News and Events

Tribal self-determination is pivotal to achieving climate justice. Climate change coupled with inadequate infrastructure have disproportionately impacted people from underserved communities, as is the case for the Akiak Native Community (ANC). Due to the increasing frequency of microbial water contamination exacerbated by temperature rise and fluctuating precipitation patterns, this community experiences water insecurity. Previous research illustrates that water samples collected from the Kuskokwim River (KR), which is used for subsistence, had excessively high mercury levels compared to the regional baseline levels, but no data has been gathered for microbial contaminants. Regarding drinking water, informal interviews conducted by our research team, with community members, indicate that their use of a rainwater cistern is well received by many households, but they are still concerned about the quality of tap and river water. The main goals of this work are to meet the ANC’s water security priorities by establishing baseline levels of E.coli and Total Coliforms (TC) and improving their governing body’s understanding about the community’s drinking water quality perceptions while promoting self-determination. We will address these goals with the following aims:

Aim 1: Empower ANC’s Natural Resource Department and their existing community advisory board by supporting their right to self-determination and tribal sovereignty. 

Aim 2: Administer a survey across households to examine the perceptions of safe drinking water access and quality in regard to rainwater collection approaches versus tap water from drinking water infrastructure.  

Aim 3: Implement a pilot study of microbial contamination of drinking and surface water along the KR using microbial field sampling technologies.

We will conduct community meetings, surveys, and field experiments. We implement Indigenous research methodology and Community-Based Participatory Research approaches to underscore the self-determination of the ANC, offering insights into Indigenous research methods and inspiring future research design in the field.

Research Team:
Principal Investigator: Clarita Lefthand-Begay, UW Seattle, The Information School
Community Lead: Akiak Native Community
Student: UW student, UW Seattle, The Information School
Collaborators: Timothy Ford, Chair, Professor, Associate Director – CPRT
Dian Million, UW Seattle College of Arts & Sciences, American Indian Studies

Pacific salmon are a vital part of Indigenous cultures and a keystone ecological species throughout the Pacific Northwest. In Washington, Tsuladxw [salmon] are the most important cultural and sacred food of the Sahkuméhu [Sauk-Suiattle people], who consider them their relatives under the water. The Skagit River, in the ancestral lands of the Sahkuméhu, provides habitat for all five species of Pacific salmon, including two ESA listed species and is a critical food source for Southern Resident orcas.

The Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe co-manages the Skagit River salmon with the state. Currently Sauk-Suiattle fisheries managers depend on state-led helicopter surveys of salmon spawning grounds to estimate population sizes and set harvest guidelines. Climate change has a two-fold effect on the efforts to estimate the Skagit River salmon population. First, changing climate is decreasing salmon survival in rivers and at sea, increasing the need for responsive and data-based management. Second, warming conditions are changing snowmelt patterns that alter river flow regimes in ways that make helicopter surveys less feasible. In recent years, helicopter surveys have not been possible due to water conditions on survey days. To address these issues, the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe has initiated a program to begin their own drone-based aerial salmon survey, currently these surveys rely on human counting of nests from drone video, which is time-consuming and difficult work. We plan to assist this Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe-led effort to develop a robust drone- and computer vision-based automated salmon counting tool.

Our product will be more accurate, safe, cost-effective and flexible than the current state-led helicopter-based survey and give the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe data autonomy as they co-manage their salmonresource. We are committed to an open-sourced approach so that our tool can be used by other Tribes, state managers and conservation groups and we have specific plans to share our methods with these groups throughout the Pacific northwest.

Research Team:
Principal Investigator: Andrew Berdahl, UW Seattle, College of the Environment, Aquatic & Fishery Science
Community Lead: Grant Kirby, Fish Program Manager, Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe
Student: Benjamin Koger, UW Seattle, College of the Environment, Aquatic & Fishery Science
Collaborators: Karen Leung, UW Seattle, Aeronautics & Astronautics

Rural communities are often overlooked in climate change mitigation and adaptation, with urban areas and economic hubs prioritized for resource allocation and planning. Resultantly, the burden of climate change impacts disproportionately falls on communities already at higher risk due to socioeconomic factors and remote geography. The north shore of Willapa Bay in Pacific County, Washington, is one such rural community suffering rapid erosion of their shoreline, intensified storm seasons, and rising sea levels. Unwilling to accept a future of unimpeded loss—of homes, culturally important lands for the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe, natural habitat, and critical infrastructure—in 2015, community members established the Willapa Erosion Control Action Now (WECAN) forum to coordinate local approaches to nature-based adaptive management. Through a partnership between University of Washington climate change researchers and WECAN leaders, we will create sustainable mechanisms for community-driven photographic beach monitoring and local knowledge to inform mitigation and adaptation approaches in this vulnerable community.

