(gentle acoustic music)
- We know that over the last 30 to 50 years,
the climate has changed.
In fact, we are at the 95th to 100th percentile
of the warmest temperatures we have ever seen
in Big Bend National Park.
And every indication from the sciences
is that's going to continue
and that's going to accelerate
even under the most conservative scenario.
- As we move forward it's just very important
that we take a real careful look
and we're observant of what the science is telling us
about the climate and the changes in the future.
- The future will not look like the past.
In many areas, including the Chisos Basin
within Big Bend National Park,
the climate is changing rapidly.
- So we need to understand
not what the future will look like
because nobody can predict that,
but we do need to understand
what are the range of possible futures.
(gentle acoustic music)
- More and more people are coming
and more and more people want to spend time
surrounded by this beautiful landscape.
Big Bend's often referred to as three parks in one.
And right now we're in the middle
of one of the most spectacular parts of the park,
where it's the heart of the Chisos Mountains.
It's a 50 million year old pile of volcanic rock
that now stands high above the lowlands
of the desert and the river.
- Because there is this high, high mountain range
in the middle of Big Bend National Park,
it receives a lot more precipitation
than other areas in the park,
and so as the mountains get precipitation,
it funnels down into the spring.
- So Oak Spring itself within the park
is a really critical water supply for Big Bend.
It's the sole source of water
to really one of the busiest areas within the park itself.
- When they hike the window trail,
I think few people realize that
that's where their water's coming from.
They may kick the little pipe here
and there where it's exposed,
but many people never really make that connection
of where their water is coming from.
All the water in their hotel room,
the water in the faucets, in the campground,
the ice on their drink is all coming
from a tiny spring miles away down on the desert floor
- In the 1950s, when they built the pipeline here,
I'm sure that they evaluated what was the best
and most cost effective way of bringing water here.
But nonetheless, we probably would never build
a pipeline like that today.
The impact would just be too great,
particularly in an area that has since been
recommended for wilderness designation,
but nonetheless it's here.
The impact is real.
The development behind me is also real
and we're not gonna take that out.
We have to provide water,
but we have to do it in the most
environmentally sensitive ways.
- Here in Big Bend, we have a limiting factor
and that limiting factor is water.
Even Oak Spring itself is not really fed
from deep underground.
It's not tapping some sort of massive aquifer.
It in itself is just being fed from rain
and as rain conditions change
and rainfall amounts fluctuate
throughout the months and years,
we see that manifested in the actual flow of that spring.
- We asked the scientists at the Climate Change
Response Program of the Park Service to come in
and evaluate what was known about Oak Spring hydrologically,
what was known about climate models.
- Well, the way we help parks manage for climate change
is by looking at different future scenarios of climate
and different projections of what climate may look like
so that they can understand the range
of what they might expect
and plan within that range intentionally.
- Particularly when we talk about big investments
within the park service, things like water supplies,
where the expectation is that this thing's gonna last
50 to 70 years, we really want to think about
what is the climate in the future gonna look like,
not just what the climate in the past looked like.
- It was really important for me
as a relatively new superintendent
being asked to commit $10 or $20 million
to make sure that I had the best available science
and we were looking at the best modeling that we could,
so that we'd make the most intelligent decision
that we could with the information that was available.
- So we took projections of future climate
and all future projections showed
that it will get warmer just depending on how much.
- So we looked across multiple scenarios,
but in a worst case scenario that the park can expect
to experience potentially twice as many conditions
in which they're really water limited
compared to what it is currently.
- So the question would be,
can we manage for those long periods of drought,
and then store enough water
so that we could survive those periods?
(gentle acoustic music)
Very intentionally we committed to two things.
One is we will redevelop the pipeline here at Oak Spring,
and two is we will put in another half million gallon tank,
so that we can store a lot more.
And at the same time, we will replace over time,
all the distribution pipes, and all the faucets,
and dishwashers, and other things that use water here
so that we actually lower the amount of use,
even if the visitation goes up.
- And so taking this approach allows the park
to act intentionally as they make their management decisions
and be able to realistically look at the range
of what they might expect
and make plans not based on
what the history of the spring looked like,
but what in the future might look like.
- I hope that 20 or 30 or 50 years from now
my successor looks and says,
"Well, they didn't know everything,
"but they made an intelligent decision."
That would be our goal.
(gentle acoustic music)