Webinar: Teen Earth Optimism – Exploring Climate Change and Land Use
Aired August 18, 2020
Meaghan Cuddy:
Hello. Thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to Teen Tuesday at the Natural History Museum. My name is Meaghan Cuddy and I am one of the educators at the museum. Thank you so much for joining us for Teen Tuesday Earth Optimism. While everyone joins us, we'll go over a couple of the logistics about today's program. Today's program will be about 45 minutes long, and we're going to be chatting with educators from the D.C. local organization, Casey Trees, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and a teen, Amen, from our Natural History Museum Teen Internship Program, about climate change, trees, urban forestry, and environmental justice.
I think we're going to have a really great program today, and thank you so much for joining us. We do also have live captions available for today's program. You can click on the caption button on the bottom of your screen if you'd like to turn those on. While everyone is joining, you can use the Q and A button that's located on the bottom of your screen to let us know where you're joining us from. I'm joining you from my home in Washington, D.C., and we'd love to know where you're joining us from too.
Feel free to type into the Q and A box with where you're joining us from today. We'd love to say hi to you. That is the button on the bottom of your screen that has two speech bubbles. All right, so we have Dina from Maryland, we have William from Lykens, Pennsylvania, Ellen from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Isabel is joining us from Washington, D.C., as well. Hi, Isabel. Leslie from Medford, Massachusetts. We have a bunch of people from the D.C. area, Samantha, Aurora. Savannah from South Bend, Indiana, hello. Rick from Richmond, Virginia.
It's great to see all of you. Thank you so much for joining us today. All right. You can keep typing in and letting us know where you're joining us from, but throughout today's program, we do invite you to participate in our conversation. You can write into this Q and A box that you're writing into right now with any questions or comments that you have for our guests when we will be doing a Q and A section at the end of the program, so make sure you stick around until then if you'd like to get your question answered.
But do keep in mind that the Q and A box is being monitored by our Smithsonian staff, so please keep all of your comments and questions on topic today. All right. We have a bunch more people joining us. Jayna from Austin, Texas. I used to live there, Jayna. Advi from New Jersey. I also used to live in New Jersey. Welcome. We have June So-Lee from Rockville, Maryland, Leila from D.C., another person from D.C., some people from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Welcome to all of you.
All right, it looks like everyone is here. We are going to get started. Like I said, this is our Teen Tuesday Earth Optimism Program. Thank you so much for joining us. This summer, we are talking to science experts, community leaders, and engaged teens in our D.C. community about topics that affect all of us and we're talking about how science and action can come together to make positive change on our planet possible.
These conversations have been really wonderful all summer, and we hope that they can leave you with some inspiration for how you can get involved in your own communities wherever you might live, so thank you for joining us today. All right, I think we're just about ready to get started. I'm really excited to introduce our guests for today. First, we have Melinda Peters and Kelsey Desmond who are joining us from Casey Trees. So Melinda, Kelsey, hi, how are you guys?
Kelsey Desmond:
Hi. Doing well. Glad to be here.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Hi, Kelsey.
Melinda Peters:
Hi, everybody. Nice to be here.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Hi, Melinda. Thank you guys so much for joining us. I'm really excited to have you guys on our call today. All right. We also have Dr. Kim Komatsu, who is joining us from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. So Kim, welcome.
Kim Komatsu:
Hey, nice to be here. Thanks.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Hi, Kim, and last but not least, we have Amen who is joining us from the Smithsonian's YES! Teen Internship Program. So Amen, hi, how are you?
Amen:
Hello. I'm doing good. Thank you for having me.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Thanks for being here. It's so great to have you guys all on, and I'm so excited to have this conversation with you today. Before we get started, to kick things off, I'd like to actually throw a question to our audience who is watching today. A poll is going to come up on your screen and because today, we're going to be talking about green spaces and urban forestry and land use, we'd like to know what kinds of green spaces are close to where you live? You can select which spaces are close to you. A yard, a park, forest, grasslands, wetlands, or if you live in a place where you don't really have a lot of green space, we'd love to know what access you have where you live.
We're getting a lot of responses. The most common one we're seeing is actually a park, which is cool. There's lots of parks right by where I live, even though I live in a city, and it's good to see that a lot of people joining us today do have access to green spaces. We have people with yards, we have people who live close to farmlands and grasslands. It's really interesting to bring all of your perspectives, and I'm really glad to hear that we have all of this different diversity in our audience today.
