 Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us this evening. This is the latest quarterly webinar of the City of Columbia's Climate Protection Action Committee, or CPACS, series on given information about climate protection, resiliency, and the ways in which we as citizens and residents of the city and of Midlands could be a part of the conversation. And so if you are joining us today, you are going to find out how you can be a citizen scientist. Now what we're going to find out is exactly what does that mean, how you can be involved in certain projects that are taking place within the City of Columbia or the Midlands area, and actually what type of projects are actually occurring. So you may be thinking or you may have actually heard of the term citizen scientist, but exactly what does that mean. And essentially what we're talking about is that you have everyday citizens or residents that are collecting data as a part of a larger project that has supervision or involvement by your professional scientists. And so that could be individuals that are connected to a school, a university, or another type of organization. But you as a member of the community, you are also becoming involved part of that project because likely it's going to have some impact on your quality of life or something with you being in the immediate area. Now the great thing is that we're going to have the opportunity to talk to individuals within the City of Columbia and the Midlands area about different citizen science projects that are taking place. Some that have already occurred and then some projects that are coming up in the near future. And so we have individuals from the University of South Carolina, the City of Columbia as well as Congaree National Park. So without further ado, the first person that we're going to talk to today is Professor Kirsten Dow. Professor Dow is with the University of South Carolina's Geography Department, and she's going to be giving us some information about a recent urban heat mapping project that took place. So welcome Professor Dow. I'm glad to be here. I'm going to share my screen and be a little bit about heat mapping. Awesome. All right. So let me... All right. Well, the City of... We did... We recently conducted a heat mapping effort, and the idea here was that we're going to collect information for... About the distribution of heat in Columbia, South Carolina. Now the way that we usually hear about heat islands is... Looks a little bit like this, right? They're a bubble over some big area, but that's not the case. This is from nasakids.gov, right? You get the basics of it. Incoming solar radiation interacts with buildings and pavement and emissions from cars and things like that, and you get an area around a city that typically is warmer, three to four degrees on average, warmer than the rural areas, but the distribution of heat within those cities is not the same. And since we said this is going to be one of these conversations where a animal might pop in, that fuzzy thing is a dog, Rio. So the reason we're doing this heat mapping is we wanted to inform community planning and development, and we're thinking about tree canopy investments. We're thinking about the resilience plans for Richland County because heat interacts... Heat is, of course, increasing with climate change, and we need to look ahead for that. It's also to inform individual and private sector decisions about greening and shading. And really importantly, if we understand heat, the ultimate driver is climate change, and so to motivate the changes that we might take there. On the one side of the screen here, I've got a clear image of a bus stop facing west on Assembly Street. On a very hot day, you can see that the seat itself is 129 degrees. See, there are choices we can make that adapt ourselves better to what we can't prevent, and there's an opportunity waiting. Now, I said that the heat's not evenly distributed, but we need citizen science because the best we know about that and the way we know it is that we have satellite images, and their course resolution, they're 30 by 30 meters, 30 by 30, almost 100 feet on each side. And when you look at those images for Columbia, you can see the temperatures drop down to almost 50, but up to 121. The other thing about... So we can see the urban area, but the thing about this is that it's not air temperatures, thank goodness, right? It's what they call skin surface temperatures or surface temperatures. What you'd feel if you walked barefoot, what you'd feel if you'd laid your hand on that park, bus bench. And we can tell that one of the things that happened here in Columbia is that there's been a loss of tree canopy. That's been a contributing factor. What I'm showing you here is the tree canopy loss between 2005, 2020, but this is only the city of Columbia. It's happened in Richland County, it happened in Casey, it happened in West Columbia. And to understand this diagram, we have to understand that some areas were cut before they were annexed to the city, and that the city's also invested in replanting some of the bigger trees that are aging out in our canopy. But this is a one meter resolution image, so those big trees that might have been 10 by 10 or something like that, 10 feet by 10 feet, 20 by 20, are being replaced by the little guys, and that's going to take a while longer, but we know there's been change. So we want to get better information about what's happening here than this course resolution. And this is a big group effort in terms of citizen science. I worked with the Columbia Tree and Appearance Commission to do the organizing, but we got financial support from Department of Geography, Richland County Conservation Commission, Columbia Green, and the organizations listed across the bottom are part of a federal collaborative that funded part of the effort. And then a lot of other organizations committed to using the data once we've got it. And here's just half the volunteers that were involved. There were about 40 volunteers in total, and we asked many people to serve as backups in case something happened, and you know, something did happen, and we did need to call some of those backups. It wasn't bad, but it was rain and it was disruptive. So here we are, you might recognize a face or two. Or even this is Juliet, she's a service, she's a therapy dog. So we had these volunteers put together in teams of two, a driver and navigator, and they covered 16 different routes. The routes were designed to capture differences in land cover, whether there were streams or rivers, elevation, whether it was sandy soil or the denser bottom land soil and other parts of the county. We wanted differences in development out by Columbia Mall versus, versus the summit versus downtown and all the way out to the edges of rural areas. We wanted to capture areas which were socioeconomically different because differences in heat have in many cities tracked to differences in socioeconomic situations in different neighborhoods, and we had some points of interest, including schools and parks, the waterfront places where we knew people congregated, Finley Park, where we knew people congregated, and we wanted to know more information specifically about what they were experiencing. As I said, we had a little rain. We got a little press, that was nice. We also had volunteers go out with what are called FLIR cameras. This is a small, oh a small camera about this size that you put on the bottom of, you plug into the bottom of the smartphone, and it takes an image of the place, but it also takes the skin surface temperature image. So you can see here this afternoon that where there was more shade on these sort of whatever parking stops, around here we had a little bit more shade. It was cooler where the area is reflective, it shows up a little bit. Where we've got hedges, it shows up a little bit cooler. So you can start to see the differentiation just on the skin surface temperature. So we want to match that with air temperature and humidity. So what is the fact that the pavement is hot? Does that mean that what I'm experiencing is also hotter? Some of the volunteers who took the FLIR cameras went out and did repeat photography. This is looking at the VA hospital on Gardner's Ferry in the morning in the evening, morning and late afternoon. So first thing in the morning it was not that cool that morning, it was 72. Later in the afternoon it was up to 88. And you can see the, here's the exhaust from the car that's going by if you see the outline here. So the relative pattern stays the same, maybe a little bit more areas where surfaces are heating up and becoming a little bit more distinct. So we'll have those kind of images to add to the information that was collected. And ultimately all those volunteers driving around with all the sensors, I'm sorry, didn't point the sensors out. Let's go back. See these things here that they're all carrying? That's the sensor and that fits on the side of your car and collects that temperature and humidity data. So ultimately we're going to get reports like this for that morning, afternoon, and