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Stanford student project - climate change in Yosemite

PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2011 8:27 pm
by kcnjhnsn
Dear Yosemite Fans,

I am a fellow devotee of the Park and a Master's student in environmental communication at Stanford University. I'm hoping to solicit your help with a project I'm working on with a Stanford professor. I'm exploring the messages that National Parks and Park Service employees are conveying about climate change, using Yosemite as a case study. Our goal is to compile this research in a feature article for a popular science magazine.

I've had the privilege of talking to several Yosemite interpreters about their understanding of climate change as it relates to the Park and their efforts to present that understanding to visitors. Now, I'd like to hear from visitors themselves - that's you! I'm interested in answers to a couple of questions:

1. If you've been visiting Yosemite for years, do you feel you've seen evidence of climate change in the Park? If so, when/what/where?

2. If you've asked questions about climate change of Park employees, attended an interpretive presentation that included information on climate change, or checked out the visitors' center displays on climate impacts, how would you evaluate those experiences? Did you get information you needed/wanted/found useful?

3. What, if anything, related to climate change would you like to learn when you visit Yosemite?

If you have time to scrawl a few sentences in response to any of those questions, please reply here or send me a PM. I'm collecting this information as a private citizen, not as a representative of the Park Service or any other government agency. All responses will be used anonymously unless you tell me otherwise.

Thank you!

Re: Stanford student project - climate change in Yosemite

PostPosted: Thu May 26, 2011 11:11 pm
by dan
I haven't really noticed any difference except in Winter. It seems that January is more iffy for skiing Badger Pass than it used to be (this past year was an exception--it was great!). Of course, there's great variation from year to year, but it seems to have more dry years recently than not.

Here's a slightly off-topic story, though. In Sequoia National Park there's some long-term climate change/global warming studies in the backcountry. Particularly at and around Pear Lake. The student researchers stay at the ski hut (summer ranger cabin) below the lake. While stuck in snow storms, I've read the logs several times. I find multiple times people complaining that the previous visitors left the place as a pigstye. Left dirty dishes, didn't sweep, left trash. So I looked back in the journal to see who the previous visitors were. In multiple cases I've found they were student researchers on climate/change global warming. I find it very ironic that students working supposedly for a better and cleaner planet can't even clean their own back yard or immediate surroundings.