All right, so we are going to kick off our talk about land use change. It's a really big broad topic impacting plant communities, human communities, natural communities. I'd like to start off with talking to all of you about how this idea of land use change interacts with your work. So Kim, I'd like to start with you. You're an ecologist and a lot of your work looks at global change drivers. Can you actually tell us what global change drivers are and how you've seen them impact the communities that you work in?
Kim Komatsu:
Yeah, definitely. Again, thanks so much for having me here today. Global change drivers are impacts that humans are having on the environment, and they tend to be very large-scale in nature. They're things that affect the entire planet or large regions of the planet. Some commonly discussed global change drivers are things like climate change or nutrient pollution, so maybe pollution from cars or runoff from agricultural fields. These changes are affecting people all around the world. An example of this is I'm studying climate change and the impact of climate change on soybeans in agricultural fields.
Soybean in the United States is mostly fed by rainwater. We don't irrigate our soybean fields. My lab is studying beneficial bacteria that can partner with the soybeans and potentially help soybean plants withstand drought, even though we don't water them, but as you mentioned at the beginning of the program, another really major global change driver is land use change.
This is when we're converting natural land into some sort of human use. This might be urban centers or suburbs where a lot of the people are calling in from today, or it could be things like agricultural fields, and it really often results in habitat destruction for things like plants and animals, and land use change is thought to be the number one threat to biodiversity for things like mammals and amphibians. It's a really big deal and we really need to think about ways that we could manage the land.
This picture that you're seeing is an example from D.C. on the left, versus more rural Maryland on the right, and you could see that there's a big difference in the way we're using the land. There's a big difference in tree cover, and we can think about how we could distribute the patches of natural habitat within these landscapes in a way that allow animals or plants to move between the existing natural land, the existing patches, so thinking about reforesting urban areas is one really good way to start to think about doing that.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Okay, that makes a ton of sense. Thanks, Kim, for introducing that concept to us. I'm curious, Melinda, how this relates to your work at Casey Trees. I know that your mission is to enhance, restore, and protect our D.C. tree canopy. How is that related to some of the issues that Kim just described to us?
Melinda Peters:
Yeah, great. Thanks Kim for that nice intro. We're lucky. We're a very hyper-local organization devoted to restoring the tree canopy. This came about with an article that was in the Washington Post in 1999 describing the loss of the tree coverage in the city in an urban area. Why do you think that is? Likely due to a lot of urban development and just not replanting trees and a concerned citizen, Mrs. Betty Brown Casey, decided to give some money so that a non-profit could get started in helping to restore the canopy.
It's been great over the years since the early 2000s where we've worked with city planners and we've been part of the conversation with policy and really redeveloping some of that and making change to increase the tree canopy. We're part of D.C.'s sustainability goal to reach a 40 percent tree canopy by the year of 2032. Sorry, we can't do another poll like where are we now? We're at 38 percent and that means we really need to reach ... It's like the size of the Mall where the Washington monuments and everything are located.
We need to plant that much more space and it's doable and we're on a really good path, and it's exciting to see change in the city with still so much more urban development. It's nice to see that all of you are living near parks because D.C. has a lot of it. We were actually coined the "City of Trees" in the early 1900s because of the tree canopy in the city. We're excited to be part of restoring that and making sure that it continues.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Very cool. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the reasons that we lost some of our canopy here in D.C.?
Melinda Peters:
With what Kim was saying, showing the two maps when you're in an urban place, people are developing more land, parking lots and buildings and just spaces that are being reused or repurposed or parks that were not maintained well. If trees have to come down and then there wasn't a chance to replant and restore that green space, then there was a loss. Part of our goal is to work with community groups ... I think Kelsey's going to talk a little bit more about that ... Community groups and schools and private citizens to make sure that we get more trees in the ground.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Very cool. I know your work is so amazing and I always love participating in tree plantings with you because it's so fun to get to really be a part of greening our space and greening our urban area. Thank you so much, Melinda. Amen, I'd like to bring you into the conversation now as well and get a little bit about your perspective. I know you grew up in Northern Virginia, so can you tell us a little bit about how access to green space has impacted your life or impacted your school? I know you're really involved in the environmental club at your local high school.
