How Will Redwoods Adapt to Rapid Climate Change?

New Research on New Threats | We Need Your Support | Meet a Researcher

Redwoods, symbols of nature’s resiliency and grandeur, have migrated during their millions of years, but not as quickly as it may be necessary to adapt to rapid climate change. Save the Redwoods League and partners have launched the Redwood Climate Change Initiative to ensure that future generations can walk among giants.

Little hard science has been developed to help guide redwood policy. The League aspires to fill this important gap and assist land managers and other decision-makers in implementing policy directives, economic incentives and on-the-ground results for land managers.

With your support, Save the Redwoods League can produce the hard science needed to shape public and private actions that will ensure the health of these mighty forests and the landscapes they depend on far into the future.

New Research on New Threats

The Redwood Climate Change Initiative is an integrated approach that will provide data and insight “from leaf to landscape” for both the coast redwood and giant sequoia.

We know that climate change will reshape much of redwood habitat. We also know that, with the right science, we can give our giants a fighting chance.

Good local land use plans, good public policy and good neighbors living next to redwoods can tip the balance in favor of redwood survival even in the face of these challenges. The data that will be amassed through the Redwood Climate Change Initiative will illuminate and help prioritize actions and disseminate information to key stakeholders who can make a difference. The findings also will shape the protection and restoration plans of the League and our conservation partners.

In partnership with top academic researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Humboldt State University and the California Academy of Sciences, Save the Redwoods League is now poised to help manifest the most comprehensive and integrated redwood discovery period in our history.

The Initiative will help find solutions to threats resulting from rapid climate change, including changes in rainfall, snow and fog; temperature; soil composition; and frequency and intensity of fire. The key to the success of the Redwood Climate Change Initiative lies in its comprehensive nature.

Scientists will

• study the entire 450-mile climatic “envelope”  of the coast redwood and the natural range of the giant sequoia in real time
• integrate data from maps and computer climate change modeling
• undertake single-tree, field- and greenhouse studies on a comprehensive scale
• study the stories that 2,000-year-old redwoods store in their rings to find out what extreme changes these trees have already survived in their long evolutionary history
• pioneer research of the redwood canopy, where scientists are discovering species of plants and animals previously unknown
• examine entire forest communities anchored by these forest giants
• correlate tree size, count and structure against the secrets contained within the core and canopy of these wondrous trees

We Need Your Support

Your support of the Redwood Climate Change Initiative will provide the hard data needed to help us guide the redwoods through climate change, from leaf to landscape.

The result of that scientific protection will yield something very unscientific: the continuation of an extraordinary expression of life that began over 100 million years ago.

We can create a world where our children and theirs can walk among giants. 
You have an opportunity to double the impact of your gift. Redwood enthusiast Ken Fisher is helping to launch the Redwoods Climate Change Initiative with a generous offer to match, dollar for dollar, every gift made to this initiative, for a total amount of $500,000.

For more information, contact Suzanne Moss at smoss@SaveTheRedwoods.org or (415) 820-5818.