Impacts of Climate Change on the Pacific Northwest

Assignments

The course focuses around 3 themes: of geology, ecology and human issues, and all assignments will assure that you integrate these themes in the work that you do. You grade will be comprised of 2 components:

  • Group Blog Essays (4) at 40% of your score – template is here and score rubric for the blog posts is here
  • Group  Project 60% of your score – score rubric for the final project presentation is here

Group Blog Essays

Before arriving in Seattle, you have self-sort to groups/teams covering the 3 themes, that resonate the most to you (we  want about 5 students per team). Each team will post blog essays illustrated with pictures and short videos to the course website, discussing and documenting their experience from the perspective that their team is focused on, but also connecting the perspective to the other two teams. These should utilize graphic elements that you create in support of your story such as pictures, videos and maps. If you are interested in seeing examples of UW student workshop based blogs, here is a recent one from the College of the Environment.

For example: when we are at Mount Rainier, the geology team can discuss volcanic eruptions in the PNW and the impacts on the ecology and humans in the region. The ecology team can discuss riparian forest and function and how these are driven by geology and impact humans (water quality, dam safety). The human issues team can discuss social trails in relations to geological features (human safety) and impact on ecological biodiversity.

You will be posting 4/team of these blog posts (12 total):

  • 1 from Pack Forest
  • 1 from the Olympic Peninsula
  • 1 from UW (Seattle)
  • 1 final post  once back in Nanjing. We want you to do the 4th and final blog post after you return home. Take 3-5 days to reflect on your excursion and the things you learned. Now compare these to climate change issues in Nanjing, how are these the same (?), how are these different (?), are the solutions being applied to these issues similar? For example: is urban canopy cover same or different between Nanjing and Seattle, and what are the policies behind this, how are these serving the populations of these two cities, can these be improved by learning from each other? You can use pictures from Nanjing to demonstrate your point.

You should be aware that these will be viewed by the UW/SEFS Communications Office and might be used for news stories or to provide information on the workshop to other media outlets. The workshop assistant (a students in UW/SEFS/PFC/RSGAL) will assist with final edits of these posts, you do not need to edit or commentate the short videos (if you are using videos in your blog).

Group Lab Projects

The second part of your grade will comprise of a lab exercise utilizing geospatial data to address issues that are on theme with the focus of your group. We will be collecting some of this data, such as  Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS). Additional data (aerial LiDAR and imagery) will also be available for you. To make your project successful you will need to familiarize yourself with LiDAR software, at UW we use CloudCompare. We also expect that at least one of your group members is proficient in GIS, UW provides ArcGIS. Your workshop assistant and faculty will be available to help with this work. You will be expected to produce a PowerPoint presentation and present it to the glass and a guest audience on the 9th day of the trip.

We have selected three topics for you to explore:

  • The geology group will look at deriving microtopography from TLS data and how that compares to aerial LiDAR data. Microtopogrphy is a critical component of the landscape related to wetland function (one of the workshops guest presenters, Dr. Halabisky from the UW will be discussing this, also see this paper).
  • The ecology group will focus on solar insolation (shading) derived from terrestrial and aerial LiDAR and how such knowledge is important to understand other ecosystem functions such as stream cooling; see this paper.
  • The human issues group will use aerial and terrestrial LiDAR to develop a ‘forest bathing‘ index (you will learn more about this on the UW arboretum tour) for the trail network in Pack Forest.