“Coastlines – Camera – Action” combines social science and coastal engineering with community art and photography. Partnering with activist group WashAway No More, we will recruit community members to engage in focus groups that use existing community-submitted photographs from the North Cove beach “Art Walk” photo stations to spur discussion about the impacts of beach erosion and the equitability of mitigation actions, and to solicit research questions. Assisted by the local drainage district Commissioner, we will modify the “Art Walk” photo stations and implement CoastSnap, an internationally used, semi-automated image assessment tool to answer the community-identified scientific questions about how the beach is changing and how mitigation efforts impact beach stability. Results will be synthesized in a report and presentation to WECAN and presented as an interactive display in the community center, with the goal to provide tools and information helpful for securing funding for future community-led adaptive management projects and monitoring stations.

Research Team:
Principal Investigator: Roxanne Carini, UW Seattle, Applied Physics Lab (APL)
Community Lead: David Cottrell, Pacific County Drainage District #1 Commissioner & WECAN member
Student: Ashley Moore, UW Seattle, School of Public Health, Occupational & Environmental Medicine
Collaborators: Nicole Errett, UW Seattle School of Public Health, Occupational & Environmental Medicine

In 2021 a massive flood on the Nooksack River left a trail of destruction in its wake. Floods are the most expensive natural hazard in Washington State, a risk that is exacerbated by climate change. Current flood response, recovery, and planning systems are not neutral, favoring some interests over others. This paradigm in turn shapes norms for planning, design, and engineering responses, which can perpetuate interrelated social and ecological challenges. For instance, flooding is typically managed as separate from other intersecting community needs such as safe and affordable housing, economic and emotional well-being, Tribal Treaty Rights, viable agriculture, salmon recovery, and ecosystem health. The goal of this project is to engage a transdisciplinary team of research scientists – focused on these complex floodplain issues – in a way that augments established local collaborations, knowledge, and expertise.

The proposed work will focus on the lower Nooksack floodplain, supporting an existing value planning process convened by the Floodplain Integrated Planning (FLIP) team and its associated Steering Committee (FLIPSC) in Whatcom County. Participants in this proposal have a shared interest in developing actionable solutions by re-imagining and exploring the intersection between: (1) current flood response, recovery and planning systems, and (2) community values, identity, and needs.

The Academic Team brings expertise in indigenous studies, anthropology, planning and design, engineering, psychology, environmental ethics, and other fields, while also bringing experience from beyond the Pacific Northwest. By adding this diverse team of academic researchers as participants in the value planning process, the proposed work intends to elevate and expand the realm of potential solutions, engage additional skilled and previously untapped capacity, reflect back with specific insights including new terms or conceptual framings, and identify additional research that could help support community-identified priorities.

In this way, the proposed work will synthesize research to both inform the value planning process and advance community values and priorities emerging from the discussions. Co-developed priorities for future research will also be identified. Finally, we will learn and share lessons on how to use a transdisciplinary approach to understand and address the multi-dimensional nature of floodplain management.

Research Team:
Principal Investigator: Guillaume Mauger, UW Seattle, College of the Environment, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Co-Principal Investigator: Sara Jo Breslow, UW Seattle, College of the Environment, Environmental & Forest Sciences
Community Lead: Deborah Johnson, River & Flood Engineer, Whatcom County
Student: UW Student, UW Seattle, College of Built Environments, Landscape Architecture
Collaborators: Carol MacIlroy, Independent Consultant focusing on Integrated Floodplain Management
Kas Guillozet, Bonneville Environmental Foundation
Bethany Gordon, UW Seattle College of Engineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Celina Guzmán, UW Seattle College of Built Environments, Landscape Architecture
Shana Hirsch, UW Seattle College of Engineering, Human Centered Design & Engineering
Michelle Montgomery, UW Tacoma School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, Ethnic, Gender, and Labor Studies
Sameer Shah, UW Seattle College of the Environment, Environmental & Forest Sciences
Dylan Stevenson, UW Seattle College of Built Environments, Urban Design & Planning
Carlie Stowe, UW Seattle College of the Environment, Environmental & Forest Sciences

