Editor’s note: This profile is part of our 11 Women to Watch in Science package.

Rebecca Peters’ first job back in high school was at the Mountain Restoration Trust in Southern California, working to clean up local streams and record data for citizen science projects. It’s a far cry from her current day job – leading 1,400 researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center – but it cemented her interest in coming up with real-world solutions to the water crisis. 

In her home state, “I observed the world’s fourth largest economy, powered by Silicon Valley innovation and unprecedented access to data and technology, struggle with environmental challenges that scientists had long predicted and could help address,” she says. “Initially, my interests focused on addressing California water issues” – such as those in her own backyard, scarred by drought and floods – “despite decades of climate modeling and risk assessment that should have enabled better preparation and response.”

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But it was on a trip to Guatemala that Peters, who also teaches science at Georgetown University, saw such abject poverty and destitution that she decided to address the systematic inequality created by climate change. “I came to see how achieving ‘water for all’ is not just a technical challenge for scientists and engineers, but a significant legal, political and social problem,” she says. “I chose to expand my skillsets and horizons to work across borders, cultures and languages.” 

Today, Peters’ work in applied science (the use of scientific knowledge to solve practical problems) includes monitoring droughts, making long-term meteorological forecasts and tracking change in Arctic sea ice, typically by leveraging NASA’s Earth Observing Satellite missions. In short, Peters turns NASA data into tangible action, particularly for those global communities hit hardest by global warming. She has worked in rural Bolivia to help improve water availability for schools, and in Guatemala to bring clean water to village communities – and, she has witnessed the health benefits safe drinking water can provide.

Peters, who is also an alum of the Aspen Institute’s Policy Academy, admits that her primary challenge is an internal one. “I’m learning how to drive impact sustainably over the long term without burning out or overextending myself,” she says. 

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Although, that didn’t stop her from rowing the Zambezi River in Africa from source to sea in 2024, across crocodile-infested waters, rapids and malaria zones. “Living with limited internet or electricity forced me to reevaluate what it means to lead and connect,” she says of the experience. “The expedition taught me that effective fieldwork is less about having the right answers, and more about creating the conditions for others to thrive — especially in unpredictable, high-pressure circumstances. This kind of awareness cannot be taught in a seminar room; it has to be lived in the field.”

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Rising global temperatures are expected to bring more frequent and intense rainfall – but many urban areas do not have the adequate infrastructure to cope.

In cities, for example, impervious surfaces like sidewalks and roads prevent water from being absorbed by the soil, which can lead to flooding. Additionally, stormwater can carry pollutants from the urban environment into rivers and oceans, degrading water quality and harming wildlife.

Sarah Waickowski, an assistant professor of agricultural sciences at the Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science at South Carolina’s Clemson University, has dedicated herself to developing solutions for these water quality issues – and teaching the next generation of engineers how to do the same.

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Waickowski’s research evaluates potential solutions to improve water quality and reduce flooding by using stormwater best management practices (BMPs), such as stormwater ponds, bioretention cells (often called rain gardens), green and blue roofs, and permeable pavements. 

Waickowski grew up in Fellsmere, Florida. And it was there, at a ninth-grade career fair, that she happened to stumble across civil engineering. “After reading about civil engineers, I decided that’s what I wanted to be,” she remembers. And in 2012, after gaining a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Florida, she began working in the field as an extension associate at her recent alma mater, collecting water quality and hydrology data from research projects as well as surveying sites to design stormwater retrofits.

“Initially I wanted to go into consulting, but then I discovered cooperative extension,” she said, referring to community education programs that aim to provide practical knowledge. “Once I realized how much of an impact you can have as a researcher and extension specialist, I decided to earn my Ph.D. and pursue a career in academia at a land grant university.”

Waickowski gained a master’s and a Ph.D. in biological and agricultural engineering from North Carolina State University. She has since moved to Murrells Inlet in South Carolina, where she writes journal articles, teaches cooperative extension programs, supports graduate students and still conducts her own stormwater-management research.

As both an academic and an environmental engineering consultant, Waickowski has worked on numerous stormwater projects to mitigate impacts of climate change and population growth, including North Carolina’s first comprehensive “green street.” 

The landmark project in Fayetteville, designed to help manage flooding during storms, was the first of its kind in the state. It’s a single street retrofitted with permeable pavement, bioretention cells – modular units which manage stormwater by filtering pollutants from runoff through vegetation and soil – and suspended pavement systems. 

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But one of Waickowski’s favorite memories was seeing her first-ever design – a series of bioretention cell planters that retrofitted a small shopping center in Pittsboro, North Carolina – come to life.“It’s just really special to see something go from an idea in your head to an actual thing that you can walk around.”

In spite of her wins, Waickowski isn’t a stranger to challenges, often being the only woman in the room. “I’ve been underestimated a lot,” she says, “which I think everyone experiences at some point in their career. But I decided I was going to prove people wrong by being one of the hardest if not the hardest working person in the room.” She adds with a laugh, “as far as I can tell, it’s worked.” 

In addition to her research, Waickowski has taught over 75 cooperative extension workshops, teaching land managers, government officials and the public alike how to manage water.

“Recently, there has been a growing disconnect between scientists and the public,” says Morgan Chaudry, Waickowski’s colleague. “More scientists like Dr. Sarah Waickowski that can bridge the gap between scientific and stakeholder priorities are needed to develop evidence-based solutions to water quality issues that are expected to increase with climate change.”

