Recent Science and Education Projects

Nearly $150,000 in research grants from Save the Redwoods League have been awarded as part of the 2018 grant cycle. Funding these projects is a significant component of fulfilling the League’s mission, and each of these projects will contribute to scientific knowledge of coast redwood and giant sequoia forests. This research can help us answer big questions that will protect the health of people, wildlife, and the forests.

If you ask high school students what the impacts of climate change have been, they can tell you that the polar ice caps are melting, that we have extreme weather, and that California has been in a drought for the past few years. But if you ask them how climate change will affect our forests and the plants and animals that live in them, they find it harder to come up with an answer.

Coast Redwood Science Symposium showcased a tremendous amount of progress in the field of redwood science in topics ranging from genetics to wildlife.

The most common plant in the redwood forest is probably a fern: the Western sword fern. And this prehistoric plant, which is found in every redwood forest, is telling us a story about how the forests are responding to changes in climate.

Redwoods are in the news this week, reminding the world once again that Earth’s tallest trees are truly ecosystems in their own right. Teeming with life from quite literally their roots to their highest leaves, the magnificent coast redwoods are home to hundreds of other species.

Everyone at Save the Redwoods League is so excited about the new giant sequoia curriculum for K-12 classrooms offered by the California State Parks PORTS® program, which stands for Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students. This distance learning program features the giant sequoia of Calaveras Big Trees State Park in its new unit and uses an innovative system incorporating interactive media and virtual reality platforms to teach about the ecosystems, wildlife, and history of California State Parks.

Save the Redwoods League and California State Parks have launched a new digital field trip that explores the challenges, including wildfires, facing our giant sequoia forests. Giant sequoia, the largest living trees on Earth, are found only in California’s Sierra Nevada. Their massive size, singular beauty, and rarity have made them living icons of the natural world and subjects of global fascination. The new giant sequoia program will air live through the Parks Online Resources for Teachers and Students program (PORTS).

Jackson does what she can to expand the horizons of her students. Each month she takes three or four students to a regional park for an extended hike. She has also participated in outreach programs sponsored by universities and conservation groups, including Exploring Your Watershed, a Save the Redwoods League project that teaches kids about the linkages between the East Bay’s redwood forests and San Francisco Bay.

Through our Redwood Phenology Project, we are collecting data on how our redwood forest plants are changing with climate.

We all know that redwood forests are part of a larger ecosystem, the components of which can find themselves closely intertwined and interconnected. This system can often be referred to as a watershed, where all the land-borne water downward, starting at the tops of the hills and making its way to the ocean. Everything in a watershed is connected, from the redwood forests to the San Francisco Bay — and knowing your place within the watershed can be a powerful tool in protecting these natural areas.