evening. It will be the morning and afternoon of the Saturday to seventh and they're going to combine that with information from a lovely evening, the next Sunday, Sunday the eighth, because Sunday evening of Saturday the seventh was not so lovely. We had to reorganize and call those backup volunteers. Thank goodness we could. But here you can see the relative differences, even though the scales are different in each image, but you can find 11 or 12 degrees difference here in the city of Charleston. So that's, so with this information, this is really the starting point. Collecting data was a citizen science point, but the next piece is what do you do with it? And how do we overlay this data to match areas that could be planted, areas that need planting, areas where we have conflicts with wire utility lines or something else and begin to think about what the priorities are for addressing the city and doing the best we can to improve the overall well-being in the city. And with that, I'll stop, unless anyone has a question about one of these slides, I'll stop sharing. Awesome. Well, thank you, Kirsten. And I actually do have some questions for you, and hopefully you can share some more information with our viewing audience. And so when we think about citizen science being part of this project, that obviously you, as a professional, and then others from the organizations having greater knowledge about this, what went into actually educating those regular citizens about what they were supposed to do for the project. So this is a project that has been done in many other cities, and so we relied on a training system that they developed. We solicited volunteers to see who was interested, and then we reached out and asked the volunteers to watch a training video. So I explained a little bit about Heade Island's purpose of the study, and then shared with them information about how the sensors work. The sensors have a blink, they have a red light and a green light, and the blinking means different things, and they need to connect to global positioning satellites so that we have a location stamp, as we're taking temperature and heat measurements. So they needed to know how those work. They needed to know that they weren't waterproof. They needed to be comfortable checking them and making sure they were charged and knowing to call us if they had any problems with it, and also some information about safety and making sure that you, you know, if you're going to drive slowly in some of these lanes, because the sensors only work at less than 35 miles an hour, you want to consider safety, you want to make sure that people are comfortable with the software that is used for determining the routes and sort of helping people walk through the routes. Then after they did the training video, watch that there was a knowledge check and a waiver that was signed, and we had to, we had compiled all of that online on a Google Forms processed before people went further with this. Okay, and so you shared that to get a really good representative or representation of the different areas within the city of Columbia that you took different routes. And as you mentioned, it could be based off of socioeconomic differences or even the landscape itself. And so likely a lot of these citizen scientists may have lived in the different neighborhoods or the different areas where those routes were. After the project took place, what was some of the feedback that you may have gotten from those participants, especially as they were maybe taking samples within their own areas or areas where they worked? I think people were interested to drive around and you see the world in a different way when you start to focus on how hot it is. You're looking more for shade, you're looking for those areas that just that you know are going to be hotter and taking into account which areas are well shaded, which ones aren't, which pathways could be better. So we're hearing people alter the lens in which they looked at the landscape a little bit. And I think that raising awareness helps things like what are we going to do about pedestrian walkways? What are we going to do about biking walkways? Some of these areas, when you look at them that way, well, there is a noticeable difference. So I think there was an immediate feedback on the observations. I'm going to have to wait until October to share the data. I think people were starting to see those contrasts and the people who took the FLIR images were certainly aware of how much difference surface makes, asphalt versus concrete versus something that's well shaded. Okay. And you also mentioned that there was the observation about the tree canopy. I'm curious either from your professional lens or even having a conversation with the citizen's scientists, if they also recognize visually a difference in the tree canopy, let's say for someone who has been a lifelong citizen here who remember when there were a lot of trees versus to the present. And so I wonder if there was any conversation about actually really recognizing that there's a difference from years past? Yeah, if you've been here for a long time, Columbia has grown a lot and it's changed and some of these old neighborhoods where the trees are aging out, you definitely see the gaps in what used to be tree line streets. And so people were seeing that. They were also seeing that some of the newer developments hadn't been well planted and they weren't growing back. And other areas hadn't been planted. The developers and the people managing landscapes hadn't done much to invest in cooling the landscapes. So people were seeing those differences. But they were also navigating, keeping track of left and right turns to get through all the different areas we wanted to get close to. Did you want me to screen or do you want to? Sure, that yeah, you can actually stop sharing. And so just have just a few more questions for you. And so as you mentioned, the data will be released later in the fall. What is the next steps for this particular project or either with the continuation of this project or potentially some other things that you would like to do as it relates to this? No, I really see this the state as the beginning of helping us identify different types of needs all over the city. I know there's been conversations about bikeways and greenways and this information can go get folded into those. I think we ought to look at the distribution of trees and shading areas and make sure that we're doing a good job in treating everyone well in those regards. So I think we can do some more analysis of the data. I know that different city departments would like to use it and understand what it means for resilience. Tree planting can also be a strategy to address stormwater runoff. We've been having some having some time sometimes with some stormwater related flooding. So looking for opportunities where those two needs intersect, I think is going to be a piece of it. I'm particularly looking forward to checking on how parks and neighborhood areas are available for people and getting to see what we can do there. The other piece of course is that the City of Columbia recently received a grant through the Department of Energy and their Communities Leap program to help communities prepare for reaching 100% renewable energy and they've asked for these data as well. So it's going to help inform priorities and needs and assessment of the issues in improving energy efficiency in making sure housing is both affordable to rents and affordable to heat and cool. Amazing. And then the final question I have for you is more related to your profession as a professor. And so given that you are in the Department of Geography and you are teaching a brand new generation of scientists or geographers, my question would be if you were to talk to them about being a citizen scientist, what information would you relay, either about the importance of citizen science or their involvement in it as well, especially as a new generation of scientists that are coming about? So I think citizen science is so important. This effort is really concentrated here in Columbia but I work on climate impacts and climate change and adaptation. And citizen scientists who collect information on rates of precipitation fill in all sorts of gaps in our national service monitoring network. It's called the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network and I would say to them that their observations fill in the gaps between the government funded work. It's so important to have people bringing that local knowledge into the broader conversation and sharing things that you miss if you don't have that many monitoring stations. We're going to need more and more of that to, for a while we were doing okay, we could count on the history of how things, patterns of rainfall, the patterns of heat, the patterns of when the fall comes and all these things. We could expect them to be more or less within a range of experience but that's changing now. We can't rely on the historical record to guide us anymore. And so I think those contributions are