As liberal democracies fail to address environmental problems, what solution does the Chinese model offer? China Goes Green is a new book that peers under the hood of the authoritarian state's ambitions to pursue "ecological civilization." Chinese scholars Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro join me to discuss their cautious optimism and deconstruct this unique type of developmental environmentalism.

China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative

Polity: https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509543113

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1509543120

The Economist Interview: https://www.economist.com/china/2020/09/12/chinas-authoritarian-approach-wont-save-the-environment

China Dialogue: https://chinadialogue.net/en/cities/as-china-goes-green-should-the-world-celebrate-its-model/

Author emails [email protected] and [email protected]

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This episode delves into the intersections of climate change, community well-being, justice and restoration of our urban ecosystems. The focus is on urban heat and the challenge of heat islands. Treehugger is joined by Vivek Shandas who Professor of Climate Adaptation and Director of the Sustaining Urban Places Research Lab at Portland State University. Dr. Shandas' studies the effects of urban development patterns and processes on environmental health. By examining the assumptions about our built environment, Dr. Shandas supports communities in improving their adaptation from climate stressors, including extreme events such as urban heat, air quality, and storms. Vivek serves as Chair of the City of Portland's Urban Forestry Commission, and on several other local and national advisory boards.

Visit this episode details at the treehugger website https://www.treehuggerpod.com/episodes/urban-heat

treehugger mixtape on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7eToZ1T7SUzMYC4CktIEeF?si=uozZvq8tRIWu2Krq0788-g

Bloomburg Life and Death in Our Hot Future Will Be Shaped by Today’s Income Inequality By Eric Roston, Paul Murray and Rachael Dottle

Hoffman, J. S., Shandas, V., & Pendleton, N. (2020). The effects of historical housing policies on resident exposure to intra-urban heat: A study of 108 US urban areas. Climate, 8(1), 12.

New York Times. Earth is overheating. Millions are already feeling the pain. a series of photo essays documenting the outsize effect that extreme heat has on the poor and marginalized

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The Pileated woodpecker is one of the quintessential forest species where I live. Their red crest helps them stand out in a crowd and the  charismatic pecking at dead trees characterizes them as “ecosystem engineers.” They jumpstart a patchy mosaic of forest succession, facilitate biodiversity and are key to the recovery of some forest ecosystems. Listen in on this discussion in the suburbs of Seattle with Dr. John Marzluff.

Dr. Marzluff is a James W. Ridgeway Professor of Wildlife Science at the University of Washington. His graduate and post-doctoral research focused on the social behavior and ecology of jays and ravens. He makes corvids cool. He continues this theme through his current research that focuses on the interactions of ravens and wolves in Yellowstone. Dr. Marzluff has mentored over 40 graduate students and authored over 140 scientific papers on various aspects of bird behavior and wildlife management. A couple graduate and doctoral students such as Jorge Tomasevic and Tina Bluitt notably worked to investigate the object of our discussion – the Pileated woodpecker.

Professor Marzluff is uniquely situated to speak about our topic. He has written five books and edited several others. His Welcome to Subirdia (2014 Yale) discovers that moderately settled lands host a splendid array of biological diversity and suggests ways in which people can steward these riches to benefit birds and themselves.  His most recent In Search of Meadowlarks (2020 Yale) connects our agriculture and diets to the conservation of birds and other wildlife.

Below is the most recent paper that prompted me to reach out to Dr. Marzluff:

J Tomasevic & J Marzluff 2020. Roosting, reproduction, and survivorship of Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) in a suburban setting. Avian Conservation and Ecology 15 (1)

Find John on Twitter @subirdia

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Early in 2020, UC Santa Cruz Professor Karen Holl published “Primer of Ecological Restoration” through Island Press. Karen is a season veteran of ecological restoration with her boots (and her students embedded) on the ground in Latin American and Californian ecosystems. She has created an accessible book that explains foundational concepts with care while also highlighting more advanced topics for reflection.

Professor Holl has served as chair of the Environmental Studies Department at UCSC and is currently the faculty director of the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History.  Karen jokes that she has been in some form or another writing this book for 25 years and her repertoire of authored and contributed articles shows off her knowledge and experience in forest ecology in Latin America and chaparral, grassland and riparian systems in California. She oversees a long-term tropical forest restoration study in southern Costa Rica and has worked with students and collaborators in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Panama. Karen advises numerous land management and conservation organizations in California and internationally on ecological restoration. She further works to advance efforts to conserve tropical forest, in part by training students from Latin American countries.

