment of the population the ability to experience nature, and you also have a broader segment of the population then understanding the resources and building the political will to support them.” HUMAN INTERVENTION?

As climate change intensifies over the next few decades, some species of plants and animals likely will be doomed without human intervention, scientists say. Current park policies — and the personal feelings of many Park Service employees — discourage active intervention. “It’s really difficult for us in the Park Service because we’ve always had a kind of hands-off perspective,” Samora said. “We

think our job is to protect, but in the face of climate change, we don’t know what that means.” Mount Rainier’s alpine and subalpine areas are huge tourist draws and also home to some of the park’s most threatened plant and animal species. As climate change squeezes wildflowers and butterflies out of their alpine habitat, should they be artificially helped by removing trees moving into the meadows? Lower on the mountain, should migrating barred owls be killed to protect habitat for spotted owls? When wetlands dry up, should endangered frogs and lizards be packed up and moved to wetter parts of the park? If species from outside the park arrive as expected because of climate change, should they be removed as “invasive?” Or should they be protected? “What would have gotten here on its own and what’s here because of human causes?” Samora asked. “That’s the big dilemma right now. How do you tease out what’s natural and what’s unnatural?” POLICY PLAYS ITS PART

The politics of climate change make coming up with a course of action in the parks more difficult. Despite acceptance by mainstream scientists that the planet is warming and that humans are mainly to blame, there’s powerful political resistance to the idea. Without congressional acknowledgment that climate change is at least in part due to human causes, it won’t be easy to justify some of the interventions advocated by scientists and wilderness managers. President Barack Obama’s willingness to regard planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants put them under the regulatory control of the Environmental Protection Agency via the 1970 Clean Air Act. But the Republican-led majority in Congress is determined to reverse his actions. The Park Service’s chronic poverty adds another layer of difficulty. At Mount Rainier, researchers can’t afford baseline studies and monitoring that would make it possible to document changes caused by warming. “Unless we get more data, we can’t document change,” Andrascik said. Park geologists will have no funding to continue climate

Sunday, December 21, 2014 | 15

DEAN J. KOEPFLER Staff photographer

An 11-foot-wide culvert was installed this summer near the Nisqually entrance and the Westside Road. The culvert not only must deal with future flooding and debris flows but also meet historic protection standards, down to the 1920’s rustic stonework and grout formula.

settlement of Longmire, which now houses the park’s maintenance, law enforcement and, unfortunately, its emergency operations center. AN IDEA FOR ACTION

ASAHEL CURTIS Washington State Historical Society

Unlike today, when many of the park’s roads are off limits to cars, much of Mount Rainier once was open to just about any vehicle. Pictured are two “autobuses” full of sightseers are seen here at beneath the entrance to Mount Rainier National Park in 1912.

change and geologic hazard related studies next year. Despite increasingly apparent threats to natural resources at Mount Rainier, the park’s Natural and Cultural Resources Division was forced to cut spending by $200,000 this year — about 20 percent of its budget. Senior program managers in the division were offered early retirements or buyouts to further reduce expenses. Three of them — the heads of aquatics, vegetation and wildlife — are leaving. INFRASTRUCTURE IN DANGER

In the park’s northwestern corner, where the sediment-laden Carbon River has torn out miles of road, Rebecca Rossi steers a tough little all-terrain vehicle up toward the toe of the Carbon Glacier. She fords streams and lurches across washouts, the ATV’s wheels sending up gouts of mud as she guns the engine on eroded inclines. Rossi, a graduate student in geology, is in the park to research the effects of climate change. Over the past two summers, she’s spent weeks camped out along the Carbon, tracking the activity of the river as it carries hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of rock and gravel down from higher elevations. The way the park has dealt with the Carbon might be a vision of the future. Access is severely restricted — only hikers and mountain bikers can use the road. Historical resources have been compromised. For example, the Ipsut Creek Cabin, built in 1933 to house back country rangers, was undercut by the river’s rapid course changes in 2006 and was dismantled and reassembled, piece by piece, on higher ground. Natural resources on the Carbon have been compromised, too. When the ATV has gone as far as it can, Rossi sets out on foot, leaping from boulder to boulder and clambering over downed trees on the way to a place she calls the Ghost Forest, where the river has cut a new course through an old-growth forest, killing acres of trees that have stood for centuries. This summer, Rossi prepared a detailed inventory of park infrastructure endangered by climate change. The list includes every public access route into the park, except one, a spine-jarring gravel road to Mowitch Lake. It also includes the entire historic