going to be ever more important to get us up to speed and to be able to help us adapt rapidly to a changing environment. Well thank you, Kirsten. It has been, it sounds like it was a very exciting project and we look forward to all of the data that's going to come out as well as the next steps in this process. So thank you very much and hold tight if you can. We have some more conversation that would take place just a little bit later. I'm going to mute myself. Awesome, so hopefully you learned a lot about that heat mapping project. Again a lot of great information was being collected and we look forward to what those results are going to be later on in the fall. And so now we're going to switch gears a little bit as opposed to looking at air quality. We're now going to dive into water quality and so we're going to look at an interview that took place by our fearless leader, Bob Petrelis, as well as Sierra Hilton. She's with the Adopt-a-Stream program, which is with the Water Quality Division of DHEC. So we're going to hear more about the Water Watch program that she's the coordinator over and exactly what that project is and what we should expect. For the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Controls, Adopt-a-Stream program. It's such a great opportunity for us ordinary people to get involved in helping to keep our streams and waterways clean for environmental monitoring, all of that kind of thing. And so would you tell us a little bit about the program and what's it all about? Absolutely. Well thank you for this opportunity and I can't wait to share more about the program. So South Carolina Adopt-a-Stream is a statewide volunteer water quality monitoring program that offers free workshops to train volunteers how to collect data on weightable streams and tidal salt waters. It's co-led by South Carolina DHEC and our program partners Clemson Center for Watershed Excellence. It's a program where certified volunteers can provide valuable data that complements our agency data and it's used to determine the health of our waterways. It's a great way for volunteers to get out and have fun and take a proactive approach to protecting our waters and many different volunteers join for different reasons, but they all help us find small water quality issues before they become larger ones, which I like to say in other words they're helping us catch pollution at its source. So it greatly helps us either protect already clean waters or if they're impaired and need restored it gives us valuable data to look at over time to see what we can do to have improved water quality across the state. Well I'll tell you I was speaking with Becca Smith who's the director of Sustainable Midlands and she was telling me about going through the training herself and and starting to do some water quality monitoring which really kind of piqued my interest as well. So how did you come to this? Do you have a personal interest in water quality or what brought you here? Absolutely, so my start to citizen science monitoring actually started back in Missouri. They have a very similar program that I was working for five to ten years ago and it's essentially the same idea. They also are partnered with litter cleanups and paddling events, but the difference between their program and ours, although they have the same goals, their program's been around 30 years and we're just now celebrating our five-year anniversary as a program. So they have a little more resources and a lot more people know about their program, whereas our program we're still trying to spread the word and get people involved, but the first event I was able to go to as part of the Missouri stream team program is one that it gives me goosebumps when I think about it because it was a big cookout. It was on the outskirts of St. Louis and it was an entire town that was certified as volunteers. So not just a monitoring group, not just an individual, an entire town came out all in matching shirts, the mayor came out, agency representatives came out and not only did they have a cookout and celebrate all the great work, all the litter pickups, all the cleanups, all the educational events that they were able to do, they sat there and talked about the data and were able to take that and turn that into action. And that's when it clicked that monitoring doesn't just have to be done at the state level, although there's valuable resources and data that can be learned from that level, starting it at the grassroots and getting people to understand their impacts on water quality and that they can be involved and that even though the agency has a pretty good reach across the state, there's always private access streams or maybe smaller streams that DHAC has to focus on some of the bigger areas and our volunteers can help us fill in those gaps and like I said, catch pollution at its source. And that's when it becomes really cool because we've even, although I was talking about the Missouri program in our last five years, we've had successes where volunteers have identified major sewer line breaks by high bacteria alerts. We've had water line breaks, sediment issues, and these are the types of stories where our volunteers weren't out there monitoring. These problems may have last longer, may have gone unnoticed completely, and it becomes a really cool and just a faster chain of communication of, hey, I noticed something unusual and now we can reach out to the agency, to our program partners, and then hopefully improve the water qualities across the state. Yeah, that's really interesting. So it actually can lead to action right now. And I was looking at your, you sent me some slides earlier. I was looking and I saw there's a map of all the different streams that are being monitored at this point and it looks like you've been doing a lot of work for five years. So I don't know, do you have that one up? I could put that up. Can you see it now? No. Oh, yeah, there we go. Great, okay. Okay, so this should be the map that you're referring to, but this essentially shows all of our sites have been adopted since 2017. The blue pens are active sites as of December 2021 and then our red sites are more of our historical data. So we have volunteers that maybe move away or that they start the program and then another team can adopt their site. And this is just a good overview of where we currently have data and also a good example of where we currently really need not only volunteers but also monitoring kits. So in our program we can certify thousands of people and we have, but we're limited by our number of trainers and monitoring kit access. So that's where those local program partners and growing this program from the grassroots and teaming up with other people. That's where if we can establish more kits around the state, the volunteers will come because citizen science has proven to be fun. It's been proven to be a positive impact and it's really a cost saving way for us to just fill in those data gaps that we might not have data on otherwise. Do you work with schools or is it all pretty much individuals? It's for the most part individuals and groups. It's not because we don't love our schools. It's just the way our program is currently structured. So in order to enter data into our database, the volunteers must attend a free workshop to be certified and that's where we teach them to follow our EPA approved protocols, which allows our data to be of high enough level for others to use freely. And when we ask people to collect the data, part of the goals is long term what we call baseline data. So we can see changes over time. So you can make conclusions about what's going on possibly with our climate or if there's any land use change. And what we see with schools is they're great to work with. The kids love it, but come summer or the second they go to the next grade unless that whole district is on board with us. It's slightly hard to get schools started, but we are hopefully launching a high school teacher curriculum soon. So if I do have teachers that are interested in the program, I really would like to hear from you and figure out how we can build that part of our program. Great. Okay. So and it looks like you've got, you know, the population senators in the state are pretty well represented, but there's a lot of blank area there that could be filled in. Absolutely. And that's where we desperately need more information is if we can get some kids sponsored and established in those areas, I can travel anywhere in the state to help do workshops outside of myself. We have a team of 23 other volunteer trainers. So even if I can't do it or my team can't do it, I can get you connected with our local trainers and we can try to get a workshop on the schedule. So you don't have to wait for us to come to your area. If we know there's demand, we'd love to get something set up. Great. Okay. Well, thanks for sharing that map. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about what the training involves. What do you have to do in order to be able to do this kind of work? So in order to get involved, it's open to anyone, whether you have a scientific background or not. I've had, I think the youngest age I have had get certified was middle schoolers, although it's better high school age on up. And then we teach you everything you need to know. So we're looking for people that have time to go out and sample a single site once a month throughout the year. So that would be for our freshwater or our tidal streams or waterways. And you would basically go borrow a kit from a local area. You would take it out to your site that you can choose or we can help team you up with a program partner to identify adoptable sites. And then you submit that data to our database. And what's cool about the data is it can be used by anyone with internet access. If they can go to our website, which is scadaptostream.org, they have the power to copy and paste or even download it straight to Excel. And then it can be referenced by anyone. We've had people in our, use our data that's been referenced by researchers, decision makers, grant applicants, teachers, advocacy groups, and really the list goes on and on. And what's neat about the data is it can be queried. So if you're a county official and you want just your county or maybe you're a watershed planner and you want just your watershed, we can help get all that data to you in the form that you need it. So it has a wide, you know, a nationwide or really worldwide reach with it being able to be publicly accessible, even though you have to be certified to enter the data itself. Is the scadaptostream.org website, is that where you would go if you were interested in getting the training? Yeah, so from our website, you can see our workshop events and you basically have to register for one of those. You would attend the workshop. Most of them are six hour in person training. So it's a little bit of classroom and then a little bit of fields field work to get certified. And then once a year, you'll get recertified online just to make sure you're following all the protocol and there's been no program updates that you've missed. And that's just our chance to stay in touch and make sure we say thank you for the data and make our volunteers feel appreciated too. And you said it's about a day long training, is that right? So not too much, not too hard to do. No, and it's fun and people, people always leave wanting more and trying to figure out how soon they can get their feet wet in a local stream. We do have people that come just to learn, but we're specifically looking for those people that can go out once a month, adopt a site and truly want to enter data that we can use for the greater good. Yeah, so you're doing a kind of chemical analysis or at least you're, you know, checking the chemical composition of the water, but you're also doing something with little critters that live in the water as well. Yeah, so we offer three different types of workshops currently. We have our freshwater workshop, which is chemistry and bacteria monitoring. So fun fact, you get to grow eagle eye in your living room, which is sometimes hard to convince the spouse or the family of, but we teach you how to do it in a safe way. And then our tidal salt water workshop. And then we also have what we call macro invertebrate workshop, which is just a fancy word for aquatic insects. Basically, how many you find and how many different types you find can instantly tell you the water quality of your stream, which is really cool. And that's my personal favorite. I did some of that work at my university where you really are you can open your eyes to the aquatic underworld and realize everything we do as humans impacts the stream, whether we know about it or not, especially through non point source runoff, which is your storm runoff. And it's something everyone contributes to and it's something that everyone can help prevent with a little bit of education and sometimes a little bit of action. So it looks like we've got a picture here of happy program graduates with their sort of their their certificates there. And that works really well. So if there's programs that need volunteer hours like master naturalists, or if there's any groups we can team up with easy people to team up with or any paddling groups or litter pickup groups or any nonprofit river keeper groups, basically anyone that likes getting outdoors and getting their feet wet is a perfect partner for South Carolina adaptive stream. That sounds that sounds just so so cool. So cool. Well, this is really, really interesting and a wonderful introduction to this to this program. Anything else to say about about it? What what how many people are involved? I mean, how many volunteers do you have now? I don't have an exact number on how many people are involved because there's a there's a little bit of a difference between the number of people certified versus the ones that actually adopt a site and actively monitor. But in the last five years, we've had over 400 sites adopted. And that's generated over 4000 sampling events. So that's how many data points we have in the last five years. And those combined have generated about 172 data alerts. So that means high bacteria alert unusual odor or color. And those alerts go straight to our program coordinator. So DHEC and Clemson Center for Watershed Excellence. And it's also alerts that people like utilities or municipalities can sign up for if they want to be notified of when there's alert in their area. So it's a great fast way of, hey, there may be something going on and seeing what we can do as next steps. Great. And I suppose if people have questions they could get on your website and and get in touch with you that way. Absolutely. So everything starts at our website, which again is www.scadoptastream.org. That's where on the first page you can sign up for our e-newsletter. So that's just a fun update to everything adopt a stream once a month. You can also view upcoming events and workshops. We do more than just workshops. So if you want to do if you are interested in webinars or other similar events, we post them there. That's where you can also find our data space, all of our handbooks that our digital copies, videos to our protocol. It's also where if you're interested in becoming a kit sponsor that greatly benefits the program and amplifies our reach, which also amplifies our ability to protect our waters. And then the last thing I want to mention is we can also be found on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. And greatly appreciate that social media support. So you can help us share and spread the word that volunteer monitoring works. So being a kit sponsor would is that are those like businesses or individuals or who sponsors kits? Anyone with the money to do so. It tends to be businesses. We do have some people that sponsor their own kit, but this program is meant to be free and accessible to all. It's just a matter of finding the right partners locally that we actually call a lot of our kit sponsors hubs because they'll buy the kit and then they may be a local outreach spot where they can help the volunteers enter data database or talk about their results and it becomes a really cool local engagement source and educational outreach opportunity for these groups. So utilities can use it at businesses, individuals, you name it. We're ready to grow and we just need to tell more people about it to make it happen. That's great. Well, I hope that maybe this webinar will help to get the word out a little bit and generate some interest for you. Very cool. We care more about our volunteers than our data. So if anyone's even remotely curious, please get in touch and we'll see what level of involvement they'll fit best in. Great. Okay. Well, thanks a lot for spending some time with me this afternoon and I really hope that this helps a little bit in getting the word out and that you keep up this good work. I mean, it's so important and it makes a huge difference in the quality of the environment in our state. So I just really appreciate it. Well, thank you and I hope to get the chance in the future to share more about the program or team up with others looking to do good things in the area. And what was exciting was to hear how many individuals are actually involved. Sierra mentioned that there were almost 400 sites that have been adopted as well as over 400 sample points that have been collected and all of this information is accessible for other citizens, for other organizations or anyone who is looking for data. So that is awesome for the state of South Carolina. So I do want to share again, as she mentioned in her presentation, as well as in the slides, if you would like to be certified to do sampling for the adaptive stream program, you can get more information and contact them at www.scadaptistrain.org. So that's www.scadaptistrain.org to sign up for the training, get more information and hopefully become a citizen scientist for yourself. So great information and it's befitting that we talked about the adaptive stream program because we're now going to talk about another project that is taking place in the city of Columbia, Richland County, but