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At the UC Santa Barbara Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, the next crop of environmental leaders work together to tackle real-world problems.
This story was originally published in June 2024.
The mission of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara is as simple as it is noble: to solve environmental problems. But those problems are anything but straightforward.
That’s why the capstone projects in the school’s master’s programs require students to work in groups made up of students from several different disciplines. An individual option isn’t even offered.
The collaboration model makes the Bren School stand out from many other university master’s programs, where departments are siloed in their own buildings and very little cross-pollination of ideas occurs. Bren takes this approach because, as assistant dean Dr. Satie Airamé explains, “you can’t solve these complex environmental problems alone. It’s just not possible.”
The issue may require an understanding of biology, Satie says, or the way people relate to a habitat. Or it might call for knowledge of economics, political drivers, or social behavior. “There are so many facets,” she says.
Founded in 1991 and named in 1997 after philanthropist and donor Donald Bren, the school has always emphasized complementary skills over individual talent. Being headquartered in Santa Barbara, the birthplace of the modern environmental movement, hasn’t hurt either.
“We’re in a community where people support innovation,” says Satie, naming the city and the county, water districts, private companies, the Channel Islands National Park, the Los Padres National Forest, and others as valuable partners and clients. “It’s a wonderful place to live and work.”
These three capstone projects by Bren School teams represent the school’s two main master’s programs ― Environmental Science and Management, and Environmental Data Science ― as well as its Eco-Entrepreneurship track, where students develop a business model for a new, commercially viable product or service. All of them tackle real-world issues for actual clients and produce concrete deliverables.
Protecting Salmon to Save Whales
For the past 60 years, the population of Southern Resident Killer Whales off the coast of Washington State has been in steady freefall. Today, only 74 remain in Puget Sound, their decline attributed to losses in their primary prey base: the similarly endangered Chinook salmon. While multi-agency efforts have directed billions of dollars over the decades to protect Chinook habitat and prop up their numbers, the recovery projects have been frustratingly unsuccessful.
Bren students Ray Hunter, Lars C. Nelson, Meghan Roberts, and Logan Ruggles came at the problem from a new angle. With NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service as their client, the group set out to determine the cost-effectiveness of three common intervention methods in the Stillaguamish River basin: floodplain restoration, riparian planting, and engineered log jams.
They landed on floodplain restoration as the most efficient option with the highest potential increase in Chinook spawners, especially in the long-term. They factored in land acquisition costs, local demographics, and project monitoring, among other expenses. The group was even able to attach a dollar figure to every new salmon hatched within a year of the hypothetical recovery work.
Such granular data will be a major asset to project managers, who are always looking to prioritize and justify their efforts from an economic standpoint. The framework could also be applied to other watersheds and species, thereby supporting conservation consults and grant applications.
In the few short weeks since their results were published, Lars says he’s already heard from a manager with The Nature Conservancy who was interested to learn more about their conclusions. A one-time naturalist based in the Pacific Northwest, Lars says he still feels pulled toward the region and its beloved band of orcas: “Getting to do a project that is in some small way supporting their recovery and the overall ecology of the Puget Sound, it’s very exciting.”
Schools as Hubs for Climate Adaptation
Adapting to our rapidly changing climate can’t happen without robust buy-in on a local community level. But the obstacles to meaningful engagement are daunting, especially among underserved neighborhoods, where residents may be skeptical, uninterested, or simply unaware of the resources and tools available to them.
The Climate Adaptation Solutions Accelerator (CASA) through School-Community Hubs project ― spearheaded by Liane Chen, Charlie Curtin, Kristina Glass, and Hazel Vaquero ― is targeting California’s 10,000-plus K-12 public schools as promising sites to build that necessary dialogue and participation.
To do that, the team is creating a platform to geospatially visualize climate hazards in and around individual districts and campuses. Risks like wildfires, floods, and extreme heat will be mapped out in detail, with the information made available to school administrators, teachers, and students, as well as planners, researchers, and the scientific community at large. The group’s clients are the Bren School itself, UCSB’s Gevirtz School of Education, and the UCSB Environmental Studies department.
The idea isn’t to alarm kids and families, Kristina says, but rather, just the opposite. Educating local communities about the regional climate dangers they face ― and more important, the resources they can use to withstand those risks ― will imbue them with agency and self-sufficiency. “We hope this becomes a tool of empowerment,” she says.
You can’t solve these complex environmental problems alone. It’s just not possible.
– UCSB Bren School assistant dean Dr. Satie Airamé
In many ways, schools are already on the front lines of the climate crisis, Kristina adds. A number of students arrive to class every day carrying climate-related trauma, perhaps from a recent evacuation from a flood or exacerbated asthma due to a nearby wildfire. According to the group’s proposal, children’s hospitalizations for respiratory complaints are expected to increase 40 to 50% by mid-century.
Moreover, Kristina says, schools can use the regional data to change the focus of their climate-related curriculum so that it emphasizes local concerns, rather than national issues and events. California students, for example, would spend more time learning about extreme heat and debris flows than about tornadoes and hurricanes.
Closing the Tribal Energy Gap
Most of us take our connection to the power grid for granted. Many members of U.S. tribes do not. In 2022, 16,000 tribal homes concentrated in the southwest and Alaska lacked electricity. Even those that do have power experienced 6.5 times more outages than the average American household, with their blackouts lasting three times as long. Backup energy typically comes from expensive and noxious diesel generators.
The federal government recently allocated $720 million to support the development of renewable energy on tribal land over the next decade, with the most viable infrastructure option being solar and battery-storage microgrids. But high technical hurdles remain for tribes to actually get such projects off the ground and shovel-ready.
Enter Sunstone Energy, a new business model created by Austin Sonnier, Marissa Sisk, Ignacio Requena, Casey Walker, and Sage Davis. Their fledgling company offers tribes assistance with the complex pre-development process of microgrids.
Their proposed service begins with site surveys, data collection, and application of spatial energy models. It then transitions to clarifying tribal roles and organizational structures, understanding permit needs and processes, and identifying net-metering options. It concludes with calculating development costs, discovering financing opportunities, and helping with grant writing. The whole process takes about three months.
The model, and the needs it addresses, was developed through long-term research that tapped into Indigenous peoples’ expertise. The team interviewed 115 people, attended six conferences, and combed through more than 100 studies. On the technical side, they created a proprietary Environmental Studies Research Institute (ESRI) dashboard that’s not only rich in data, but also incredibly user-friendly.
Sunstone Energy, the group says, stands to capture 5% of the estimated $75 billion tribal renewable energy market. They forecast 500 potential projects valued at $20,000 each over the coming decade, translating to $10 million in revenue.
And they already have a proof-of-concept feather in their cap. Sunstone partnered with the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians for a pilot project that assessed the tribe’s elder and public works buildings for solar potential, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and electrical savings.