Rural communities in north-central Washington are impacted by several of the most severe climate impacts, including wildfires, smoke exposure, and extreme heat. During the summer of 2021, this region was inundated with smoke while also dealing with record-high temperatures. Despite this, there is minimal engagement with at-risk populations regarding how to mitigate the health effects of these climate impacts. This proposal focuses on addressing communication around the health impacts of smoke exposure, and defines at-risk populations both as those vulnerable to the health impacts of smoke from both wild and prescribed fires, and those who do not have the adaptive capacity to avoid increased risk. For these populations, messaging around smoke exposure either does not exist or is limited, is not culturally or linguistically responsive, and is not communicated through accessible and appropriate channels. Through this proposal we will bring together community leaders and stakeholders in north-central Washington to form a Community and Climate Impact Hub for collaboration. This Hub will be co-run and organized with our community partners, Wenatchee CAFE, with the intention of developing a cohesive and consistent group that will outlast this funding cycle. Community leaders will collaborate to co-develop a toolkit for strengthening community engagement and improving access to and content of heat-related climate impact messaging in Chelan, Okanogan, Grant and Douglas counties.

Research Team:
Principal Investigator: June Spector, UW Seattle School of Public Health
Community Lead: Laura Rivera, Environmental Justice Coordinator, Wenatchee CAFE
Post-doc: Savannah D’Evelyn, UW Seattle, School of Public Health, Occupational & Environmental Medicine
Collaborators: Maria Blancas, UW Seattle School of Public Health
Stephanie Farquhar, UW Seattle School of Public Health
Alma Chacon, Wenatchee CAFE

As the country comes to a reckoning on education and the environment, we are forced to interrogate the historic events that have led to such crises and how we can support inclusive solutions. Covid-19 has offered us an unprecedented glimpse into the challenges students face in the K-12 education system. It has also profoundly impacted socio-economically disadvantaged communities through the exposure of crippled or missing infrastructure. These same communities have been deliberately disconnected from building relationships with the natural world. In the face of complex problems like climate change, which will disproportionately impact these communities, we must act urgently to support the students who have historically been excluded from environmental science education. Our project starts with reconnecting community to environment, followed by engaging learners dynamically through the co-production of place-based knowledge.

Although disadvantaged communities are highly engaged in climate change mitigation, this is often limited to anecdotes about water quality during trash pick-ups or community beautification projects led by outside non-profit volunteers, rather than building knowledge and strength within the community. Rarely do students have the opportunity to access their local environment through a non-problem solving lens and participate as equal partners. We want to change who is leading the learning as well as how the learning is done. Partnering with Sea Potential and Black in Marine Science, our team of scientists and digital arts experts will co-produce an arts based learning approach to increase environmental literacy in the communities most regularly overlooked. We will empower students to engage with the intertidal ecosystem, a defining feature of all coastlines and an accessible and dynamic place to learn about ocean science, organismal resilience, and community composition.

Student projects will demonstrate how they understand the intertidal ecosystem, their connection to it, and its relationship to their home neighborhoods. Each of the projects will be presented to their academic and familial communities as well as used to create a teaching toolkit for local and national educators to replicate our art- and science- integrated student centered learning model for intertidal ecology.

Research Team:
Principal Investigator: Steven Roberts, UW Seattle, College of the Environment, Aquatic & Fishery Science
Community Lead: Tiara Moore, CEO, Black in Marine Science
Student: Chris Mantegna, UW Seattle, College of the Environment, Aquatic & Fishery Science
Collaborators: Tivon Rice, UW Seattle College of Arts & Sciences, Digital Arts & Experimental Media
Symone Barkley, Black in Marine Science
Rosalind Echols, UW Seattle College of the Environment, Aquatic & Fishery Science
Savannah Smith, Sea Potential
Ebony Welborn, Sea Potential
Ángel Quimbita, Sea Potential