Summer access to facilities and services in Denali remains altered due to the Pretty Rocks Landslide and the associated closure of the Park Road at Mile 43. Check here for more information on what to expect. More
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Credit: Photo by Stephen R. Capps, 1919
The easternmost Teklanika glacier pictured here has retreated approximately 450 yards (410 m) and downwasted (surface elevation decreased) approximately 300 feet (90 m) between 1959 and 2010.
Change is ever-present in natural settings, and the landscape of Denali is no exception.
Over the course of a day, flowers open and close as light plays on mountain flanks. Across the seasons, lakes and rivers freeze and thaw. And over thousands of years, glacial advances literally carve the landscape we see before us. Although many changes are natural and can be expected, Denali's landscape may also be imperiled by changes - those brought on by human activities.
Human impacts can be seen most clearly in direct alterations of the landscape caused by infrastructure development, but there are also less obvious impacts resulting from our modification of the earth's climate system.
Exploring Land Cover Change Through Repeat Photography
Get a birds-eye view on Denali's changing landscape. Our partner's website contains a wealth of information about Denali's landscapes and allows you to view hundreds of matched historic/current photographic images that help us document and understand ecological changes occurring in the park.
The Denali Repeat Photography project has assembled more than 200 photo pairs taken across a large cross-section of Denali from the low-lying black spruce forests to ice fields high in the Alaska Range. What unites these disparate images is that they show repeated views of a single location at different moments in time. The interval separating the pairs of photos varies greatly - from just a few years to longer than a century!
Some of the images reflect major changes that have occurred in the physical landscape such as shrinking of huge glaciers or changes in the size of lakes or ponds. Other photo pairs show changing patterns of vegetation such as the establishment of spruce trees in formerly treeless areas or shrubs invading wetlands, and some show changes humans have made by building structures and roads. Still other photos show no apparent change at all over long spans of time.
The website serves as a clearinghouse of visual information about the wonderful and dynamic Denali landscape. The photographs have come from many different people and sources - from historical collections, longtime Denali researchers, and students visiting the area for the first time.
Climate Monitoring in Denali
Climate is one of the important vital signs used to monitor long-term change across the park landscape. There are several climate/snow monitoring stations that provide information on temperature and precipitation patterns in Denali. Data are used to support natural resource programs including wildlife, vegetation, hydrology, and fire. Data are also used on a day-to-day basis for practical management issues such as visitor access, construction projects, road work, and aviation safety.
Most of the weather stations record air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, solar radiation, precipitation, snow depth, and soil temperatures. Near-real time information from these sites are used by the National Weather Service for forecasting. Weather data and data analysis tools are available for most of these stations from the Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC) and Mesowest.
Annual data reports and seasonal weather summaries are available from the Central Alaska Network website.
This work is part of the Central Alaska Inventory and Monitoring Network program that was established to monitor key components of ecosystems of the parks and to provide that information back to park managers for use in stewardship of park resources.
Further Studies and Stories of a Changing Climate in Denali
Locations:Aniakchak National Monument & Preserve, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Denali National Park & Preserve, Gates Of The Arctic National Park & Preserve, Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, Katmai National Park & Preserve, Kenai Fjords National Park, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Kobuk Valley National Park, Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, Noatak National Preserve, Sitka National Historical Park, Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve, Yukon - Charley Rivers National Preservemore »
Offices:Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate
The rugged beauty of Alaska has been the homelands of Alaska Native people for thousands of generations. Today the relentless march of climate change threatens a range of cultural resources from archeological sites to historic cemeteries. Now the National Park Service is in a race to document heritage across the parklands in Alaska.
Locations:Aniakchak National Monument & Preserve, Denali National Park & Preserve, Gates Of The Arctic National Park & Preserve, Katmai National Park & Preserve, Kenai Fjords National Park, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preservemore »
Alaska is one of the most heavily glaciated areas in the world outside of the polar regions. Approximately 23,000 square miles of the state are covered in glaciers—an area nearly the size of West Virginia. Glaciers have shaped much of Alaska’s landscape and continue to influence its lands, waters, and ecosystems. Because of their importance, National Park Service scientists measure glacier change. They found that glaciers are shrinking in area and volume across the state.
Locations:Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Denali National Park & Preserve, Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, Kenai Fjords National Park, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, Sitka National Historical Park, Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve, Yukon - Charley Rivers National Preservemore »
The wild lands of Alaska national parks are changing at a rapid pace due to the disproportionate increases in temperature at high latitudes. Climate has fundamentally shaped the landscape of high-latitude parks, but now climate change is redefining them. This collection of articles provides a glimpse of the science related to climate change in the high-latitude parks of Alaska.
Locations:Denali National Park & Preserve, Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, Kenai Fjords National Park, Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve
Climate change is a task society must address sooner rather than later. Park interpreters know it’s important to explain the science, the changes happening on the landscape, and the reasons why, but that’s only half their task. They aspire to inspire; to provoke their audiences to care. Societal action is the ultimate measure of success for effective communication. Alaska Park Science 22(1), 2023
Climate is a fundamental driver of the character, structure, and distribution of plant communities in the Far North. Periodic and massive change is deeply woven into the fabric of Alaska’s ecosystems, which have been subject to repeated, dramatic shifts precipitated by disturbance and changing climatic conditions, among other drivers. We are just starting to see the earliest results of a huge experiment playing out on northern ecosystems. Alaska Park Science, 22(1), 2023
Locations:Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Denali National Park & Preserve, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, Sitka National Historical Park
Offices:National Heritage Areas Program
Within the modern boundaries of Alaska are some of the oldest-dated archeological sites in the Americas. An understanding of the depth and breadth of human history in Alaska informs our global understanding of human evolution, migration, occupation, adaptation, and cultural change around the planet. Climate change is threatening irreplaceable archeological sites, historical sites, and modern communities. Alaska Park Science 22(1), 2023
Locations:Denali National Park & Preserve, Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve
Read the abstract and get the link to a peer-reviewed article on the use of climate models in ecological modeling: Sardoti, G., S. A. McAfee, E. F. Nicklen, P. J. Sousanes, and C. A. Roland. 2020. Evaluating multiple historical climate products in ecological models under current and projected temperatures. Ecological Applications 0(0): e2240.
Locations:Denali National Park & Preserve, Gates Of The Arctic National Park & Preserve, Wrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve
Read the abstract and get the link to an article on how climate change is impacting park roads in Alaska: Lader, R., P. Sousanes, U. S. Bhatt, J. E. Walsh, and P. A. Bieniek. 2023. Climate indicators of landslide risks on Alaska national park road corridors. Atmosphere 14(1): 34.
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