Amen:
Yeah, I actually helped co-found the environmental club in my school, and in doing so, we go out and make sure that the area in our community is clean. We do monthly cleanups of the surrounding parks and whatnot, and part of the environmental club is actually maintaining the green space that is already inside of our school. A lot of these green spaces were forgotten and left to maintain itself, which really just left a lot of pollution and unwanted stuff living inside of it.
We helped clean it up and maintain it. We do talks with the children in the area talking about the pollution in the area, also, what we could do to come as a community and maintain the green spaces. By doing so, we created this community that not only cares about the green spaces, but is willing to create discussions and improve on it as time goes on.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. Do you find that having access to green spaces or working on enhancing these green spaces enhances your life in any way or do you notice any changes in your community once you have restored some of these green spaces?
Amen:
Of course. Yeah. By doing these community events, we not only come together as a community, which is already amazing, but by keeping the community clean and working seamlessly, we create this fluidity in the community that creates a conversation, and not only does it make everyone happier that they're living in a cleaner area, but also, allows them to do more in the area by keeping it pristine and well kept.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. You brought up this really amazing point, which is that communities are really involved in these issues and our human communities are really closely tied to our natural communities. I'd like to move our conversation on to this role that community and natural environments have of coming together. Kelsey, I'd love for you to talk to us a little bit about how community intersects with the sustainability work that you guys do at Casey Trees. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Kelsey Desmond:
Right, sure. So as Melinda mentioned, we're very locally based, so our mission is related to the District of Columbia. We work in the city limits and I've had both the opportunity to work with our volunteer corps, which is about 2,500 volunteers and youth programs, so I get to go out and do educational programs with youth throughout the city. Here's some fabulous photos of our different community events. When I think about our sustainable goals as a city, we're not just planting trees in a boundless void. We are planting trees in community.
I think of this term, the community forest, which is not just trees and the wildlife that live there, but also the humans that get to engage with the urban forest or even woodlands in rural areas. I get to work with community groups to plant these trees, but it's also so important to maintain our urban forest and make sure that trees grow healthy so that they can provide these benefits over many years. I was thinking earlier about Melinda talking about how we had canopy loss over many years.
I think historically, that has to do with disinvestment in urban areas and perhaps, as money flows out of cities, it seems like not a great investment to be planting trees, but we know now that trees not only provide support for things like storm water and erosion control, but they also make people feel happier. They calm traffic, they bring in birds and different wildlife.
I think for a long time, as people developed urban areas or planned green spaces, they thought just about how we can manipulate our green spaces, but now, we're starting to see that we have to involve humans in that equation as well. If humans are involved and invested in their green spaces, that they take care of them, that is beneficial not just for the Anthropocene and humans, but also to different species.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. There's all of these tangential benefits to this that Kim touched on a little bit already. Things like climate change and biodiversity, but also, our mental health is really impacted by access to green spaces and our physical health is really impacted by access to green spaces. Thanks so much, Kelsey. I'd like to jump to Amen and talk a little bit about the environmental action you've been involved in because you've been such a leader in your community. Why do you think that people of your age should get involved in environmental issues or sustainability practices? Why do you think that's important?
Amen:
Well, I personally believe it's important, especially for people of my age, to be active in keeping the environment clean because it's going to be my generation that feels the first waves of what global warming has to come onto us. By making sure that we have these discussions, we're making sure that it doesn't get worse than it already is.
By also having this discussion with people that are younger than us, people in our elementary and middle schools, making sure that they're aware of what's going on, they're keeping their local water streams clean, they're making sure that the pollution that goes in and around their communities doesn't get out of hand, and by doing so, not only does it make you aware of what's going on, it also helps you react to it. I believe that that's one of the most important things you could do in this ever changing climate that we're all living in.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. Providing that education and that foundation for the upcoming generations is such an important part of this. I'm curious, have you had any perspective changes or have you learned anything since you've gotten involved in the environmental club at your school or through the YES! program at the Smithsonian?
Amen:
Yeah, actually, I started to become aware more about invasive species in my area. In my area, we have a little bit more woods than what would be considered woods in D.C. By having an open eye out for all the different invasive species and having discussions about what we could do to make sure that they don't spread, is an amazing discussion that I've had with the environmental club. It really just showed me because almost 70 percent of the plants in our area was actually not even native. By having these discussions, it opened my eye out to something that I thought wasn't even happening in my extremely local, even school, area.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, I think it's so interesting how the more you learn about these issues, the more it opens your eyes to all of the other things going on and provides all of these different avenues for you to get involved, which is really, really cool. You and Kelsey and Melinda have all talked about action at the local level. Kelsey and Melinda working here in D.C., you working in your school community. I'd like to zoom out a little bit and Kim, I think you can provide that zoom out for us since you work on a larger scale in larger types of communities. As someone who looks at these issues through a scientific research lens, what's your perspective on this?