more in our historically rural areas of lower Richland. And this is actually a project that I'm personally involved in as a community member. And so we're going to be talking about the thriving earth exchange project. And our next guest is going to be Claudia Santiago. She is a climate protection, I'm sorry, she is a biological science technician, as well as citizen science coordinator with the Congaree National Park. And we're going to be talking about again, the thriving earth exchange project that also kind of aligning with the adaptive stream is looking at water quality. But unlike the adaptive stream project, there's a little more simplicity that goes along with this. So welcome Claudia, how are you doing? Hi everyone, I'm glad to be here and to share this project with everyone. Awesome, so you can go ahead and share your screen and pull up the presentation and just talk about the thriving earth exchange. Can everybody see my screen? Yes. Okay, so the thriving earth exchange first of all is a national program and is run by the American Bureau of Physical Union. And it mainly focuses on more of community science versus citizen science, which is a little bit different. They both have similar goals. The difference mainly is that community science seeks to involve communities from the start, from asking the questions to drafting protocols, to engaging them in every step of the solution that a community might have, or solutions to problems that they might be dealing. And that could be from water quality, any type of problem that is affecting their everyday life or the nature around them. So if you want to learn more about the thriving earth exchange from AU, they have a website where they have all the programs that they have been doing for many years. So this project specifically started because the thriving earth exchange approached the National Park Service and they came up with a partnership to involve parks, national parks around the nation, the entire nation, to start a community science project. So the call went out and Congrean National Park, the Research and Stewards Ship and Science Division, which I work, I'm part of that team, the Wausau office from Washington reached out to us to see we were interested in applying and getting a project going. So we decided to do that and that's how this project started. And you can see here, we decided to name the project Increasing Community Resilience for Watershed Organization. And this picture at the park, for those of you that have visited Congrean National Park, you know that fishing and fishing traditions for the African American community are very important. So that's why we chose this picture as our main picture for the project. This is actually one of our interns that just left this month, earlier this month. And he was focusing on coming up with a plan for the park that would make fishing more accessible for the local community. And also he worked a lot with the local community to learn from them and to give them advice on how to do fishing sustainably and also to do fishing by not affecting the environment. So he did a great job. So that's why we picked him as the main picture for this project. So the way we started for this project is as you might know, Columbia or South Carolina has a biosphere. And the biosphere, you can see the outline of it. It's called Congre biosphere. And Congrean National Park, which is shown here in the green outline, is part of the biosphere. So when we decided to apply for the Trivenus exchange project, the first thing that we did was to reach out to our Congre biosphere partners and put out a call to have a discussion of what were some of the things that we could help with this project, specifically the gateway community around Congrean National Park. So circa the Southeast rural community outreach, which Dr. Tamara Warren is part of that community organization, stepped up and say, we want to work with Congrean National Park and develop a project that can benefit the lower Richland community. So many of you might already know that the low Richland community is very concerned specifically about the Richland County news sewer system. So the circle or short for South East rural community outreach had already some knowledge about their concerns. So after we talked to other members of the biosphere, we thought that that was something that the park and this project could help in some way. So our main goal then became to understand how we could help their concerns. And after talking to community members and circle, we started seeing a pattern that they had mainly concerns about urbanization. What happens if after they build this news sewer system, there's more commercial industrial and residential development and what happens to the watershed and the water. So a lot of concerns about just how increasing population might affect the streams at the park and around the low Richland community. So that was our first goal to figure out how to help them become more knowledgeable about the topic and also to come up with a project that they could use to understand how watersheds work and how they're going to be affected in the future if urbanization comes in into this area. And also one of the other things that they were concerned about was the rural character, losing that rural character, which it might be something that Congrean National Park might not be able to do much about it if urbanization starts moving in into the low Richland area. But at least what we're trying to do is give them the tools and the knowledge for them to grow as a community in a way that they are stores of the community and that they're growing with the changes that are happening in the area. So this is just instead of focusing on one single point source of contamination, what we're trying to do is to look at all the possible contamination that can come in if there's more urbanization. So this picture just shows you examples of what happens when there's more people moving in, there's more industry, more construction, maybe more farming, more agriculture, more neighborhoods and roads. So all of this can affect the streams around the park and at the park, at Congrean National Park. So what we decided to do then is to develop a visual water quality assessment and geomorphology monitoring protocol. So I know we just heard about the adoptive stream protocol, but our protocol is going to be more visual base and I can talk about more in the next slide. And what we're trying to do is as we develop this protocol, we're having community meetings and learning more about the local knowledge, the local knowledge of the African-American community and other historically excluded communities to make sure that as we draft this protocol, all those things are considered in the protocol and also knowledge that they might already have that could help them, that could help the protocol be more specific to the area and more practical for the community to use. And then we hope that the community members of the Low Richland area and around the Congrean area will use this protocol and collect baseline data that can help them track how urbanization and pollution will impact the surface water around the park and the community. And then we hope that at some point then the community will be able to communicate the results to other community members and learn in the process more about water quality and watersheds and streams and how they all work together to maintain a balance and maintain habitats. So we heard about the Adopter Stream protocol that we have in South Carolina. So the Adopter Stream protocol focuses more on the chemical and biological like we heard on the presentation. They use, they collect microinvertebrates and also they collect water samples and then they test the water for different to find different things about the water quality like how much equal you can find the water for example. Our protocol is a physical water protocol, monitoring protocol and what that means is that people are going to go out there and look at the streams and they're going to observe the habitat and we are going to train them to be able to identify things that have changed in the habitat whether there is less vegetation on the bottom of the stream or the channel is getting deeper or is moving away. If the vegetation around the stream is dying, all those visual clues can give them an idea of the quality of the habitat and also how well overall the habitat is doing based on water health. So something, this is an example of how a visual water quality monitoring protocol looks like. This is one of the categories that you see. This is actually from the Adopter Stream in Georgia and you ask a question to look at the material at the channel, at the bottom of the channel and then you can rate it. If it's excellent, if you have a lot of debris on the bottom of the channel then that means that there's a lot of habitat for microinvertebrates and fish so that you will score it really high versus a stream that has a little to known debris on the bottom such as trees and things like that. It would not be a good habitat for