According to some in the wilderness land management profession, the best way for park managers to deal with climate change is to focus more on what’s happening outside their borders. “They need to look at what’s happening in the whole landscape,” said Mark Wenzler, senior vice president of Conservation Programs for the National Parks Conservation Association. While some talk of the parks as “refuges” against climate change, Wenzler doesn’t agree. “I don’t like that word,” he said. “It sounds like we’re surrendering. Rather than refuges, I prefer to think of parks as anchor tenants within large, connected landscapes. Where it’s necessary, we need to be more deliberate in reconnecting them.” “We need to change the things we can control — air pollution, for example,” he said. “If you take those kinds of stressors out of the system, you’re providing a lot more opportunities for fish and wildlife to deal with climate change, even as it speeds up the pace of things.” NATURAL VS. UNNATURAL

Except for existing road corridors and building sites, the entire park is designated as a National Wilderness Area. This means that building roads outside of existing corridors would literally take an act of Congress and would put federally protected resources at risk.

Craig Thomas is a professor at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs, where he specializes in environmental policy and national land management. Thomas said he sees no point in park managers agonizing over the distinction between what is “natural” and what is “unnatural” as they formulate responses to climate change. “From my perspective, climate change is human caused, but it’s still natural,” he said. “Humans are a part of nature. Global warming may not be something you like, but we’re part of nature and what we’re seeing is natural change.” If maintaining biodiversity is the goal, Thomas said, it means ecosystems will require increasing human involvement, and there should be no hesitation to do so. Choosing to do nothing is itself a form of manipulation, he said. To allow climate change — an accidental human intervention — to proceed without undertaking planned, purposeful intervention makes no sense, he said. “I personally believe in preserving habitat for as many species as possible,” he said, “and if moving species around helps keep biodiversity, then I’m all for it. Park managers should be doing their best to maintain what’s there.” Wenzler is more cautious than Thomas with regard to park managers intervening to counteract the effects of climate change. “Probably in the long run it’s not viable to engineer nature,” Wenzler said. “The best thing we can do is to maintain a healthy, functioning ecosystem — but not with a heavy hand.” “It becomes an area of ‘best judgment.’ You can’t really legislate or regulate that ahead of time.”

GOING, GOING ... GONE?

Park access under threat Melting glaciers are destroying roads and trails faster than the park can fix them. Public access has decreased steadily over the past 20 years.

3 Carbon River entrance 165

MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK

Sunrise Visitor Center

Mowich Lake

DETAIL 410 410

2 Sunrise Park Rd. Wonderland Trail

Paradise

5 123

Nisqually entrance

706

Longmire

4 MILES

Pacific Crest Trail

LANDMARKS WE MAY LOSE 1 Longmire Historic collection of buildings lies 30 vertical feet below the adjacent Nisqually River. Endangered facilities include the park’s Emergency Operations Center and helipad.

2 White River Campground Large campground in the mountain’s northeast corner is at risk from moderate to large debris flows from the Emmons Glacier.

3 Wonderland Trail Sections of this popular 93-mile trail encircling Mount Rainier are threatened by aggradation in the Carbon River valley.

4 Mather Memorial Parkway (State Route 410) Aggradation has raised the bed of the White River 14 feet above the highway, putting it at risk of flooding for several miles.

5 Lower Nisqually Road Sections of this heavily traveled road from the Nisqually entrance to Longmire are at risk from floods and debris flows, particularly at the Tahoma Creek Bridge and the Westside Road junction.

LANDMARKS LOST TO MANY 1 Sunshine Point Campground The only year-round campground on the Nisqually River was washed away in the November 2006 flood.

