Written by: Nan Renner & Maren Hale
On March 14th and 15th, the SoCal Extreme Heat Research Hub participated in an education design summit led by Climate Champions and the San Diego Science Project (SDSP). The summit, which represents the hub’s first major education activity, was led by education team members Alec Barron of SDSP and Jessica Bean, leader of UC Berkeley’s Understanding Global Change (UGC) project. Also participating were SoCal Heat Hub education team members Nan Renner of Birch Aquarium and CREATE, Cheryl Peach who directs Scripps Educational Alliances, and project manager Maren Hale. Forty-five leaders and educators from five school districts, the San Diego County Office of Education, and environmental education organizations learned how to model relationships across Earth’s geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere using the UGC framework, and participated in brainstorming how these strategies can be incorporated in their classrooms.
To illustrate the use of UGC in modeling and understanding Earth systems, we used the anchoring phenomenon of land surface temperature and its relationship to vegetation in familiar areas of San Diego, such as Balboa Park. This anchoring phenomenon was inspired by the work of Hub researchers, particularly Dr. Morgan Levy, who contributed land surface temperature and vegetation maps for the educators. In small groups, they examined visual data and asked: What do we notice? What do we wonder? They tapped their collective knowledge and worked together to deepen their understanding of solar radiation, vegetation, and urban heat islands while simultaneously learning how to use UGC to make their thinking visible.
Climate Champions Design Summit participants compared three visualizations of satellite data showing surface features, land surface temperature, and normalized difference vegetation index.
Educators at the Climate Champions Design Summit also helped to answer an essential question: Where can science from the SoCal Heat Hub best integrate into K12 science? Over the next two years, we will collaborate with K12 partners to co-develop curriculum resources that are equity-centered, phenomena-focused, data-rich, and NGSS-aligned. We aim to connect science-based understanding of extreme heat and how vegetation cools local environments with action opportunities, such as planting trees, growing edible gardens, and nurturing native plant communities.
In a warming world, extreme heat has tremendous relevance to everyone, including K12 students and their teachers. Many school yards, with abundant hardscape and scant vegetation, present immediate opportunities to investigate heat-related phenomena and how to improve microclimates. K12 students and teachers will also learn that, within a global context, working with plants can help us both mitigate and adapt to climate change, with many potential benefits for healthier people and ecosystems.
The SoCal Heat Hub and SDSP would like to thank all of the educators who attended the Design Summit. For educators who are interested in diving even deeper into Heat Hub science, and other science being done at UCSD, SDSP will be launching its Teacher-Researcher Collaborative this August, with the first talk by Dr. Morgan Levy. You can RSVP for that event here or check out all of SDSP’s events on their events tab. Updates on future lab activities can be found on the Hub’s blog. If you’d like to stay in the loop, sign up for our newsletter here.
In the garden at World Beat Cultural Center in Balboa Park, educators connected natural climate solutions involving plants with other benefits related to growing food, biodiversity, and social-emotional well-being.
Header image caption: University, K12, and community partners practice modeling climate phenomena and Earth systems using Understanding Global Change.