Kim Komatsu:
Yeah, I think it's really great to hear the perspectives of Amen and Casey and Melinda all about being really active and hands on in environmental stewardship on the ground, so things like planting trees or cleaning up waterways or removing invasive species we know make a big difference locally, but when we start to think bigger scales, globally or regionally, it's a little less clear what the best course of action might be, so you need science to help guide things like governmental policies or other conservation actions that people are doing to make sure we're doing the right thing as a society as a whole.
I want to say that anyone can get involved in this kind of science. You just need this desire to learn about the world around you. You don't have to have some sort of fancy degree or some certain level of education. You could start doing this type of work right now. There's lots of organizations that work with citizen scientists, so the Smithsonian is one of them. You can come out and help us do the research that we're doing and we can all really work together by doing science together to try and figure out what these best solutions are at these broader scales to environmental threats that we're facing.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. I think that's such a key point is that anyone can be a scientist and anyone can observe the world and make these positive changes at whatever scale that they're at. How are you working with local communities or community members in the research that you do for us at the Smithsonian?
Kim Komatsu:
Yeah, that's a great question. Oftentimes, people think about scientists as just these people out there in the world who are learning something and then we go and tell people what to do, and that's not what we want to be doing, specifically at the Smithsonian, but also, science in general should be more of a community effort. In my lab, what we're doing is we're starting to get involved with people who really have a stake in the consequences of global change on their land or in their livelihoods. We're engaging them from the very beginning of the scientific process.
In science, the first step is to ask a question and what we're doing is we're partnering with stakeholders on the ground to help us identify what the questions are that they need answers to so they can make sustainable choices on their own land. An example of this, and you can see it in this picture here, is that we're working with people in rangelands in the Midwest where we're partnering with them to help provide them the information that they need to develop drought management plans for multi-year droughts.
This will help them to come up with a solution to protect their land and their soils during the increasing number of droughts we expect we're going to see in the future and in our country, we know that 60 percent of the land is privately owned, and so, we really need to work with these private landowners if we want to make an impact on how they're protecting the land and encouraging the stewardship of the land in these regions.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is such cool research. It's really amazing how you are bringing together the science perspective and the expertise of the people who live in those communities to answer these really important questions that are going to become more and more important as time goes on. I think it's really interesting to see how your work really dovetails with the work that people like Casey and Melinda are doing at Casey Trees where you're bringing together these community partners and scientists to really make positive changes in your communities.
I would like to open it up to our audience and actually ask them a question and see how their citizen science skills are. Kim talked to us a little bit about how anyone can really be a scientist in their community and Kelsey and Melinda talked to us about how trees are so important in all of our communities. A poll is going to pop up on your screen and we'd like to know, do you know how many species of trees live in your area, in your local, in your park?
You can let us know if you don't know at all. I don't actually know exactly what lives in my area, but we're curious to see how much you guys might know about what is living around you. We're getting some really interesting results everyone. A lot of people are saying four or more species live in their area, which I think is great. Would you say that that's good, Kim?
Kim Komatsu:
Yeah, that's great. I'm sure there's many more than four in some places, so that's fantastic.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. Like you guys all talked about having all this rich biodiversity of trees and plants is only going to enhance our green spaces and the animals and the people that live there, so it's really great to hear that our viewers are having a lot of biodiversity around them as well. Thank you guys all for participating in our poll and thank you to Kim and Melinda and Kelsey and Amen. This has been such a great conversation so far.
I'd like to move on to one more topic before we open it up to audience Q and A. We've talked a little bit about how these green spaces are so important and why they're important and also how we're changing green spaces. I'd like to talk a little bit about how our viewers might be able to get involved in this. Amen, do you have any advice for people who are watching who might want to get more involved in this type of work?
Amen:
Yeah, actually, it's quite simple nowadays to create a very large and impactful community. It all has to be pretty much on the phone. Everyone is connected nowadays and it's so simple to keep in touch with people. By doing so, you could create a very impactful community to do really anything you want.
