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UC Climate Stewards take action to protect communities
UC ANR partners with state and local organizations to improve urban communities. This story is one in a series about the impact of these partnerships.
Water availability, food production and biodiversity are being affected by climate change. There are actions individuals can take to protect their communities. Climate Stewards is a new public education and service effort by the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources designed to improve climate understanding and empower community-level stewardship.
The first group of certified UC Climate Stewards graduated in December from the 40-hour course taught by Cameron Barrows, UC Riverside research ecologist in the Center for Conservation Biology, at the UCR Palm Desert campus.
“I am already using what I learned!” said Elizabeth Ogren Erickson, who was one of 32 participants in the inaugural UC Climate Stewards course led by Barrows. “Two Coachella Valley organizations contacted me in December, requesting that I speak to their organizations virtually.” She is preparing a presentation that describes the climate crisis and offers some climate resilience solutions.
The Climate Stewards course is delivered through a collective impact network – organizations with common goals, but with unique strengths and strong local connections. To reach a variety of audiences, the organizations tailor the course content and delivery to be culturally relevant and address local needs and priorities. Each participant completes a capstone project as part of the certification process.
Ogren Erickson and her husband Robert Erickson, who took the course with her, assessed landscaping in their neighborhood for their capstone project. Based on their findings, they have proposed landscape changes to their homeowners association. For example, to save water, they propose converting turfgrass areas that are not used for recreation to native plants.
“Did you know that one square foot of turfgrass, on average, requires 73 gallons of water per year, whereas one square foot of desert landscaping, on average, requires only 17.2 gallons of water per year?” she asked.
Hot spot in Coachella Valley
“The Coachella Valley is warming faster than the rest of the planet,” said Barrows, explaining local interest in the program. “The desert community is feeling the effects more rapidly than other places. Scientists say the average desert temperature increase is already above 4 degrees C. Only the arctic is warming faster.
Greg Ira, director of the UC California Naturalist Program, who oversees the new course, said, “The UC Climate Stewards certification course is a first step in a long-term project in which our partner organizations delivering the course will try to improve community resilience to climate change and ultimately measure that change.”
To build their community's resilience to climate change, UC Climate Stewards are encouraged to engage in community-scale efforts, including volunteer service that draws on the knowledge and skills gained from the course. These may include conducting community education and outreach, participating in local adaptation planning efforts, facilitating community and participatory science projects, or addressing issues of environmental or climate justice.
During the course, participants read Climate Stewardship: Taking Collective Action to Protect California written by Adina Merenlender, UC Cooperative Extension specialist, and Brendan Buhler. Rather than a reference text, the book is a collection of stories from diverse voices and shows how specific actions enhance the resilience of communities and ecosystems across California's distinct bioregions.
Together, UC Climate Stewards academic coordinator Sarah-Mae Nelson, Merenlender and Ira form the core UC ANR team who have partnered with local organizations, other UC experts and practitioners around the country to design and move the course forward.
“The program differs from many other climate education efforts because it goes beyond the science of climate change to address the social and emotional challenges climate change presents,” says Nelson. Participants also explore root causes and environmental justice issues. They learn to communicate about climate change and leverage community and state resources to advance collective solutions.
“There are components of the training that are gut-wrenching, like an assignment that relives a personal experience with climate extremes, such as flooding or landslides, and yet every segment of the training is important for each of us to learn, whether an elementary, middle school, high school, or adult education student,” Ogren Erickson said.
While the course was planned to include field trips, because it launched in October amid coronavirus restrictions, Barrows gave the students a tour of a local solar panel construction firm and wind energy site via video.
Measuring community resilience
Before teaching the UC Climate Stewards course, Barrows and one of his co-instructors, Tamara Hedges, the executive director of UC Riverside Palm Desert Center, conducted a baseline community resilience assessment.
The assessment tool – developed by the Community Resilience Assessment Organizations – examines 26 indicators of community resilience in four broad categories: basic needs, environment and natural systems, physical infrastructure and community connections and capacity. They will rank specific actions, for example, reducing food waste at restaurants. Like all Climate Stewards partners, the UC Riverside Palm Desert Center team will repeat the assessment every year to identify changes over time.