Island Press webpage for the book Primer of Ecological Restoration https://islandpress.org/primer-ecological-restoration 20% discount code ‘PRIMER’ to be used at checkout

Holl Restoration Ecology Lab http://www.holl-lab.com/

Professor Karen Holl on Google Scholar

Tree planting is not a simple solution by Karen D. Holl and Pedro H. S. Brancalion | Science 08 May 2020: Vol. 368, Issue 6491, pp. 580-581

Science Podcast “Making antibodies to treat coronavirus, and why planting trees won’t save the planet” Karen’s piece starts about minute 14:00.

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It is no longer science fiction. The future is now people. Can we respond quicker to disturbances and mitigate climate change by planting tough places with drones? Matthew Aghai joins me from Droneseed to demystify this ever-adaptable technology. This company is scaling up to what Matthew refers to as “terraforming-level operations using biomimicry” - package seed up with resources to survive, load it into a swarm of aircraft and bombs away – plant forests.

Matthew Aghai is currently the Director of Research and Development at DroneSeed Co in Seattle. Previously his work as a consultant had sent him around the world to pursue reforestation including projects in the Central Midwestern US, intermountain US, the Pacific Northwest, the Hawaiian Islands, Australia, Europe, the Middle east and more. He has trained and practiced for over a decade as a nurseryman and restoration specialist. In addition to previous degrees in forestry and wildland management, he is a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington. Reforestation and native plant restoration have always been his mission.

Learn more about Droneseed https://www.droneseed.com/

Join #TeamTrees at https://teamtrees.org or check out video from Mark Rober - former NASA engineer, current YouTuber and friend of science https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nJBFjKqAY

University of Washington Botanic Gardens’ Ecological Restoration Symposium in Seattle, WA was postponed until June 16th. It will now be a remote meeting. The theme is Pollinators, Pests, and Prey: Considering the roles of and mitigating for the influence of invertebrates within regional ecological restoration efforts https://botanicgardens.uw.edu/education/adults/conferences-symposia/ecological-restoration-symposium

Save the Date for February 8-11, 2021. The Society for Ecological Restoration Northwest and Western Canada Chapters present a Joint Regional Conference on Adapting Restoration Practices to a Changing Climate in Eugene, Oregon. I am organizing field trips, so please reach out to me if you have ideas about nearby sites to visit. https://chapter.ser.org/northwest/conferences/2021-regional-conference

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On this episode I want to introduce you to Sean Rowe. He is a restorationist born and raised in Humboldt County, CA. Sean has a science communication-based business called Resonant Restoration that is currently doing the Resonant Restoration Podcast with his cohost, Kyle Sipes. The podcast focuses on topics related to the world of ecological restoration and includes interviews about specific projects occurring around the world.

Sean is a Botanist with SHN in northern California. His work includes ecological restoration, wetland delineations, rare plant surveys, monitoring, and stormwater compliance. He is a qualified SWPPP practitioner (QSP), qualified industrial stormwater practitioner (QISP), and certified erosion, sediment, and stormwater inspector (CESSWI). Sean has a bachelors in ecological restoration and a minor in botany from Humboldt State University and was born and raised in Humboldt County, California. He has been fortunate to work on great endeavors such as the Salt River Ecosystem Restoration Project, The Willits Bypass Mitigation Project, and on the Prosper Ridge Coastal Grassland Restoration effort.  

The Resonant Restoration podcast focuses on topics related to the world of ecological restoration and includes interviews about specific projects occurring around the world. The show is produced in order to encourage discussion and collaboration in the field of restoration ecology with both practitioners and the general public. Episodes to date include wallflower restoration, floating treatment islands, forest revegetation using open source unmanned aerial vehicles, and beaver dam analogues in northern California. The show includes background information on types of restoration endeavors, an interview segment, a segment on California phenology, and a plant of the week.

