Advancing climate research through community engagement

Jake Szabo
June 30, 2025

Members of UC Irvine’s Research Justice Shop (RJS) spent a day at UC San Diego in September 2024, educating postdoctoral scholars and PhD students from ecology, behavioral and evolutionary programs about environmental justice. “It was a great opportunity for my colleagues to not just learn about research justice but to actively define and implement it—like collaborating with local Indigenous communities,” says Karagan Smith, a PhD student who participated in the program.

The Wildland-Urban Interface Climate Action Network (WUICAN) coordinates events like this to supplement traditional ways of conducting scientific research by creating a network of community and university collaborations. WUICAN is part of a large set of grants addressing climate change through community research. In a historic partnership with the state of California, the University of California awarded over eighty million dollars to programs across the state, connecting universities and partner institutions through the California Climate Action Seed and Matching Grants program.

New perspectives on stewardship at UC Irvine
WUICAN’s foundation is a grant awarded to UC Irvine for a project entitled “Community-engaged research to manage fire and water in California landscapes” that connects UC Irvine, UC Riverside and UC San Diego to a variety of Tribal and community climate action groups. The program hopes to aid community efforts to combat climate change. Steve Allison, the Principal Investigator of the WUICAN project asks, “How can we flip the narrative so the university is playing a role of service and following the lead of the communities?”

Allison’s research focuses on the relationship between the drought resistance of plant species and their unique microbiome. One project, the Loma Ridge Global Change Experiment (LRGCE), is set in the foothills of the Santa Ana mountains in coordination with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy. Their research aims to reveal the effect of droughts on the diverse ecosystems that communities rely on and how we might restore these lands in the future.

Conservation and stewardship priorities of Native and community groups deeply influence Allison’s research. Future experiments at the LRGCE might study what vulnerabilities local groups will face due to extreme heat and what protections are available to mitigate the effects of drought.

“We all have different perspectives based on our lived experience,” explains Janelle Bohey, a PhD student in the Campbell Lab at UC Irvine, “so having a team from diverse backgrounds supports problem solving, critical thinking and compassion.” Engaging with the communities most affected by climate change can generate new pathways to solve societal challenges brought on or exacerbated by climate change. Bohey’s research analyzes how soil conditions affect the scents created by flowers, which in turn affects how pollinators are attracted to them. The results of her research will provide insight into how flowering plants may respond to climate change and how this could impact the ways plants and pollinators interact.

Alongside science and on-the-ground research, the arts and humanities at UC Irvine are assisting by increasing awareness of climate action and building avenues for advancing climate knowledge and environmental justice. Grecia Perez is an anthropology student at UC Riverside who collaborates with Orange County Environmental Justice (OCEJ), sharing knowledge about toxic sites with the Santa Ana community through the development of new digital resources.

Working with Native groups at UC San Diego
The Cleland Lab at UC San Diego is also exploring new ways to produce climate knowledge with community partners. Smith, a PhD student in the lab, researches native sagebrush plant communities’ response to fire, exploring how drought conditions, invasive species and fire severity affect plant recovery. She gained valuable data working with the Climate Science Alliance, and partnering with students from Palomar Community College equipped with drones to determine how fire affects sagebrush landscapes. 

Much of Smith’s work is influenced by Tribal knowledge that has historically been disregarded by western science. “Scientists studying Southern California’s environments have so much to learn from our Indigenous partners, like the Kumeyaay, who have long stewarded the land where I conduct my research,” she says. “I am grateful for every opportunity to learn from their deep knowledge of climate resilience.” Smith praises the opportunities that WUICAN has given her to learn from a diverse community, all with a common goal of addressing climate change.

Another eye-opening experience for Smith came at a Climate Science Alliance event where she had the opportunity to meet and learn from Kumeyaay community members, learn about the Kumeyaay creation story, how to weave baskets, and help restore black and white sage at Kendall-Frost Marsh Preserve. Climate Science Alliance, whose Indigenous partners have helped inform Smith’s research, is also involved with a grant given to San Diego State University as part of the Climate Action Seed and Matching Grants. The Collaborative of Native Nations for Climate Transformation and Stewardship (CNNCTS) project supports the land stewardship practices of Native Nations to address issues such as sustainability and fuel management.

Community-involved research at UC Riverside
At UC Riverside, Darrel Jenerette, a Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, investigates the wildland-urban interface (WUI). He is working closely with a team of graduate students including Miranda Buckley, Lyndxe Zapokal, Ariana Firebaugh Ornelas, and Sahar Foruzan. The team has been actively seeking and engaging with individuals and organizations to begin the process of building long-term partnerships in support of their efforts in their communities. Part of this engagement has required acknowledging the harmful legacies previous institutional engagement has created and working towards a culture that centers community needs and experiences.

In April, Jenerette in partnership with the USDA co-organized and hosted a day-long workshop of 35 participants to discuss the recent Los Angeles urban fires that occurred in January in the communities of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena. This workshop brought together academics from a range of disciplines, and practitioners within government agencies and nonprofit and private organizations working within southern California to collaboratively learn from the devastating fires and discuss research questions, community-engagement practices, policy options and management needs moving forward. The research team compiled the notes generated from this workshop into a report that was shared with all participants as a communal resource that can be utilized by academics, government land managers, and nonprofits as the work towards recovery and prevention goes on.

The team has been collaborating with UCR CCB’s Sweet Lab to build on existing community climate resilience partnerships in the Coachella Valley, with a renewed focus on supporting tribal climate action. Recognizing cultural revitalization as central to Indigenous climate resilience, Jenerette’s team has participated in a range of community outreach efforts. These include tabling at Temalpakh Farms events, giving science talks at the Native American Land Conservancy’s Learning Landscapes series, and presenting alongside the Sweet Lab at the Desert Climate Resilience Initiative meeting in the Coachella Valley.

In building out improved understanding of WUI dynamics in the inland areas of southern California, Jenerette in collaboration with Specialists Luis Barrios and Robert Johnson have been developing new mapping approaches to characterize the extent of interactions between urban and wildland areas. As one component of this work, they have been mapping the extent and distribution of warehouse development and their influence on habitat for rare and endangered species. This work addresses large uncertainties in WUI dynamics that were evidence in the Los Angeles fire and the large spread of burning embers.

The research Jenerette conducts involves Tribes, universities and community organizations, while the landscapes he studies range from the Coachella Valley to the Pacific Coast. He emphasizes that the diversity within the state of California and the appetite for cooperation between different institutions and communities has created the opportunity to develop new research. “The broader communities are increasingly valuing community engaged research and action,” reflects Jenerette. Such research is vital to addressing the climate crisis and creating a model that Tribal and non-Tribal communities might integrate into their climate action.

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Jake Szabo is a 2025 graduate of the University of California, Irvine, where he majored in English. He was a 2024-2025 WUICAN Climate Communications Fellow with the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI).

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WUICAN acknowledges our presence on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Acjachemen and Tongva Peoples, who still hold strong cultural, spiritual and physical ties to this region.