2 Westside Road Closed to vehicles after constant washouts and rockfalls. Cut vehicle access to the park’s heaviest concentration of hiking trailheads.

3 Carbon River Road Popular access route in the park’s northwest corner is permanently closed to vehicles.

4 Ipsut Creek Cabin Historic log cabin built in the 1920s to house backcountry rangers was undercut by the Carbon River and moved to a higher location.

5 Paradise Ice Caves Long passages formed by water flowing under the Paradise Glacier were for decades among the park’s most popular attractions. The last traces of the ice caves disappeared in the early 1990s. NOTE: Most of the images shown above are from a November 2006 flood damage assessment report released by the National Park Service.

Staff graphic

16 | Sunday, December 21, 2014

LOSING PARADISE

Leader: Parks agency working on plan Q&A with National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis Q: The national parks are famous for their reluctance to interfere with natural processes — especially in parks that are also designated as wilderness areas, such as Mount Rainier. Do you see that hands-off approach changing because of climate change? I’m thinking about more active intervention, such as constructing new wetlands or moving species to new locations? Photos by DREW PERINE Staff photographer

Sueann Brown, historical architect at the park, stands in a crater left by a huge boulder that hit a vehicle and damaged the Westside Road in May 2014. The road has been closed to the public since the late 1980s because of damage from debris flows and outburst floods.

No easy route to saving park’s roads

BY ROB CARSON Staff writer

“Every time I drive through that entrance, I feel touched by the legacy,” said Dolan, who manages the Cultural Landscapes Program for the National Park Service from her office in Seattle. The feeling is no accident, according to Dolan. It was orchestrated by early Park Service visionaries. The park’s entrances, its roads with their stone masonry guard walls, the buildings that look as if they might have sprung from the earth — the entire visitor experience — was choreographed to convey presence in a special and maybe even hallowed place. “It was almost like a Victorian playground of a park,” Dolan said. “The experience was all laid out for you.” The Mount Rainier style helped set the tone for all the American national parks, Dolan said, and eventually parks all over the world. That, and the fact that Mount Rainier was the first park to conform so completely to a master plan, led to the establishment in 1997 of the Mount Rainier National Historic Landmark District. That gave the park the highest possible protection under the National Historic Preservation Act. The level of protection is on a par with the Statue of Liberty. The designation was an honor, but in the era of climate change, it can seem at times like a burden. The 100 miles of roads in the

Access to a Marine memorial at the park was curtailed when much of the Westside Road was closed to motorists in the late 1980s. The memorial marks the 1946 air transport disaster that killed 32 Marines when their plane crashed into a glacier.

The Park Service has a legal obligation to protect its cultural resources. While the National Historic Preservation Act is strict, it is not completely inflexible, according to Susan Dolan, who manages the Cultural Landscapes Program for the National Park Service.

Q: At Mount Rainier, science research programs are chronically short of money. Scientists say they can’t do the research they need to establish baseline data for glacial melting and plants and animals. Unless things change, they won’t be able to do the monitoring needed to document changes related to global warming. Are you doing anything to change that?

A: Mount Rainier has a long history of glacier monitoring and was the recipient of significant funding for the long-term monitoring of natural resources as a part of the Natural Resource Challenge. That said, the entire budget of the Park Service has been in real decline for years, and that has affected all programs: research, maintenance, interpretation, search and rescue, law enforcement and more. We have a strong budget request before Congress for our centennial, but it is up to Congress to provide the funds.

Rainier’s protected status limits ways and boosts costs of maintaining visitors’ access

If you’ve ever driven into Mount Rainier National Park through the Nisqually entrance, you might know the feeling. As you pass beneath the massive log arch and begin easing your car through tree-lined curves, there’s a sense of entering another reality. Susan Dolan says she always feels it.

