Explore the Climate Smart Agriculture story map

Climate Smart Agriculture story map summarizes the program's the history, activities and staff.

The Climate Smart Agriculture Program published an interactive online story map highlighting the program's focus areas and team of experts.  

Esther Mosase, Climate Smart Agriculture community education specialist for San Diego and Riverside counties, used ArcGIS to create a story map for people to explore the program and personnel.

Climate smart agriculture promotes activities that address the risks that climate change poses to agriculture. It encompasses management practices to

• Increase soil carbon
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions
• Improve on-farm efficiencies
• Promote sustainable land practices

“The story map was developed as a way to summarize and visualize the history, activities, and staff involved in the Climate Smart Agriculture Program,” said Hope Zabronsky, academic coordinator for UC ANR's Climate Smart Agriculture Program. “Each staff member's bio is included along with the regions and counties they serve. This is useful to both growers and stakeholders who support our programs.”

In 2019, the California Department of Food and Agriculture partnered with UC ANR to place community educators throughout the state to provide technical assistance and outreach with the goal of increasing adoption of climate-smart farming and ranching practices. 

The community education specialists help growers find appropriate resources, educate them about financial incentive programs, assist them in applying for grants, implement climate smart farming practices and more. 

The program recently released an impact report that shows the community education specialists have served clientele in six languages across 25 counties in California, through 100 workshops attended by more than 2,300 participants. Technical assistance and grants support a wide range of projects – from cover cropping to water efficiency upgrades – that have saved an estimated 8.3 billion gallons of water and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to taking 68,000 gas-powered vehicles off the road for a year, based on impact modeling. 

To explore the Climate Smart Agriculture story map, visit https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/db4de0f145574ed5b7fac4a51e14125c.

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