If you want to create green spaces, it all has to do with just networking, making sure that you know who you're talking to, what you want, and pretty much just putting yourself out there as the person that could enact change in the community. I know that's how I started. I texted my friends asking if they wanted to start an ecology club and I know many other people who have done the same really. I feel like that's the most simple and most effective way to do it nowadays.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. That network building is so important and it's so cool to see that you and your friends are doing that at the scale that you're doing that in your own community. Melinda, Kelsey, I know that network building is a really important part of what Casey Trees does. Do you guys have anything to add to what Amen just said?
Kelsey Desmond:
Yeah, and I guess building too off of what Kim said earlier is that you don't necessarily have to be a scientist to be involved with environmentalism. Y'all, I think, know this already about me, but I actually studied French in college. While I loved doing that and that was a really enriching experience for me, I then pivoted to local environmental action because I had other passions and interests that informed my entry into this work.
At Casey Trees, we have a few different ways that people engage with our programs. We have our tree planting program, which is well known in the area and obviously, when you think about trees, you're like, "Let's put them in the ground. More of those. We like those," but like I mentioned earlier, it's so important to care for the trees too, so stewardship to ensure that trees grow up.
We also have a great citizen advocacy program where folks can write public comments to our elected officials in the D.C. area and our citizen science program, and so, you don't have to have a degree, but we teach folks how to use the tools, inventory trees, and so, we know what's there. If you're just a really engaged and excited person, you can grab some friends and say like, "Let's do something about what we see around us." I think knowledge is power and the more you know about the natural world, the more wonder it can inspire and the more you feel empowered to do something about it, because we're talking about-
Meaghan Cuddy:
There's absolutely, I think that-
Kelsey Desmond:
... huge topics. Yeah, go ahead.
Meaghan Cuddy:
I know. They're huge topics and I think it's so true that there really is a place for anyone who has any interest, any passion, anything that you're particularly good at. There is really a place for everyone in sustainability and in environmentalism. Melinda, what about you?
Melinda Peters:
Yeah, I grew up in a really small town surrounded by a lot of trees, so moving around and ending up in big cities, I'm always wanting to have green space in my life and focus on that. I've been lucky to land in different places and be able to now educate and reach out to community groups and help people feel safe and comfortable in green spaces, especially in an urban place, and learn about the benefits that it's not just providing shade, but as Kelsey mentioned, as we see more rainfall coming into urban places, how these trees can help maintain and sustain our green spaces better. Yeah.
Again, knowledge is power and just finding some way to do what you want and be passionate about something is a great thing. Unfortunately, right now, we're not doing as much with our community groups in person because of the current situation with COVID, but there are ways to still get involved. I think we're going to talk a little bit more about some action items in just a minute on what you can do or do you want me go [inaudible 00:28:13]-
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to hear from you guys. What are some things we can do?
Melinda Peters:
Well, one in particular is ... We are having some rain, but on those really hot days, our crew goes out all summer and is helping to make sure that the young trees stay alive by watering, and there's a great saying that, "It's 25 to stay alive," so there's 25 gallons a week that the young trees need to sustain themselves for the first five years in the ground. That's one easy thing if you have tree box around or any other kind of green space, gardens, you can get out and do a pretty simple action item right there.
Kelsey Desmond:
I think becoming more aware of [inaudible 00:29:00] that are around you, we all have access to ... It might not be forest or woodland, but I saw it in the poll too, some folks are surrounded by farmland or they live in a coastal area. It's not just like you're not allowed to be a part of this conversation because you don't have trees around you. You need to engage with what's there. One of the most meaningful experiences I've had has been learning about the different parts of nature. We see trees for sure, but I learned about something called the mycorrhizal network, which is a fungal network that connects the roots of trees and literally, nature is connected by this underground network of different funguses or if ...
I'm getting lots of turtles on my Facebook feed, which is just delightful. That sparks, again, the awe, the curiosity, because as you start to learn about different aspects of the natural world and how it intersects, that might pique your care and pique your interest and your passion so you can find ways to get involved and to make a difference by impacting a specific species or an area that you care about.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely, yeah. It's not just trees. Natural areas of all types need our support, and so, wherever you're located, you can definitely get involved in protecting whatever you have in your own backyard, and that's a great first step. Kim, do you have anything else to add? I know you probably have some great ideas as well.