A: The National Park Service policy regarding natural resources stems from a report written in the 1960s called the Leopold Report, which called on the Park Service to manage for natural processes but also create the appearance of “primitive America.” While we have adapted many of our policies to accommodate change, climate change presents new challenges. I do see our policies changing, as we are in the process of developing new policies under a recent report called Revisiting Leopold. I do not think we are ready to make major changes like constructing new habitats or assisted migration.

historic district are narrow; they were built through low-lying areas vulnerable to flooding. Their historic status makes it next to impossible for the park to change or move them. As the planet warms and Mount Rainier’s glaciers melt, the roads constantly must be repaired, at great expense. Dolan is aware of the irony of the situation. The basis for the Mount Rainier master plan was the idea that everyone should be able to experience the world through the windshield of their automobile. The exhaust from all those cars turned out to be a major cause of climate change. Within the Park Service, it’s not difficult to find people who think the roads were a bad idea to begin with. The park was “dealt a bad hand” with the roads, said Paul Kennard, a Park Service geomorphologist who predicts ongoing disaster as climate change continues to melt Mount Rainier’s glaciers. With regard to decades of futile effort to keep open the park’s Westside and Carbon River roads, park biologist Barbara Samora put it more bluntly: “How much money do you have to spend before you finally just say, ‘Enough is enough?’ ” Dolan takes such skepticism in stride. “Not everyone coalesces around the same notion of what is good and bad,” she said. “I truly believe people value national parks and want to take a conservative approach to change.” The Park Service has a legal obligation to protect its cultural resources, Dolan said, and while the National Historic Preservation Act is strict, it is not completely inflexible. “The idea is not to put these places in a bell jar and keep them entirely unchanged,” she said. “We can’t say that we will be able to manage the Mount Rainier National Historic Landscape in perpetuity. We can say that is our goal.” “From a preservation standpoint, the roads need to stay where they are,” she said. “Where the debate comes is, ‘How much change is too much?’ It’s a question of degree. They still need to be recognizable as what they were. “Society as a whole has decided these are significant,” Dolan said. “Which one of us now should be the one to decide, ‘We’re wiping this out?’ ”

A historic comfort station, built with quarried rock in 1931, is no longer in use at the former Tahoma Vista view area on the Westside Road.

Q: Geologists say climate change is melting Mount Rainier’s glaciers at an unprecedented rate and that flooding and debris flows are likely to get worse as warming intensifies. Every park entrance road is at risk, and repairs already have cost millions. How can the park keep up with repairs and continue to provide public access?

A: Mount Rainier National Park suffers from the same issue of most of our big mountain parks: the access roads were built up the river valleys, because that was the path of least resistance. Now we are seeing some of these roads are not sustainable, like the Carbon River Road, now a trail. We will continue to provide access where we can and when that becomes cost prohibitive, we will take the range of alternatives to the public. We are committed to providing access, but perhaps not in the same location or way we have experienced in the past. Q: If global warming were happening naturally and not caused by humans, how would that change the Park Service’s reaction?

A: Climate change is clearly human caused; it is happening now. We can see the impacts and we need to step up to the facts and take actions. The Park Service uses the best science to determine our approaches, and we are addressing the impacts as we can. Q: How do threats related to climate change at Mount Rainier compare with those at other parks?

A: Mount Rainier is not being hit any harder than any other park. Impacts are all over the national parks. New species are appearing in parks, driven there by climate change; snow pack in Glacier and the Sierras are at record lows. Lake Mead is as low as it was when it was being filled. Fires in our Sierra parks are burning a month longer and hotter, and the forests are not returning in the same mix of species. Our coastal parks are seeing high-intensity storms — Hurricane Sandy, for example. Q: Some people say climate change poses such overwhelming threats to the parks that the whole idea of what parks are for needs overhauling. You’ve talked about a “new vision” for the parks. What is it?

A: Our national parks offer “natural solutions” to climate change and need to be recognized as such. They serve as refuges for species under stress from other factors that compound the effects of climate change; biological reservoirs for repopulating areas impacted from climate change; sources of inspiration for action to address the climate; sites of public education regarding climate change; and anchors for landscape connectivity. They also can be laboratories for adaptation strategies, when applied with a precautionary principle. National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis NPS courtesy photo