Resonant Restoration website resonantrestoration.com/

Resonant Restoration on Instagram instagram.com/resonantrestoration/

Resonant Restoration on Twitter twitter.com/restorationpod

Are you a garden lover? Check out my @spokengarden podcast and blog https://spokengarden.com/

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Forests can and do play an essential role in urban life in many places - 4 bil people live in cities world! Join my conversation with Sarah Low, Executive Director of the Tacoma Tree Foundation - an organization dedicated to community-powered urban greening in the South Puget Sound of Washington State. They provide a great template for community engagement around tree planting, tree care and integration of urban greening into the fabric of our lives. They are helping to shape our urban ecosystem.

Some say the Earth told us to go to our rooms and think about it for awhile back in the early days of 2020. Many many people were forced to do nothing in order to protect the old, the weak and the vulnerable when SARS2 spread around the world. It has been a human crisis that called for solidarity. This interview was recorded in the early parts of 2020, just as the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day was just getting started. Even though a whole Earth Year of activities were being planned, the coronavirus put a small dent in the "normal" schedule of events. 

Tacoma Tree Foundation website https://www.tacomatreefoundation.org/

Tacoma Tree Foundation on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tacomatrees

and on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tacomatreefoundation

How racism kept black Tacomans from buying houses for decades by Kate Martin in Tacoma News Tribune from 2018

Compare the historic redlining maps against the City’s urban forestry canopy data

City of Tacoma Urban Forest Management Plan https://www.tacomatreeplan.org/

Special Issue “The Science and Practice of Managing Forests in Cities” in the journal Cities and the Environment (CATE)

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Natural light from the sun is so vital to the health of every living thing. My guest on this episode is Dr. Travis Longcore. He is going to “illuminate” this topic of the ecology of light, especially focusing on impacts of artificial light at night. Light pollution doesn’t just affect our ecosystems. The loss of darkness is linked to increased energy consumption and a disrupted connection with the night sky. There are important consequences for human health too.

You can find out more about Travis by visiting his website travislongcore.net.

twitter: @travislongcore #lightpollution

And more about the Urban Wildlands Group at www.urbanwildlands.org.

Links to explore noted in the episode:

University of Utah in Salt Lake City developed a new undergraduate minor in dark sky studies in 2019 housed in the College of Architecture + Planning. 

Metro21: Smart Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon

Loss of the night Berlin, interdisciplinary research project about light pollution

International Dark-Sky Association

Draft strategy for the Restoration Decade is up and available to peruse and comment on. Available at www.decadeonrestoration.org/get-involved/strategy

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Finally, an episode about forests. And climate. My guest Dr. Sally Aitken delivers a nuanced discussion that embraces the complexity of how climate has and will continue to drive change in our beloved long-lived tree species and plant communities.

Sally Aitken is currently a Professor and Associate Dean, Research and Innovation, in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia. In 2001, Aitken helped start the Centre for Forest Conservation Genetics at UBC. Broadly, she studies the population, conservation, and ecology of forests. More specifically she is deeply involved in large-scale multi-institutional, applied genomics project that use population genomics, common garden experiments and climate-mapping technologies to help guide reforestation decisions for new climates.

As restorationists we make decisions about which plant seeds and other propagules to introduce to the land, or in some cases, the sea to assist the natural processes for ecosystem recovery. This episode is a a primer on the response adaptation strategies that exist that allow ecosystems to adapt to the changing climates they are bound to experience. 

Resources to explore that we mentioned

Center for Forest Conservation Genetics and CoAdapTree Project: Healthy trees for future climates

British Columbia Provincial webpage on “Climate-Based Seed Transfer,” this is replete with updates as late as 2019, video presentations and fact sheets on their science-based policy 

United States Forest Service Seedlot Selection Tool in the Climate Change Resource Center. Initial conceptualization and development was done by Glenn Howe, Brad St. Clair and Ron Beloin.

The Walrus from December 2015 "Run, Forest, Run: Helping trees flee climate change"

Scientific American from August 2015 "How to Move a Forest of Genes"

Twitter/ @SallyNAitken

Thanks for listening. See you in the woods.

Restoration ecologists may be the optimists of biology. We are often hopeful and confident about the future and our work. Brianne Palmer is back to discuss hope and doubt, environmental change, community, environmental heroes and gratitude. This conversation was jumpstarted by Brianne's 2019 Opinion Article called Restoration Ecology: The Study of Applied Optimism found in the journal Restoration Ecology.

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