Climate change forced displacement and resettlement is becoming a pressing topic as the impacts of sea level rise, drought, and severe tropical storms increasingly impact communities’ livelihoods. As communities and entire nations are forced to resettle, how will basic social and cultural structures be maintained? The transportation of resilient socio- cultural patterns becomes essential for maintaining the health and well-being of a community.

See Zoom details.

See Zoom details.

For spring, 2020 all WWU classes are being taught online. As such, the Huxley Speaker Series is revisiting favorite presentations from the Archives.

This talk was originally presented as part of the Huxley Speaker Series in Fall 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTAuw4UK3ig&list=PL_V1x509m24mrCNrm3tJBNOInyrovnHz1&index=5&t=0s

DUE TO CAMPUS SNOW CLOSURE THIS TALK HAS BEEN CANCELED

Stories are critical to understanding and responding to climate change. On the one hand, our collective imaginations are shaped by dominant, inherited narrative conventions; as public climate stories rely almost entirely on large-scale, apocalyptic tropes, many people are uncertain how to respond to them in their everyday lives. On the other hand, stories can help us make shared emotional and relational sense of the complexity of large-scale ecological and social transformations.

Climate change is threatening the survival of Tonga and other South Pacific nations. It is causing sea level to rise, putting coastal communities at risk, and warming ocean temperatures, increasing the strength of cyclones/hurricanes. Cyclone Gita (2018), the strongest cyclone in history to make landfall on Tonga, caused significant damage.

The Living Snow Project is a community enabled science (aka "citizen science") program that engages the outdoor recreation community in science that is revealing impacts of climate change on biology in snowy alpine environments.

Indigenous Peoples of North America have always had to accommodate and respond to environmental change. Oral histories, recollections of contemporary elders, and terms in their numerous languages have allowed understandings of responses to change, most recently since the colonial era. Traditional knowledge systems incorporate adaptive capacity. Now, however, many people have noted signs of greater environmental change and challenges to their resilience than in the past: species declines and new appearances; anomalies in weather patterns; and declining health of forests and grasslands.

Ocean acidification (OA) threatens marine resources and coastal communities around the Salish Sea. These threats have spurred action to address the causes and consequences of OA. Intensified research and monitoring have advanced our understanding of ocean acidification and its effects on local marine life, public processes have led to legislation, and education and outreach have promoted understanding across diverse audiences.