To launch UC Climate Stewards, UC ANR collaborated with existing partner organizations from the California Naturalist certification course. To expand the program, they are seeking new partners from a wide range of organizations that have training capacity and an interest in addressing climate change at the community level. Current UC Climate Stewards partners include:
Coastal Training Program - National Estuarine Research Reserves
Community Environmental Council
Conservation Society of California - Oakland Zoo
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History
Point Reyes National Seashore Association
Riverside-Corona Resources Conservation District
UC Hopland Research and Extension Center
UC Riverside Palm Desert Center
The UC Climate Stewards course is currently being offered online throughout California, but will shift to a hybrid “online and in-person” delivery format when appropriate. For more information about the UC Climate Stewards, and to find a course near you, visit http://calnat.ucanr.edu/cs.
UC Climate Stewards take action to protect communities
Water availability, food production and biodiversity are being affected by climate change. There are actions individuals can take to protect their communities. Climate Stewards is a new public education and service effort by the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources designed to improve climate understanding and empower community-level stewardship.
The first group of certified UC Climate Stewards graduated in December from the 40-hour course taught by Cameron Barrows, UC Riverside research ecologist in the Center for Conservation Biology, at the UCR Palm Desert campus.
“I am already using what I learned!” said Elizabeth Ogren Erickson, who was one of 32 participants in the inaugural UC Climate Stewards course led by Barrows. “Two Coachella Valley organizations contacted me in December, requesting that I speak to their organizations virtually.” She is preparing a presentation that describes the climate crisis and offers some climate resilience solutions.
The Climate Stewards course is delivered through a collective impact network – organizations with common goals, but with unique strengths and strong local connections. To reach a variety of audiences, the organizations tailor the course content and delivery to be culturally relevant and address local needs and priorities. Each participant completes a capstone project as part of the certification process.
Ogren Erickson and her husband Robert Erickson, who took the course with her, assessed landscaping in their neighborhood for their capstone project. Based on their findings, they have proposed landscape changes to their homeowners association. For example, to save water, they propose converting turfgrass areas that are not used for recreation to native plants.
“Did you know that one square foot of turfgrass, on average, requires 73 gallons of water per year, whereas one square foot of desert landscaping, on average, requires only 17.2 gallons of water per year?” she asked.
Hot spot in Coachella Valley
“The Coachella Valley is warming faster than the rest of the planet,” said Barrows, explaining local interest in the program. “The desert community is feeling the effects more rapidly than other places. Scientists say the average desert temperature increase is already above 4 degrees C. Only the arctic is warming faster.
“The UC Climate Stewards certification course is a first step in a long-term project in which our partner organizations delivering the course will try to improve community resilience to climate change and ultimately measure that change,” said Greg Ira, director of the UC California Naturalist Program.
To build their community's resilience to climate change, UC Climate Stewards are encouraged to engage in community-scale efforts, including volunteer service that draws on the knowledge and skills gained from the course. These may include conducting community education and outreach, participating in local adaptation planning efforts, facilitating community and participatory science projects, or addressing issues of environmental or climate justice.
During the course, participants read Climate Stewardship: Taking Collective Action to Protect California written by Adina Merenlender, UC Cooperative Extension specialist, with Brendan Buhler. Rather than a reference text, the book is a collection of stories from diverse voices and shows how specific actions enhance the resilience of communities and ecosystems across California's distinct bioregions.
Together, Nelson, Merenlender and Ira form the core UC ANR team who have partnered with local organizations, other UC experts and practitioners around the country to design and move the course forward.
“The program differs from many other climate education efforts because it goes beyond the science of climate change to address the social and emotional challenges climate change presents,” says Nelson. Participants also explore root causes and environmental justice issues. They learn to communicate about climate change and leverage community and state resources to advance collective solutions.
“There are components of the training that are gut-wrenching, like an assignment that relives a personal experience with climate extremes, such as flooding or landslides, and yet every segment of the training is important for each of us to learn, whether an elementary, middle school, high school, or adult education student,” Ogren Erickson said.
While the course was planned to include field trips, because it launched in October amid coronavirus restrictions, Barrows gave the students a tour of a local solar panel construction firm and wind energy site via video.
Measuring community resilience
Before teaching the UC Climate Stewards course, Barrows and one of his co-instructors, Tamara Hedges, the executive director of UC Riverside Palm Desert Center, conducted a baseline community resilience assessment.
The assessment tool – developed by the Community Resilience Assessment Organizations – examines 26 indicators of community resilience in four broad categories: basic needs, environment and natural systems, physical infrastructure and community connections and capacity. They will rank specific actions, for example, reducing food waste at restaurants. Like all Climate Stewards partners, the UC Riverside Palm Desert Center team will repeat the assessment every year to identify changes over time.
