A hub for environmental information and transformation in Southern California.
Acknowledgment of Land and People
Pitzer College’s Robert Redford Conservancy is located on the traditional land of the Tongva/San Gabrieleño. Pitzer and the Robert Redford Conservancy recognize and honor the past, present, and future of Indigenous people and the precious lands we share. Read a full land acknowledgment by Tongva elder Julia Bogany.
Fire Resources & Information
Websites
We are facing the most significant climate disaster in Southern California history. Below are some resources for learning about and responding to fire as well as helping those in need.
Mutual Aid LA Network - Resource List for Windstorms and Fire
Community Organizing - California Fire Safe Councils
Wildfire Risk - wildfirerisk.org - Search your risk by state, county, tribal area, city
Theodore Payne Foundation - Ecological Landscaping for Wildfire Resilience
Home Hardening - https://www.rcdsmm.org/wildfire-defense-videos/
Sustainable Defensible Space - defensiblespace.org - Eco-appropriate Homescaping for Wildfire Resilience
California Fire History - https://projects.capradio.org/california-fire-history/#6/38.58/-121.49
The California Chaparral Institute - https://www.californiachaparral.org/
California Native Plant Society - Fire Recovery Guide
United States Green Building Council - https://usgbc-ca.org/programs/wildfire-defense-education-and-tours/ Association of Professional Landscape Designers
American Society of Landscape Architects - https://www.asla.org/fire.aspx
Books:
Firescaping Your Home: A Manual for Readiness in Wildfire Country, https://store.theodorepayne.org/products/firescaping-your-home-a-manual-for-readiness-in-wildfire-country?_pos=1&_sid=2ab836881&_ss=r
Fire Ecology, The State of Fire, Obi Kaufmann, https://store.theodorepayne.org/products/the-state-of-fire?_pos=1&_sid=59aff9a00&_ss=r
Firescaping: Protecting Your Home with a Fire-Resistant Landscape, 2nd Edition - https://store.theodorepayne.org/products/firescaping-protecting-your-home-with-a-fire-resis?_pos=2&_sid=2ab836881&_ss=r
Playbook for the Pyrocene - https://www.swagroup.com/stories/playbook-for-the-pyrocene/
Thank you to Erik Blank, horticultural educator from the Theodore Payne Foundation for compiling these resources. This is a non-exhaustive list that we will continue to update.
New edited volume on fire management and cultural significance.
Critical reading for the age of fire.
Climate Sentinels StoryMap: Your Local Insurance Agent
SoCal Earth StoryMap about Heat and Fire.
Southern California at-a-Glance
The maps below show how Southern California is doing across topic areas, at a glance. Click on your city or input an address. Toggle between tabs to find out more and then explore SoCal Earth topic areas and experiences.
These ratings are established by the Federal Government and State of California and are based on the best available science.
If you want to make your own map, go to our Make a Map page!
If we were giving Southern California a grade, it would be earning a "C" in the six index ratings above. Seems pretty average, right?
Compare ratings between and within cities to see how inequality and the built environment impact these ratings.
Compare cities to see how many places have strong climate resilience and healthy places profiles while having poor biodiversity, watershed health, and air quality rankings.
These ratings are an artifact of decades of dominating the earth rather than partnering with it, and dominating each other in the process.
Everyone can be part of changing these outcomes by putting community and climate at the forefront of every decision at every level in every sector, starting today.
Business Unusual: Putting Community and Climate First
SoCal Earth provides users with the best available data to fight climate change and protect Southern California’s diverse communities and habitats. We've designed the website to be accessible, empowering, and engaging for people of all ages and across sectors. Our open and often playful communication choices are as serious as the ideas and paradigms that inform SoCal Earth--a seriousness that matches the gravity of the environmental crisis in which we find ourselves.
The Earth’s rapid warming necessitates a fundamental shift toward decision-making that centers community and climate first. In short, it requires business unusual.
Four key principles anchor how we can enact business unusual:
Partner with the earth instead of dominating it.
Build community and connectivity to build climate resilience.
Prioritize the most vulnerable people, species, and places.
Meet Ollie!
Ollie is a burrowing owl and the mascot of SoCal Earth. This scrappy little friend reminds us of a key SoCal Earth principle: that prioritizing the most vulnerable species, places, and people benefits everyone.
Find Ollie around SoCal Earth helping to explain things in easy-to-understand ways. Like Ulysses, Ollie is our guide to the site as well as to more inclusive decision making in Southern California.
And kids, go to the Teach and Learn Page for more fun with Ollie!
Topic Areas
Learn more about topic areas, explore your neighborhood, and learn through making, interacting, and doing. All of these topic areas are interlinked within ecological systems. On our Make a Map page, you can add your own layers to compare things that might be separate in the categories below.
Visuals by Noah Cousineau. Sound by Ava Blank.