Kim Komatsu:
Yeah, definitely. I think Kelsey's totally right that these are really big questions that we're trying to address and it can feel overwhelming sometimes, even for me as a scientist, but I mentioned earlier that I think anyone can get involved in science, even right now, even when you have to stay socially distanced from other people and you can't go and help volunteer, doing things like planting trees in person.
There's lots of apps that exist, things like iNaturalist or eBird where you just download an app on your phone and you can go out into the world on a hike or in your backyard and take photos of the species that you're seeing, and these apps will help you to identify what the species are so you can learn something about what's around you, but they also record what the sighting is and where you are located in a big global database.
Scientists actually use this information to try and figure out what the global distributions are of species around the world and how they might be impacted year-to-year by things like weather or across longer time scales to try and figure out where these species could be moving with climate change. You can go out right now and do the science in your own hands, in your own backyard to learn something for yourself. There're versions for plants, birds, mammals. I think there might be one for amphibians that's in the works. Anything you're interested in, you can get on board these programs and they're really easy to use. I personally think it's fun to learn about all the species around me.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, that is such a cool way to learn more about your own environment, which is already such an important part of this, but also contribute to these really cool research efforts and a great way to socially distantly engage with your environment. I think that's a great idea, Kim.
Kim Komatsu:
Definitely.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Thank you all so much. Those are such great suggestions. One last thing I would like to ask you all before we open it up to Q and A. Our program is titled Earth Optimism. We're all about how we can come together and start to address some of these really big, really overwhelming issues that can feel scary sometimes when we're just one person, but through organizations like Casey Trees and the cool partnerships that people like Kim are doing and the amazing work in their own community that Amen, you are doing, I think we have a lot of reasons to be optimistic. I'd like to ask you all, what is one thing that makes you feel optimistic when it comes to issues like climate change and land use change and all these issues that our environment is facing? Amen, I'd like to start with you if you don't mind.
Amen:
Oh, thank you. I'm especially optimistic now because I know, especially in my demographic, people are finally taking notice of what's going on in the world and it's becoming less of an idea of whether or not something's happening and it's more about something is happening. By having that conversation already set in stone, we can now fast track the issues that we want to focus on, and by doing so, I've already seen a lot of change in my local community. I've seen some amazing change within how conversations are being held on a whole global sense. I'm overly optimistic about what can happen in the next 10, 20 years that could ultimately change the fate of the entire planet. I feel as if the large majority of people now are finally taking notice of what's going on.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. I think that is a really good reason to feel optimistic. Kim, how about you? Do you have a nugget of optimism for us?
Kim Komatsu:
Yeah, I'll just follow up on what Amen said and say that I am also so optimistic because people are taking notice and in particular, young people like Amen and everyone who's listening today. You guys are really making a difference doing action on the ground, taking the information that we've learned through the environmental movement over the past several decades and putting it into action right now. I think it's great that we're seeing this momentum, this movement of change led by young people who are really going to make a difference for themselves in the future and future generations.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. They always make me feel super-optimistic as well. I always feel optimistic when I talk to young people who are engaged. Kelsey, how about you?
Kelsey Desmond:
Well, you guys stole my answers because I was just think ... I'm so excited. My title is Youth Programs Coordinator. That means I get to spend a lot of time with young people and I'm just thrilled that folks are taking interest in and awareness in environmental issues, and beyond that, we see intersections with racial inequity and economic inequity, and we're starting to see how different social justice movements interact.
I learn things from people younger than me all the time, and I just feel very grateful to be in a community of people that value the environment and other people, that feel strongly in their empathy for others. I met a young person and he told me he was going to be a paleontologist because he's really good at science and social studies, and I just almost slipped out of my chair.
I'm like, "Yes, we need more young people to be interested in science," and discover the vast diversity of subjects and again, plug away at the work we have to do. So, optimistic about young people. I'm also optimistic about how people in charge, the adults in the room, are taking interest and starting to move policy. We have really big policies that are detrimental to the environment that we're starting to see roll out, but we're also seeing a growing wave of political movement around environmentalism, which makes me optimistic.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. That sea change is, I think, really encouraging to a lot of people. Last but not least, Melinda, how about you?
Melinda Peters:
Yeah, well, you all have really summed it up nicely, but just to add to that, it is great to see some youth movements, and especially this year, this has been such a hard year for so many reasons with the pandemic and equity issues and conversations, but it's also a good time and I think some positive change where people are really taking time to reflect and become informed.