microinvertebrates and fish and therefore the balance of the stream would not be good and the water will suffer because there's no balance and there's not enough microinvertebrates and fish to keep that balance. So this is just an example of how our protocol would look like. So this project has five stages. So the first one was to look for a scientist that could help us with the first draft of this project and also to find other scientists that specialize in your morphology of low gradient streams which are the types that we find around the park and so we have completed that phase and then involving and facilitating knowledge exchange between local groups. So what we've been doing is every month we host a community meeting in different parts of Lower Richland. We also hosted one online and then we just talked to the community, we tell them about the project and then we hear what they have to say about the project and also their concerns and how they're connecting this project with the bigger picture of water quality and other pollutants that are in the Lower Richland area. And then we're actually presenting this project at the water. There's a water conference in Columbia in October so we're presenting this project there and the protocol which we're working on drafting right now and we hope to get some feedback from scientists and some peer review. We also hope to host a field trip where people can test the protocol that could be scientists and community members and then start refinding the protocol. And then finally we hope that at some point once we have a really good protocol that then we can engage local community members to collect the baseline data at Lower Richland County and then hopefully engage community members to present that data to other community groups. And those phases are subject to change so we're not like as we're doing this project we're just trying to go through the phases but at the same time we're very flexible when things need to be changed. So who's involved in this project? So like I mentioned we're working Congaree National Park. I'm a biological science technician and citizen science coordinator at Congaree and we're working with the Southeast rural community outreach circle and Marie Barber Adams which she's the chair of the organization and she is a long time community member that has done a lot for the Lower Richland community. And then Dr. Tamara Warren which is here today and myself so a little bit about me I have a master's degree in geophysics and a master's degree in rhetoric and ready studies from the University of Texas at El Paso. Currently I'm a biological science technician and citizen science coordinator at Congaree but I have worked in interpretation at other national parks and memorials so Chamisau National Memorial Cliff Dwellings, the Hila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, Washington Battlefield National Historic Site and I always been very interested in connecting non-science knowledge with scientists knowledge to solve problems. And finally we have a scientist Dr. Timothy Callahan. He's the department chair at the College of Charleston Geology and Environmental Department, Geoscience Department and he is a professor that has been collecting data at Congaree for many years with his students so when we approached him to do this project he was really happy to help because he felt that he's been using the streams around the park to teach his students about geomorphology and how habitats work but now this is a way for him to give back to the community the Lower Richland community and the park. So this is my information if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me or to Tamara Warren and with that I'll answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. Thank you Claudia and so obviously you know I'm one of the community partners with this but just from your experience how has this how has this project been for you as as you mentioned we've had a few almost three in person community sessions and so we've been in Hopkins, Gaston as well as Eastover trying to get information or feedback from the community as well as we had an online session and so I'm just curious of your perception of how this project has gone along as we've gotten feedback from individuals. I think I wish we had a and if you could take your slide off just so we can see you. Yes sorry that's okay. I think that the feedback from the community we haven't had a lot of feedback I would say and is that working? We can. Yeah so I wish that we could have more people participate in the community meetings but the people that have participated I haven't learned a lot from them just seeing us because I'm mainly drafting the first draft of the protocol and then the next step is for Dr. Tamara Warren and Dr. Callaghan to review the second draft so as I'm drafting the first draft and just thinking about how to make this connect to their concerns and what they know about water quality has helped a lot because I think as a scientist you kind of know I know about water quality and how streams work and the geomorphology but you if you don't talk to the people that are going to use this then it's very hard to forget that some people have not made those connections yet of how the whole stream systems work and how urbanization affects the streams and the habitat so all that all those connections some people might not be familiar with that and so even I think in some of the warships that we had even showing that picture that I showed you has we have gotten comments from people saying like oh I didn't know that I didn't know that that all that was going to affect my water and I didn't know that you know water quality meant that there's different types of ways to measure water quality and that visually you can tell a lot from a stream just by looking at how it's changing and how it looks. Okay so as we get information about the adopt the stream program with Sierra and we know that there's different kits that the volunteers would use as you've mentioned for this particular Dragon Earth exchange it is more visual and so one of the great things is that the individuals would be able to go out to a stream and visually assess or even use things to to get a better understanding of the quality for example if we have a fisher someone who's fishing and they want to use their rod as a way to look at water levels so it's I guess the lower and expensive commitment on the individuals in in this particular project and so can you share a little bit more about why this particular protocol may be something that would be helpful for the citizens once the project kind of moves further along. Yes I think like we actually have some volunteers that they have on their own they use the adopt the stream protocol at the park and I know them because they they help me a lot with citizen science programs at the park and they have comment on the difficulty of finding kids even if they they had means to rent them but still finding one sometimes is hard so for the lower Richland community we know that that's something that is not would not work like even if the park had the kids but still we still the park still not have does not have that connection with the community well enough that people will go to the park and get the kids so what we're trying to do with this visual protocol is something that they if they go fishing we know that there's a lot of local community members that go fishing a lot at the park so they can just take the protocol as a piece of paper and observe as they fish and also I think this protocol is it's advantageous for a lot of local fishermen because as you look at the stream a lot of the water quality that a lot of the local people know it's already they already have that knowledge when they're trying to find fish at Congaree they're already looking for spots so even though they might not know that but they already know where to look where it's a healthy habitat so for them it'd be natural to say oh okay I go fishing I take my protocol and I'm just writing oh this is a good habitat for micron berberates and fish so that's an example of something that I feel like is more connected versus if we ask them like get into the water test bring us some samples and then we'll take them to the lab that might seem more like more complicated in a way versus this is I think is more connected to what they know the local fishing traditions and it might be easier for people that are already going to the park and hanging out there and observing the streams. Okay and so just one last question I have for you Claudia is what are you excited about as we move forward with this project and we do start to recruit different residents who are interested in this and you know want to become more involved so what are you anticipating or looking forward to? I think this is a very exciting project I think water quality like adopter stream has a place where it can give us a lot of good information but I think projects like this one where you really working with the community and really tailoring to a specific area can also be very beneficial because