To launch UC Climate Stewards, UC ANR collaborated with existing partner organizations from the California Naturalist certification course. To expand the program, they are seeking new partners from a wide range of organizations that have training capacity and an interest in addressing climate change at the community level. Current UC Climate Stewards partners include:
- Community Environmental Council
- Riverside-Corona Resources Conservation District
- Point Reyes National Seashore Association
- Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History
The UC Climate Stewards course is currently being offered online throughout California, but will shift to a hybrid “online and in-person” delivery format when appropriate. For more information about the UC Climate Stewards, and to find a course near you, visit http://calnat.ucanr.edu/cs.
Forest management can help giant sequoias and coastal redwoods survive
In 2020, 9,000 fires scorched more than 4 million acres of California, a record-breaking year, reported Alejandra Borunda in National Geographic. Fires burned through homes and oak forests, grasslands and pines — and also through patches of giant sequoias and coast redwoods, respectively the most massive and the tallest trees on earth.
Giant sequoias are not the oldest living trees, but some have been growing in Sierra Nevada forests for more than 3,200 years. They are found in 68 groves on the Sierra's western flank. The state's redwood forests grow in a narrow strip along the coast of Northern California and Southern Oregon.
The 2020 fires burned through about 16,000 acres of sequoia groves, about a third of their total area. In redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains, 40,000 acres burned.
But because redwoods are well-adapted to fire, they'll likely recover pretty quickly, said Scott Stephens, a UC Berkeley fire scientist. “In some ways, this fire could make redwoods more dominant in the landscape," he said, because other trees — like the hardwoods or Douglas firs that crowded the local forests — died outright in the burns.
However, scientists are concerned one cause of the fires, climate change, could have additional impacts on these natural treasures.
Since the mid-1800s, temperatures in the western U.S. have increased by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Fog banks are fading in coast redwood territory, and snows are less consistent in the Sierras. The changes leave redwoods and sequoias without their preferred climate conditions.
The most responsible thing to do now, Stephens said, is to “take the opportunity that has been handed to us,” and make a plan to go back in and burn again—soon, within the next few years.
UC Cooperative Extension forestry advisor Lenya Quinn-Davidson agrees that California must manage fire to help the trees survive. Tree-ring records show that humans have influenced the fire regime for better and worse as long as they've been in these forests.
“The empowering message there is, human management can actually override the effects of climate in a fire contest,” Quinn-Davidson said. “It's not just a climate story. We can't just throw in the towel, feel overwhelmed, and tell ourselves these trees are done for. That's not true!”
Climate change is converting cities into 21st century ghost towns
In California, most ghost towns were created when a local industry collapsed. Now, climate change is more often to blame when booming communities whither and die, reported Daniel Cusick in E&E News.
In an eerie horror story released just before Halloween, Cusick wrote about five towns around the nation that have died or are dying from climate-related disasters. Historic Shasta and Helena, Calif., are featured in one of the vignettes.
"Those are two towns that are getting more ghostly," said Yana Valochovich, UC Cooperative Extension forestry advisor in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
A 19th-century mining town, Shasta City had been a preserved tourist destination in Shasta State Historic Park since 1937 when it was burned in the 2018 Carr Fire, the seventh most destructive wildfire in California history. Helena, a 170-year-old pioneer mining settlement, burned in the Helena Fire of 2017.
There almost certainly will be more "dead towns" as fires consume more of Northern California, Valochovic added.
North Coast forests are more dense and dry, fueling fires
Five of California's six largest fires have occurred in 2020, reported Julie Cart in CalMatters.
Quinn-Davidson is based in Humboldt County, with typically rainy, foggy redwood forests. However, she said, the forests don't resemble their former state.
"They are suffering from the same things that the rest of the state forests are. They are poorly managed and have fuels buildup," Quinn-Davidson said.
Redwood and pine forests are many times more dense than at any time in their history.
"We are now entering a new regime, the climate is changing and we are seeing drier conditions and we are seeing a longer fire season. We are not getting that fall precipitation," she said.
The state's 2018 Fourth Climate Assessment included dire predictions for the North Coast: “Future wildfire projections suggest a longer fire season, an increase in wildfire frequency, and an expansion of the area susceptible to fire.”
Average annual maximum temperatures in Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte, Lake, Trinity and Siskiyou Counties could increase by as much as 9 degrees through the end of the century, the report concluded.
The fog that reliably blankets the North Coast is dissipating. Research from UC Berkeley found that fog frequency has declined by a third compared with a century ago.
“Even here in Humboldt County — we are right on the ocean, basically in a rainforest — people are starting to look around and say, ‘Is my house ready for a wildfire?' I'm hearing those conversations,” Quinn-Davidson said.
