People depend on natural ecosystems of trees, grasses and shrubs to capture carbon from the atmosphere and pull it underground to slow the decline toward climate-change disaster.
People depend on natural ecosystems of trees, grasses and shrubs to capture carbon from the atmosphere and pull it underground to slow the decline toward climate-change disaster. Ironically, these same protected spaces also tend to be highly photogenic hot-spots for tourism.
New research from the Quinney College of Natural Resources and the Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism makes a case study of one such place — Yellowstone National Park — to calculate surplus carbon visitors from across the world add to the atmosphere each year as a direct result of a park visit.
Emily Wilkins and Jordan Smith from the Department of Environment and Society and colleagues leveraged existing data to create a tally of carbon emissions generated by one year of tourist visits to Yellowstone National Park, a popular destination that can receive over 4 million visitors per year. They estimated that recreation visits to the park produce just over one megaton of carbon emissions per year, an average of 479 kilograms attributable to each visitor (about the weight of a grand piano).
Read more at Utah State University
Image: Visitors walk the boardwalk at the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. (Photo Credit: National Park Service)