you're really getting to know the people one on one that are going to collect the data and you really get to talk to them about the specific things about their streams and their local community versus you know like a bigger project where they just go get a kid or they just see the person that's training them once things like that so I'm very excited about continuing to engage in the community and every time that I present this project and somebody from the Long Beachland community has like this moment of like oh I see the connection of why is it that urbanization is going to affect those streams that makes me excited because I feel like if people get engaged in this protocol they're not only going to collect data but they're also going to learn about sustainability and observing why is it that all the ecosystem works the way it does and it's all connected um so I'm really excited about continuing doing this work and just continuing sharing with the community and and and I'm going to be feel even more excited when the protocol is done and and they collect their own data awesome well I'm excited as well so if you can hold tight we're going to have some more conversation very shortly but thank you again for sharing about the thriving earth exchange project and so our final person that we're going to talk with is actually lead the fourth she's a comprehensive planner with the city of columbia and she's going to talk about an upcoming bike and pedestrian count so welcome lee hey thank you for having me um and so you know um we we talked a little bit about this beforehand and I say I'm not sure it's 100% citizen science but it is a great way to collect data um maybe think of it as citizen engineering um but we annually since 2014 have been using staff and volunteers and we rely heavily on volunteers because of the number of places that we count um we count 34 locations throughout the city both on a weekday morning and a weekend morning so uh Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday morning and a Saturday morning the weekdays are 7 30 to 9 30 so it's a good way to kind of ease into the work day you can bring a camp chair and your coffee and a podcast um Saturdays are tend to noon so it doesn't cut into too much for your Saturday there but um what what we do is we ask volunteers to um really look at a specific what we call a screen line so it's a section between two intersections and they are tabulating for us the number of bicyclists and pedestrians that enter that space and transit users in 15-minute intervals for that two-hour time period they're also collecting some qualitative data while they're doing it um they're looking at where folks are jaywalking if they're um you know if there's a what we would call a desire path if it's easier to cross you know in a driveway apron than it is at a non-ADA accessible um crosswalk that's data that we can use that they report back on that we can provide to the folks that are um managing the street right-of-way whether it's the city of Columbia's public works department or South Carolina DOT or university in some cases um and so we have revamped our counts this year to look at some updated other data so the accident data that the department of public safety collects and coordinates throughout the state um so we really targeted some areas that we know are safety concerns and then also some areas where we know that development will really change that landscape whether it's a streetscape project like South Maine that's been in the news recently to look at where um what what might change um in the coming years as we see wider sidewalks and protected bicycle facilities and how users might come to an area you know if you build it they will come so um so we rely on that data not only um ourselves but we one of our goals is to really make sure that we're reporting back on data so this this past year we generated a report for those counts that had been completed that um can be helpful to folks other than just your city planners and um your your transportation planners throughout the local agencies um and that's available on the city's planning and development services love sites so planning and development services dot columbia sc dot gov um under uh multimodal transportation resources and that report summarizes the the prior years of data and then we're looking forward we're going to be providing an annual calendar year report so we count in both the spring and the fall when we know we have students in town um we actually have a huge mode share of pedestrian's um in the city and we know a lot of that deals with the folks that are walking to work or to higher education at higher education institutions so um it's around 21% which is a little higher than you would you would think otherwise um and so that that data is really helpful to us um as we you know provide back information and in in ways that we don't necessarily think of I remember one year the common or local bus service was curious um they wanted to know the pedestrian and count near their bus stations or bus stops because they were selling advertising on the buses and they wanted to be able to prove that the folks that are standing on the side of the street waiting for buses or walking through downtown they could they could provide that and that helped provide some critical funding for the comment which as um you all probably are aware transit is generally quite underfunded and so they they can use um those those dollars to make meaningful improvements and improve multimodal access for citizens in our community so um it's it's a great opportunity um I think one of the things um if you go to planningdevelopment.climbsu.gov you can you can view it there but you can also just go to if you're familiar with bit.ly it's a link shortener it's just bit.ly forward slash 2022 fall counts and the f and the c are capitalized in that and that will take you to a basically a survey monkey or job job form is um that lets you sign up you can pick your location will be in touch with account form and there's a brief training so we're kind of the the reverse of Claudia's program and that we're there's a very brief training and and and we have kind of a standard that has been developed as as part of bike pad planning um and those are um those those sheets are distributed and then we just ask that you get your data back to us so we can analyze it and get the word out um so I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it and um and I I just think it's a fun way to get to know your city you you tend to notice things that you would not notice if you're sitting in one spot for two hours it is definitely not as boring as it might sound it sounds exciting and can you share again what is the time frame for the testing that you're doing oh yes of course I'm so sorry um so our counts this year are September 10th through 24th so they kicked off on Saturday the 10th um and we count three Saturdays and then two consecutive weeks of weekdays and we do those Tuesdays through Thursday mornings because um if you're anything like me you might be running a little bit late on a Monday morning and so we know Mondays are hard for people not just volunteers but can change our commuting patterns the same thing for Fridays right we might be taking off early we might be um you know taking a day off there are a lot of folks that have changed their work schedule so they're working for 10s and those Fridays they might just not be driving into work or walking into work um and and I guess one thing I didn't say was the reason that we collect this data is um and the reason there's a critical need for this data is that generally when we talk about traffic counts the data that's being collected is just vehicles so we're not otherwise capturing that data so it's really hard to plan for our streets and for bike and pedestrian safety and transit safety without having that critical piece of the data and when you see those little strips that are rolled out on the road and you drive over them um yeah those are counting cars and it's as really easy and DOT does that once a year and sometimes more often um we don't have the same infrastructure in place for data collection for our most vulnerable road users. Awesome well thank you Lee and so at this moment I do invite Claudia and Kirsten to come back online so we can just have a short conversation um wrapping up everything that we've discussed so far about citizen science or even in the case with the Drive and Earth Exchange community science and I'll give Claudia a moment um but I hope you all so far have enjoyed all of the information about the various projects that are taking place within the city of columbia or midlands area either what has already occurred or as we have some projects that are continuing and so one of the things that I wanted to present to you all and this was actually said by Kirsten is that with citizen science or community science when we're using residents within our areas it gives us some opportunity to feel in the gaps and so where we have the professionals that are collecting data and getting information