Center for Community & Citizen Science Blog

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Grant from CALFIRE for participatory modeling and mapping to plan for fire resilience in Tuolumne County

April 2024 will mark the start of a four-year CALFIRE grant to the Center, on science synthesis and decision support for community fire resilience.  MV Eitzel (Center Researcher) will lead the effort, with Ryan Meyer (Center Executive Director), Emily Schlickman (UC Davis Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design), and Craig Konklin (Tuolumne County Fire Safe Council).

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Fresh Faces

Welcoming Our New Interns

As we enter winter quarter, we are delighted to welcome both familiar faces and newcomers alike to the Center for Community and Citizen Science. This season always brings a buzz of excitement and anticipation and with the arrival of our new undergraduate interns, Elly Dai and Kelsey Farhit, we’re diving headfirst into another exciting chapter of collaboration and growth!

Blog entry Peggy Harte

Spring Staff Sightings

Follow the Center's trainings, webinars, and presentations

Catch us if you can! Find our faculty, staff, and students at these events this spring.

Blog entry Sarah Angulo Peggy Harte

Project Update: Connecting Classroom Content in Spinning Salmon Field Trips

“Bye, Spaghetti!” waved one high schooler as a tiny Chinkook salmon, so named Spaghetti, swam out of a plastic cup and into the murky Sacramento River. Across the boat ramp at Riverbend Park in Oroville, students said their farewells to the alevin in their own cups. This was the last chance for students to get an up close of the fish they spent raising in their classroom over the last 6 weeks.

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ECL290: A Course On Community And Citizen Science In Conservation

This 2-unit course will involve weekly discussion and exploration of community and citizen science (CCS) approaches and applications in conservation and related environmental topics. With an emphasis on practice, each session will focus on a different theme such as equity and justice, project design and implementation, participant and conservation benefits. Other topics will be identified and explored based on student interest, and students will also have an opportunity to develop ideas for CCS projects within their own research.

Blog entry Heidi Ballard Shulong Yan

Project Update: Elementary Students Connected to Forest Managers through Data

After 4+ years of collaboration and intensive project work, the Our Forests Project is entering a phase of analysis, product development, and sharing with a wide range of audiences. Our Forests is an NSF DRK-12-funded Youth-focused Community and Citizen Science (YCCS) collaborative project between our center and our community partner – Sierra Streams Institute.

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Farewell to Todd Harwell

Thank you and best wishes!

This fall we said goodbye to postdoctoral scholar, Todd Harwell, as he moved into his new role as Life Scientist at the US EPA. Todd joined our team two years ago, jumping into our ongoing work on the role of community and citizen science (CCS) in marine protected areas. Under Todd’s leadership, this project has had direct impacts on California policies that will guide monitoring of marine protected areas in the coming decade, and generated a trove of data that is helping us understand CCS in conservation in new ways.

Blog entry Ryan Meyer Becca VanArnam Jadda Miller

Project Update: Back to the Matilija Dam

Discussion surrounding the removal of the 76 year old Matilija Dam started in the mid-1990’s, yet here we are today in 2023, and the Dam is still here. Initially constructed in 1947 for water supply and flood control, the dam is now considered non-functional due to structural deterioration and sediment accumulation. Classified in poor condition, the dam poses a significant impediment to species movement in Matilija Creek, notably impacting the federally-endangered Southern California Steelhead Trout.

Blog entry Heidi Ballard

Project Update: Visiting NatureBridge in Olympic National Park

A new research partnership

In early September, Alexandra and Heidi traveled to Washington State to visit NatureBridge, an environmental education campus in Olympic National Park. Supported by the Resource Legacy Fund, the visit aimed to explore the potential of a new research partnership between the Center for Community and Citizen Science (CCCS), NatureBridge, and scientists at NOAA around a youth community and citizen science (YCCS) project related to long-term monitoring of the removal the Elwha Dam. 

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New quarter, new faces

Welcoming Rebecca VanArnam

We’ve started this fall quarter welcoming returning students and new students alike. It’s always a busy and exciting time at the Center for Community and Citizen Science, and with the addition of our new graduate student, Rebecca VanArnam, we are hitting the ground running with classes and projects. 

Get to know Rebecca:

Blog entry Peggy Harte

Spinning Salmon, Year Three: Deepening our Collaboration and Community Connections

Our Center specializes in helping educators and youth work together on real science – youth-focused community and citizen science. An especially powerful aspect of this approach is the opportunity to help youth connect directly with professional scientists, and with local partners in their own communities who are working on environmental challenges. The story of our Spinning Salmon project shows how these connections can evolve over time, as partnerships develop, and new opportunities for collaboration arise. 

Blog entry Sarah Angulo

Backyard biodiversity helps statewide initiatives at Biodiversity Day 2023 events

At the Center for Community and Citizen Science, we love connecting people with opportunities for authentic science engagement. Every so often, we get to participate ourselves! Saturday, September 9, staff from the Center went to Effie Yeaw Nature Center at Ancil Hoffman County Park in Carmichael. We met colleagues from the California Academy of Sciences who were hosting a bioblitz alongside the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Natural Resources Agency. 

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