I'm a lifelong learner and as an educator, that's all I can ... Just please keep reading and keep learning and joining things like this today can really maybe spark something that you didn't know about, and I think that's something to be excited about moving forward is just ... There's lots of opportunities ahead and just jump on, take advantage, be passionate.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we said such a good first step is just learning more about everything that's going on in your own community and how you can get involved. Thank you to everyone who's watching, but also thank you to Kim and Kelsey and Melinda and Amen for sharing all of your knowledge and your experiences with us today. This has been such a great conversation and I feel like I've learned so much from all of you, but do you guys think you have some time to answer some questions from our viewers?
Kelsey Desmond:
Oh yeah.
Amen:
Let's do it. Awesome.
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. Great. We're going to open it up to Q and A, so for anyone watching, this is your chance to talk to Kelsey, Melinda, Amen, and Kim yourself. If you have any questions for them about anything that we talked about today from trees to land use to climate change to how to get involved in your own community, you can feel free to type your questions into the Q and A box now, and we will get to as many as we can. We already have some really great questions coming in for all of you guys. Our first question is for Amen. "Amen, was there a particular leadership activity that you learned about through your internship or through your environmental group that made you feel confident in being a leader in your community?"
Amen:
Actually, there was and now that I look back on it, it was probably the best activity that I could have done for myself. In my internship with the YES! Program and the Smithsonian, I had to learn to speak in front of people. Before this, I was just really, really afraid of just speaking to any group, let alone speaking to a whole livestream.
I couldn't have done this without it. By being able to talk to people, especially older people, which I was just really nervous about in general, it helped me become more of a leader than I could have been before. It helped me be able to speak my thoughts in a more cohesive manner, and by doing so, it just propelled me to somewhere that I know that I couldn't have been without it.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. I think learning how to do public speaking and be comfortable with it is such an important part of it, and I would encourage anyone watching to get involved in a program in your community where you could have those types of opportunities to talk to the public.
It's a really great skill to have and I'm glad you were able to get it through our program at Smithsonian, which is a program for teens. It is an internship program that's available to teens in the D.C. area where you can come and intern at the museum and get mentored by one of our amazing research faculty. We also have a question for Kelsey. First of all, Josh would like you to know, Kelsey, that he speaks French as well and he says, "Bonjour"-
Kelsey Desmond:
Bonjour.
Meaghan Cuddy:
... and would like to know, "What are some of the ways we can safely connect with our natural spaces and people interested in preserving them during this pandemic?"
Kelsey Desmond:
That's a really good question. I'm on Instagram quite a bit and REI and different environmental nonprofits have really great ways that you can stay safe outside, aligned with Leave No Trace as well, and Outdoor Voices I think too. You can start to google some places and see what guidelines they offer. A lot of it's like wear your mask, make sure that someone knows where you're going, which is something you always want to do when you're headed out into the wilderness, and make sure ... I sometimes go out with friends of mine and we make sure to stay socially distanced, but if you're going with someone, let them know what you expect to do together.
I also know that locally, places like Rock Creek Conservancy are doing trash pickups and Anacostia Riverkeeper, they're doing Fishing Fridays, Friday Night Fishing, and they, it's very adorable. You can go fish in the Anacostia River. There's some fish that are safer to eat than others and maybe you just want to put the fish back, but take a look around to see what environmental nonprofits are doing programs in the area, and a lot of them are doing service work that remain safe to do.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. Yeah, we're based in the D.C. area, but there are groups doing things all over the country and all over the world. You can definitely look into what's going on in your area and see what sort of activities you can get involved in. I'm sure there's something close to you. Thanks, Kelsey.
Kelsey Desmond:
Yeah.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Kim, we have a question for you from Isabelle. I know that your research looks at plant communities and how they're being impacted by things like climate change as you told us. Isabelle would like to know, "Is there a way that microbes are involved in plant change or plant community change?"
Kim Komatsu:
Yeah, definitely. This is a really big growing field of science right now. In the past, looking at microbes, you've had to culture them in petri dishes and look at them under the microscope to try and figure out what they are, and they all look similar enough that it's difficult to tell what they are. Now we have DNA technology that lets us really relatively cheaply and rapidly figure out what all these microbes are, even things that don't do well in petri dishes.