there are times when there just isn't enough that we can get or our citizens have an opportunity to share more that we aren't familiar with so they're filling in the gaps for those projects and they're given this local knowledge and so I'll open it up to any of you to share why that is actually important and not everyone all at one time so whoever wants to whoever wants to chime in so why is filling in having the ability to fill in the gaps from our citizens is so important hey this is Kirsten one of the reasons I think it's so important is that I work a lot on climate right and when we talk about climate we've got two big weather stations in the city got one out of the airport we got one in the one at USC there are these long-term weather stations and we act like those are that's that's the truth that everyone experiences and it's just not there's so much variation and we need to understand that because we don't all experience the same thing and weather stations are made to be consistent across the country right they're all supposed to be scientifically derived with X amount of green space and so on around them but that's not how we live and so I think this other information that really gets to how we how we live and experience the city is so much so important to not the long-term records that scientists care they're my people um no disrespect no disrespect to the scientists but sometimes their agenda is not the same as the collection of data that we need to make our lives better and I think we're looking for a little intersection on that and citizen science is making a huge difference in that thank you any other thoughts claudia or lee I mean I would absolutely agree and I think you know just to to kind of reiterate um what I said earlier but in a way it's not just the gaps it's also having this qualitative so when you're not just collecting raw data like you asked kirsten earlier about what um what information she had heard back about folks in the tree canopy you know over time I think it's those snippets that can help us really explore the data better so when you sit at an intersection for two hours you might notice why somebody's always jaywalking in that location maybe the light doesn't work correctly maybe there's um maybe there's an ADA issue maybe there's a tree that needs to be trimmed that's in the sidewalk and we can look at a street cross section and unless we're really on that street cross section even as planners we're going to miss things and what I might see might be different than what somebody who has different concerns might see so you know maybe I'm looking um from the angle of a pedestrian because I like to run in the mornings um and maybe a cyclist is looking at um you know there's litter on the on the roads edge there that could be a dangerous hazard so we learn um we learn more from having those varied um folks really engage in the process than we would um and and you know we've got our blinders on we're looking for specific things because we we know that specific things contribute to safety issues but what we're not what we what we may be missing um is is sometimes even more important great um one thing I'm thinking about for all of these projects as well as citizen science in general is how empowering it can be for your your local base and so a lot of times kind of to what Kirsten alluded to you know we have our meteorologists our other individuals that are given us information based off what they have collected or their areas of expertise but when you're looking at citizen science it gives individuals within a community who may not be a professor or a scientist or a professional in any particular area the ability to be involved in something that is you know may have an impact on their quality of life or just a greater impact on the community as a whole and so I find that it could be very empowering why do you think that is probably important as we kind of think about climate change and the different things that may take place in the the media as well as a long-term future um as it relates to our environment so I just do heat is on my mind um and I'm worried about heat and I'm I'm worried about stuff and one of the things that really stood out to me when I was starting to starting to work on this is is moms um moms um moms in South Carolina um they're pregnant pregnant moms experience a lot of stress and they experience it in the heat and you're like oh it's hot it's hot it's hot you know like okay you know lots going on you're under a lot of stress like you know is there an empirical reality to your experience yeah actually there is there's an empirical reality that shows that the health outcomes of you being under that stress are significant and you get to say like hey look at these things look at how they work together I told you that this is important and it is and um it's not um as someone who's been accused of complaining um I liked it's not just me saying it I've got the data this is um and it is it's like don't don't argue we've got the observations it's real and it really um you know I think it matters for a lot of people in our community who um haven't I didn't say a lot about it but we experience health differently if you've got um a heart disease or if you've got asthma if you've got lung obstructions if you're young or if you're old the way your body is able to regulate temperatures is massively different so we need to be able to hear from people and understand what those experiences are thank you Claudia you're going to share some information yeah and I don't know if my network is low so hopefully you can hear me well um but yes I also think that it has to do with I think as scientists sometimes when we solve problems or the way we approach problems is we're going to use science to come up with this protocol and and then people are going to implement it but I think when you engage people in the creation of the protocol then they're more likely to use it and understand it and understand science and how it works versus if you just you know create this protocol and just tell them like here it is and and just implement it so um I think community science in that sense is very helpful because you're not imposing or you're not giving them the solution you're engaging them to find a solution uh with them and working with them from the beginning to ask asking the question that they care about and and and that they they they find meaningful that are really impacting their lives in some cases in really big ways so like can you see all the thriving earth exchange projects um they're they're all projects that have come from questions that the community and has and concerns that the community has so I think that when we talk about climate change and how where our communities are changing um it having community science is very important because we have to start answering questions that are affecting communities not just not just in South Carolina but all over the world um and also I think um in in climate change we tend to think about what's going on in our own communities but it's affecting everybody everywhere and there's a lot of people that are not participating in the conversations that we're having about climate change so being able to bring like the lower richland community who has been marginalized for many years including the national park service has marginalized communities um so being able to bring them into the the conversation and to give them the tools to ask their own questions and to gather their own data I think that's very powerful. Awesome Lee did you want to share any last words? I think just to encourage folks I mean where there are some great opportunities out there are this is right now so um if you go ahead and sign up and you you can do one day you can decide you like it so much do multiple days multiple weeks we we'd love to have y'all um tell us what you think about our how people use our streets. And on that note um but I just want to say I want to thank you Kirsten, Claudia, Lee as well as Sierra and Bob for sharing all of the great information um about the projects that are taking place in richland county the city of columbia just the midlands area um I think what is taking place is great obviously it's needed to get data about where we live but also it does give us a great opportunity um to get this to get the public involved um I think for a lot of our citizens they find these things very interesting um and it may just not know how to be involved but having this opportunity is really great so I commend you for all the great work that you all are doing and we look forward to getting more information about the data as well as if any of these projects continue on or another project starts please share with CPAC and we can make sure to get that information out to the public um so for our viewing audience thank you again for being with us this evening for our quarterly webinar on behalf of CPAC we hope that you have found this very enjoyable and we hope that you will come and watch us for our next one in a few months so everyone have a great evening and we'll see you later