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Posts Tagged: climate
‘UC Environmental Stewards’ is new home of California Naturalist and Climate Stewards
In 2012, the California Naturalist certification course became a statewide program within UC Agriculture and Natural Resources known as the California Naturalist Program. For 10 years, the course and the program have shared the same name. In 2020, we added the new Climate Stewards certification course. Both courses use education and service to inspire and empower individuals to create more sustainable and resilient communities and ecosystems.
Unfortunately, our program name only reflected one half of our work. To better reflect the scope of both the California Naturalist and the Climate Stewards certification courses, we've renamed our program “UC Environmental Stewards.” This new program name reflects the overarching importance of environmental stewardship to both courses.
While the program name is new, the two courses remain unchanged. The California Naturalist course still proudly focuses on California's natural history under the emblem of the California sister butterfly, and the Climate Stewards course still builds community resilience under the emblem of the lupine. Anyone certified as a California Naturalist or Climate Steward is still a California Naturalist or Climate Steward. UC Environmental Stewards is simply the new programmatic home for these two courses, and potentially any others we may add in the future.
Along with our program name, we are excited to announce additions to our small but growing program team. Jill Santos joins the program in Ventura County at the end of the month and next month we welcome Michelle Peeters, who will support our partners in Northern California.
The growth of the Environmental Stewards program reflects the demand for our courses and the growing need for community and ecosystem resilience. As Californians search for ways to productively engage in local solutions to the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, they are finding our courses. Through community education, civic engagement, and the cultivation of a shared identity as environmental stewards, the program builds the adaptive capacity of individuals and communities to address the impacts we are already experiencing, as well as those yet to come.
Our collective impact network of 67 local partner organizations has conducted 422 California Naturalist and Climate Stewards courses and trained over 7,600 participants since the program started. These certified naturalists and stewards have gone on to volunteer over 240,000 hours of service across the state since 2018, worth over $6 million. The UC Environmental Stewards program continues the legacy of the original program started in 2012, and opens the door for many more Californians to effectively engage in discovery, action and stewardship.
Explore the Climate Smart Agriculture story map
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.
UC ANR, NRCS, CDFA and CARCD streamline conservation services
To deliver climate-smart conservation services to California's farmers, ranchers and non-industrial forestland owners in a more coordinated fashion, UC ANR has signed a memorandum of agreement with USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, California Department of Food and Agriculture, and the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts.
USDA NRCS State Conservationist Carlos Suarez, CDFA Secretary Karen Ross, CARCD President Don Butz and I have signed this formal commitment for our organizations to work together in very specific ways on basic research; applied research; extension, education, and engagement; technical assistance and outreach; and implementation evaluation, learning and impact. With this strategy, we will be able to streamline services and identify gaps. See the graphic below depicting the roles of each institution in developing climate-smart conservation practices and delivering technical assistance.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are invested annually into helping agriculture stewards address hundreds of conservation activities throughout the state. But that investment starts with the leg work of analyzing and strategizing the conservation activities on a property-by-property basis.
This agreement will not only enhance our delivery of technical assistance, it offers a greatly expanded feedback loop to help us prioritize UC ANR research to ensure continuous improvement of practices, technologies and solutions needed by California's specialty crops and diverse ecosystems. This will enable new knowledge from our research to be quickly incorporated into NRCS's Field Office Technical Guide, which will expedite its availability to our farmers and ranchers in the field.
The official Memorandum of Agreement is posted at https://ucanr.edu/sites/anrstaff/files/377732.pdf.
Glenda Humiston
Vice President
See demonstration of Natural Climate Solutions Toolbox Sept. 29
The Center for Ecosystem Climate Solutions is launching its Natural Climate Solutions Toolbox. The comprehensive suite of data and decision support tools are designed to aid UC Cooperative Extension academics, land managers, policymakers and scientists in adapting California wildland management for a changing climate.
On Sept. 29, Safeeq Khan, UC Cooperative Extension specialist and adjunct professor at UC Merced, Toby O'Geen, professor and UC Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Davis, and Mike Goulden, professor at UC Irvine, will demonstrate the Natural Climate Solutions Toolbox for UC ANR and other UC academics who are interested in climate change, wildfire and land management in range and forest lands. They will explain how the toolbox can be used to address clientele needs.
The demonstration and product launch will be held via Zoom from 9:30 to 11 a.m. on Sept. 29. To register, visit https://surveys.ucanr.edu/survey.cfm?surveynumber=37843.
All UC ANR and UC academics, nongovernmental organization representatives and related colleagues interested in climate change, wildfire and land management in range and forestlands are invited.
The NCS Toolbox is useful for a variety of goals, including habitat restoration, reducing wildfire severity, projecting impacts of disturbance or management on water and carbon, and valuing benefits of management. This one-stop-shop data hub includes metrics of management history, vegetation, carbon balance, water, fire, fuels and more.
In the demonstration, the CECS team will walk through the decision support tools and extensive data available in the toolbox and discuss how they may be used in exploring impacts of historical and future disturbance and management on a range of metrics, or planning and assessment of new fuel reduction and restoration projects.
NIFA grants available for weather-related disaster response
Informational webinars on Sept. 14, Dec. 8
The increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather-related disasters across the country may have many of us wishing we could click our heels and go back to times when weather did not disrupt our agricultural, forestry and rangeland production systems as often as it does today.
In addition to their devastating impacts on people and communities, disasters contribute to land degradation and adversely impact agricultural supply chains at the production, processing, distribution and consumption stages.
In response to extreme temperatures, heavy downpours, droughts and blizzards, USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture is introducing a new program to help communities protect the nation's food supply.
The Rapid Response to Extreme Weather Events Across Food and Agricultural Systems program reflects a new cross-cutting program area within NIFA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative. The program is housed within AFRI's Foundational and Applied Science program and is designed to rapidly deploy strategies, and fill knowledge and information gaps to protect the nation's food and agricultural supply chains — at the production through consumption stages — during and after extreme weather disasters.
Disasters happen when a community is not appropriately resourced or organized to withstand the impact, and whose population is vulnerable because of poverty, exclusion or other social disadvantages, according to United Nations Office for Risk Reduction official Mami Mizutori.
The new program area contains two grant types: Strengthening Standard and Coordinated Agricultural Project. Project proposals for either grant type will directly address effects associated with an extreme weather event or disaster that has occurred. In addition, applications will present projects that address one or more of the following emphasis areas:
- Agroecosystem Resilience
- Agricultural Commodity and Nutrition Security
- Health, Well-Being and Safety
The intention of the Rapid Response to Extreme Weather Events Across Food and Agricultural Systems program is to fund projects that provide solutions, which may include trainings, communication strategies, tools and technologies, food supply logistics, and climate-smart practices that can be rapidly adopted by various end-users. These projects will also explain how adoption potential of proposed solutions will be measured.
NIFA is committed to alleviating the impacts of extreme weather events and disasters across the food and agricultural system. NIFA understands the importance of supporting timely, critical research and Extension activities following extreme weather events and disasters.
For more information, or if you have any questions about this new program area priority, please visit AFRI Foundational and Applied Science RFA or send an email to afri-rapidresponse@usda.gov.
Live FAQ webinars will be held at noon on Sept. 14 and Dec. 8. Please check NIFA's events page to register for upcoming live Q&As.
When planning a proposal that includes communication, contact Linda Forbes, director of UC ANR Strategic Communications, at lforbes@ucanr.edu.