This is a huge field of science now, trying to figure out how microbes are interacting with the environment in so many different ways. Things like the weather, again, climate change, pollution, but also how plants interact with microbes, how insects interact with microbes, how humans interact with microbes. This is a great way to get involved if you're at all interested in tiny microscopic organisms. It's a fun field of research for sure and they're having a huge impact on ourselves and on the environment around us.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, I think that's such a cool and new area of research and is something that is going to be really interesting moving forward. If we have any burgeoning microbiologists watching, I feel like that would be a really cool area of research for you. All right, we have a question from Leslie, and I'm going to throw this to Melinda. Leslie would like to know, "How can young people be involved in design and planning of the types of programs that you guys work on to feel like they have ownership over the spaces that they live in?"
Melinda Peters:
Great question. I guess it depends on your area and what group to look to. We actually have done some work with some local high schools and have had students even help us with the planting plans. It's hard for me to say that fast ... Of schools. We actually work with a lot of public schools to get trees in the ground and the students plant them, and sometimes, they've been involved with the process of planning, but I think this also goes back to the advocacy work that we were discussing earlier, that in any area that you live, urban or a rural smaller area, there's always a city planner and there's a process of how the space is allocated or is used, and there's a lot of environmental groups that maybe have to go out and survey an area to make sure before you build that house or this property or whatever it is, you have to know what's already living there.
That's the way we started. You can't do anything unless you know what's there. You can't study what you don't know. You can't make decisions unless you're informed, so it comes back to that being informed and that research and data aspect of it. I guess that's a long answer to say there are some probably local groups, but it might be worth checking in with your school or as with what Amen's done, maybe your ecological club could do some planning of your green space in your park or find out who owns it as the basic idea. Yeah.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. That is such great advice, Melinda. Thank you so much. I think we have time for just one more question. I'm going to throw it to Kelsey. Kelsey, "How does environmental justice impact the work that you guys do at Casey Trees or just general urban spaces and green spaces?"
Kelsey Desmond:
Yep. We're starting to think about this more and more. Melinda and I have had a lot of conversations about environmental justice, and there's a lot to be said about this. I'm thinking specifically of a neighborhood in Washington, D.C., River Terrace and it's a beautiful neighborhood that's right next to the Anacostia River by Kingman Island if you live in the city. We are really interested in working with this neighborhood because in the past, they've had serious issues with air pollution and water pollution, and we know that trees can impact both of these sources of pollution.
Over time, as the city develops ... Let me go back like 400 years. Let's start there. In the D.C. area, this actually used to be a very popular place to plant tobacco and to do that, the European settlers that came had to forcibly remove the native populations that lived here and they felled a lot of trees that were growing, a lot of the wetlands were destroyed and forested areas to make room for this tobacco, these agriculture product, and that's why the Anacostia River these days is a lot less deep than it used to be. There's a lot of debris that rotted. It literally changed the geography of the area, our land use.
I, again, see these intrinsic ties between how we treat people and people of color and Indigenous peoples in the United States along with how do we treat the Earth. I think those are a couple of case studies that are relevant and how we can start to move forward and say, "Okay, we know that trees impact people's health and they impact people's livelihoods and we've changed the land and that's had a significant impact on society as well," so that we can start to have a more aligned way of living. We can live in alignment with land and our moral values as humans.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. That was so well put, Kelsey.
Kelsey Desmond:
Thank you.
Meaghan Cuddy:
One thing that makes me optimistic is seeing this trend where people are starting to think more about how the health of our natural communities and how we take care of our natural communities is really closely tied to how we take care of one another as people. I think that's actually a really wonderful note to end on. Thank you all so much, Kelsey, Melinda, Kim, Amen. You all were so wonderful to talk to today and it was such an enlightening conversation. I really enjoyed having a chance to chat with you all and thank you to all of the people viewing.
We had such wonderful questions from you all and I hope that you learned as much as I did in today's program. I hope that we got to your question and if we didn't, I am so sorry, but we are just about out of time. I will sign us off for today. Before I do, I'll let you know that we do have one more summer Earth Optimism program coming up next Tuesday when we'll be talking to the Anacostia Watershed Society and some scientists from the Smithsonian Marine Station about watersheds. If you're interested in today's program, I highly encourage you to join us next Tuesday as well, but that is all the time we have for today. Thank you all so much for joining us and I hope you have a great rest of your afternoon.
Amen:
Bye everyone.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Bye.
Melinda Peters:
Thanks. Bye.
