Big news: LA City Council has formally endorsed #ShadeLA, building on the Mayor's commitment & authorizing the City to expand, maintain, and fast-track both natural and built shade. Thanks to the leadership of @dornsife.usc.edu Public Exchange, in partnership with @luskininnovation.bsky.social

Great piece about why Zone Zero rulemaking is complicated for a state as big and diverse as CA. Thanks @nohaggerty.bsky.social for the clarity, and to the many (mostly) SoCal voices of reason including Max Moritz @ucanr.edu for improving the outcomes. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Finally some good news for LA and Eastern Sierra ecology and communities we rely upon

Yes, it's nearly November. And yes, it's 90ºF at #UCLA today.

Got to check out Festival Trail’s new modular shade prototype at Grand Ave Arts this weekend — complete with immersive VR art experience. Great to see such concepts come to fruition despite many site-specific restrictions, and thrilled to have them as a ShadeLA partner.

Thanks @ianjames.bsky.social for honoring Melanie’s legacy. LA has never had a fiercer watershed advocate.

Let's do this, Los Angeles

New story by @ianjames.bsky.social + highlights options for ground-based, mobile water deployment before, and in early hours of, major fires. An important space given frequent high winds. And with currently zero systematic evidence on options and cost effectiveness www.latimes.com/california/s...

With @gregspierce.bsky.social @edithdeguzman.bsky.social and others, and institutional support via @luskininnovation.bsky.social @ucanrwater.bsky.social

Just ✌️ weekends left to see Roots of Cool @descansogardens.bsky.social before it's uprooted! 🌳☂️ Come check it out if you haven't had a chance yet. We'll be doing a final walkthrough on the last day Sun. 10/12 @ 9:45am. Meet at the tables by the entrance. @luskininnovation.bsky.social @ucanr.edu

⬇️ happening next Tuesday. Register now and think about it later!

Spend your lunch hour with me, @gregspierce.bsky.social and accomplished panelists for a webinar on 10/7 introducing the 2025 Southern California Community Water Systems Atlas, a joint project of @luskininnovation.bsky.social and @ucanr.edu. Register at ➡️ innovation.luskin.ucla.edu/event/how-do...

Just a spoonful of political will could make a profound difference for those least able to afford the most basic of resources 💧 Let's get get some policy champions to address this -- both bottom-up (low-income rate assistance) and top-down (system financing)

Proud to join @gregspierce.bsky.social & our research team in unleashing this new resource for SoCal communities after 1 ½ years of work! Water equity begins with knowing where your community is starting from and where it’s going. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

The first ½ of the run of the exhibit I co-curated combining science-inspired art with civic participation at beautiful @descansogardens.bsky.social has been off the charts. Only 5️⃣ weeks remain. See it before it's gone! @luskininnovation.bsky.social @ucanr.edu www.descansogardens.org/visit/sturt-...

In today’s @latimes.com: ‘It needs more water’: Calls grow for boosting Mono Lake www.latimes.com/environment/... @myungchun.bsky.social

This is coming up Saturday...join us! 🌳☂️🍦😎 Details at www.descansogardens.org/event/a-cele... @luskininnovation.bsky.social @ucanr.edu

SoCal peeps: come out Friday for a fun and informative evening among folks who give a hoot.

Because there is no one better than @awalkerinla.bsky.social to help us better understand our city and its potential. Thank you Alissa for this great story on @weareshadela.bsky.social's launch day! @luskininnovation.bsky.social @ucanr.edu

It's not every day that one gets the Chancellor to endorse their work. Now we need all of YOU to be part of the @weareshadela.bsky.social campaign to 🆒 LA's most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods!

And we’re off to the races! Join us as we aim to elevate SHADE to the status of a shared civic resource protected and funded like the essential infrastructure that it is. Learn more + take the pledge at shade-la.com! 😎

“There’s a lot of reasons to despair right now, but if we change our radio frequency a little bit, we can connect to a whole different feeling. We can actually create the city we want, in the neighborhoods that we deserve.” @edithdeguzman.bsky.social Go see this show if you can!

Opening tonight (reception 5-7pm, free), on view through October 12: a series of indoor and outdoor art installations that my husband and I curated at @descansogardens.bsky.social. @samkbloch.bsky.social's NYT piece is a great appetizer! publ.cc/vGfzTx @ucanr.edu @luskininnovation.bsky.social

Our full report "Drought & Climate Resiliency Solutions for Small Water Systems in LA County" is out ⬇️. This is the work of 12 UCLA Urban Planning recent Masters graduates for LA County DPW. Which @edithdeguzman.bsky.social & I at the @luskininnovation.bsky.social helped supervise.

Some UCLA colleagues and I just published this @natureportfolio.nature.com article. Using over 470,000 user reviews and LLM tools, we found that disadvantaged communities have ~70% fewer public EV chargers/pc & experience more reliability issues—esp. among renters www.nature.com/articles/s41...

So Cal peeps: come to @descansogardens.bsky.social on Jul. 11 for the opening reception of a shade equity show I co-curated. Free garden admission that night only. Spend time with caring humans and remember our region still stands strong during trying times! www.descansogardens.org/event/roots-...

Highly recommend reading this brief but critically important dose of reality about the role of vegetation in spreading -- or stopping! -- urban 🔥 written by @ucanr.bsky.social colleague Max Moritz. Major pending decisions depend on this knowledge getting out there www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

Check it out⬇️ This is a snapshot re: which water systems were affected, who they serve, and how they might move forward. To coincidentally match the 11 water supply systems, it took 11 authors from @luskininnovation.bsky.social , @ucanr.bsky.social, @umassamherst.bsky.social & Stantec to compile!

Learn some eye-opening facts about the impact of LA's fires on water systems in this article and new report. As always, thanks @ianjames.bsky.social for the incisive coverage, and @gregspierce.bsky.social for spearheading the work.

Went back out into the #PalisadesFire burn scar this week to collect forensic LiDAR data on trees and fire dynamics. Things that give me hope: a newly planted oak and a few mature CA natives bouncing back 4 months after being heavily scorched.

Pre-order the ultimate summer read and help @samkbloch.bsky.social have a successful book launch. Out 7/22. It’s also the perfect companion to a trees+shade exhibit I’m co-curating 7/12-10/12 @descansogardens.bsky.social. More soon on that! bookshop.org/p/books/shad...

⚠️ ACTION ALERT ⚠️ The City of LA's proposed budget aims to eliminate the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office. Please submit a comment to protect @cemo-ej4la.bsky.social before the public hearing Fri. 4/25 @1pm. And thank you! ✍️ LACouncilComment.com and reference Council File No. 25-0600

New results from the annual Quality of Life Index presented by Zev Yaroslavsky at the #LuskinSummit this morning point to a harsh reality: many LA taxpayers are unwilling or unable to pay for the investments needed to make the region more resilient to the next crisis. Where do we go from here?

Team work makes the dream work! BIG THANKS to volunteers who made 1st part of #PalisadesFire tree assessment possible, joining us from @ucanr.bsky.social @forestservice.bsky.social @treepeople-org.bsky.social @uclaextension.bsky.social @luskininnovation.bsky.social 🙏 Bonus: Can you spot the Xmas 🎄?

Thrilled to be leading this w @fkearns.bsky.social, @edithdeguzman.bsky.social and Erik Porse. Thanks to the UCLA Climate and Wildfire Initiative @uclasustainablela.bsky.social for enabling this work. Look forward to collaborating w many folks here and welcome your ideas!

What happens when you're rooted in the ground and can't escape 🔥? If you're a 🌳, luckily your ancestors developed a host of adaptive responses they passed on to you. Here are a few we saw in our #PalisadesFire fieldwork. @ucanr.bsky.social @luskininnovation.bsky.social

Wrapped up phase 1 of data collection in #PalisadesFire. Many trees still standing, many survived when everything around burned. This was no forest fire. In a wind-driven, urban fire like this, we see many trees burned by the built environment @ucanr.bsky.social @luskininnovation.bsky.social

Happening tomorrow!

Honored to be part of this conversation, coming up on April 3 and featuring some of my favorite thinkers (your truly not included in that statement).

While we're on the topic...the difference btwn SCORCHED and CONSUMED in palms in #PalisadesFire. Learn much more in the newly-published manual by @ucanr.bsky.social + @forestservice.bsky.social colleagues. 34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.azureedge.net/-/media/calf...

Started ground data collection in #PalisadesFire this week with support from @ucanr.bsky.social. Plenty of perplexing evidence testing conventional knowledge about fire behavior and the role of vegetation. 🌴🔥 Here are 2 views of 2 canary island palms shot across the street from each other.

Spent the day w @ucanr.bsky.social @forestservice.bsky.social @ucdavis.bsky.social colleagues doing forensic tree research in #EatonFire. What I saw tested some key assumptions that are circulating about the role of vegetation in spreading fire.

Our Nature Water comment “Redefining expectations for urban water supply systems to fight wildfire” is out ⬇️. I started working on this w/ @edithdeguzman.bsky.social and @mullinmeg.bsky.social 10 days after the fires started. We lay out 3 major implications from the fires for water supply systems

I just emailed my legislators to urge them to protect @uofcalifornia.bsky.social state funding -- which has already been impacted by undiscriminating federal cuts. Communities across CA benefit from these investments. Join me and tell the CA legislature to protect UC's budget 💸 🗳️ bit.ly/3Dcom6e

Are urban water systems able to put out wildfires? A question @gregspierce.bsky.social and I got A LOT during the recent LA fires. This set of FAQs is our attempt to answer that and many other questions related to water supply infrastructure and wildfire innovation.luskin.ucla.edu/wp-content/u...

Spend your lunch hour with me and @gregspierce.bsky.social on 2/24. We'll present on 💧 supply ✚ wild 🔥 ... the topic that's dominated our lives since last month's megafires. Zoom link: tinyurl.com/WebinarFeb24 Thanks @ucanr.bsky.social Water Program Team and @ucanrwater.bsky.social for co-hosting!

Join us for the next @ucanr.bsky.social Water Webinar series talk on Feb. 24, '25 at 12PM, with @edithdeguzman.bsky.social and @gregspierce.bsky.social: "Water Supply and the Los Angeles Fires: Emerging Lessons and Implications". Zoom links: tinyurl.com/anrwaterwebi... and at tinyurl.com/yuccgenm

Join me and several distinguished tree-folk this Thursday! @lindsaydarling.bsky.social (Morton Arboretum), Elektra Fike-Data (Tree San Diego), Hamil Pearsall (Temple University), Elizabeth Riedman (US EPA) and yours truly will discuss 🌳 planting and care barriers -- and how to overcome them

Holding out hope that when the barrage of finger-pointing in the wake of the fires subsides, one thing will remain: interest in better understanding and actually supporting improvement of water systems and the broader preparedness measures that are needed to meet the challenges of our changed era.