As for future ambitions, Waickowski simply hopes she can continue the work she’s doing, and make her own mark in the field. “I hope that when people hear my name, they say I’m a gem of a person.”

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Liz Dennett grew up in a small town in Alaska, bordered on every front by vast, rugged wilderness. Surrounded by extreme environments, Dennett was drawn to questions that “lived at the edge of possibility.” Over time, “that led me from astrobiology to geology to subsurface genomics,” she says. “Eventually, I realized the real frontier wasn’t outer space. It was under our feet.”

Dennett is the founder and CEO of Endolith, a company that combines biology and machine learning. It uses microbes to extract critical materials – like copper and lithium – from low-grade ore, supplying the minerals needed for electric vehicles, data centers and large-scale battery technologies. (A shortage of copper is one of the biggest threats to the clean energy transition.) 

“Basically, we give tiny organisms a really big job,” she laughs. 

Now based in Denver, Dennett holds a Ph.D. in geoscience from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and trained at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. For two decades, she led corporate teams at data giant Wood Mackenzie and cloud provider Amazon Web Services. But she realized she kept seeing the same pattern: “Massive, system-level problems being tackled with outdated tools. Mining was one of them.” 

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Dennett says the opportunity to apply her biology and data science skills to something as foundational as copper recovery was too good to pass up, and so she decided to launch her startup in 2023.

The company uses microbes, or tiny organisms living in the environment, to unlock low-grade ores – mineral deposits that have just a small amount of the desired material, which would otherwise be wasted. This approach reduces the vast water and energy consumption usually associated with traditional mining methods. Microbes can also help mitigate the environmental impacts of mining through bioremediation, or natural cleaning, of contaminated water and soil. 

As much as 70% of copper reserves are in low-grade or hard-to-process ores, while experts predict mineral demand will double by 2040. Dennett’s aim is to offer a cleaner, more scalable path to securing the minerals needed for the transition to clean energy and address the challenge of how to scale clean energy without causing more environmental harm. 

Endolith recently closed a round of Series A funding and raised $13.5 million, and announced last year that it had achieved significant breakthroughs in copper extraction. The company pointed to tests that demonstrated its methods were able to access minerals that were either previously inaccessible or economically unviable to process. 

To get to where she is today, Dennett has had to ask for help. “A lot,” she adds. “I used to think leadership meant having all the answers. Now I know it’s about asking better questions and building a team that can see things you can’t.”

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She continues: “Mining and biotech are both male-dominated fields, as is data science. Working at the intersection of all three means I have had to work harder to be heard or taken seriously.”

When days get hard – and they do, Dennett says – she stays grounded by reminding herself why the work matters. “I remember that the electrons flowing through power lines to power the screen you’re reading this on now, or your phone, and think: ‘This is our shot to help make that possible in a better way.’”

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For Madeline Walker Miller, who grew up the daughter of an entrepreneur (her dad) and an energy-efficiency company CEO (her mom), it made sense that she would eventually land in a similar field. The Detroit native is the founder of NexTiles, a company recovering textile waste and giving it a second life – everything from thermal and acoustic building insulation to punching bags and artificial snow for theme parks.

Less than 15% of textiles are recycled, and with approximately 17 million tons being produced every year, that adds up to a lot of waste – 11.3 million tons end up in landfills every year.

Miller turns a growing waste problem into a climate solution, cutting landfill use and associated emissions (landfills are the third largest source of human-related methane waste in the U.S.), as well as lowering utility bills and replacing virgin materials.

NexTiles focuses on pre-consumer waste, or textiles that end up on the cutting room floor during the manufacturing process, working with fashion, automotive and aircraft companies. The materials are shredded, although any large leather hides that are usable are sold and repurposed. The company shreds up to 120,000 pounds a month, and Miller has plans to expand following the purchase of a large warehouse.

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“The space is a former film studio, and we found some really cool things when we were cleaning it out, like gator shoes [made from alligator skin], which are kind of like a Detroit staple,” Miller laughs. “And so it just feels right and it feels good to be there.”

Miller started out as a dual-degree engineering major, but took an interest in environmental science toward the end of her undergraduate time at Spelman College in Atlanta. “I didn’t really know what I liked, I just knew I was interested in the impacts of industry and manufacturing on people.”

Eventually she was accepted into University of Miami’s environmental science graduate program, focusing on marine ecosystems. “I wanted to figure out the impacts of microplastics on the ocean, and in my reading and research I landed on fashion as a major contributor to landfill waste, and synthetic fibers that end up in the ocean,” she says. An internship at a New York-based recycler called Fabscrap opened Miller’s eyes to the scale of waste occurring. “I thought it would be really cool to bring something similar to Detroit.”

And being in Detroit, all of Miller’s first clients were automotive. “We just started off doing small local pickups and we’ve grown from there,” she says. “The biggest challenge has been finding the capacity to deal with large amounts of waste.”

Last year, Miller took a risk and bought the warehouse, but she has struggled with the competition against traditional waste disposal methods – like landfills. It’s far cheaper for a company to send their waste to a landfill than to pay NexTiles to dispose of their waste ethically.  “Price point, we’re not a landfill competitor – we’re many times the price of what it costs an organization to just landfill their waste,” she says. For that reason, she leans on the corporate responsibility element when she pitches to companies on why they should be upcycling their waste materials, rather than dumping them in landfills. 

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“It’s still a struggle persuading them,” Miller says. “We’re fortunate to have a pretty steady stream of companies that reach out to us just because there aren’t many people doing what we do. But when we want to go after a client that’s never heard of us, that is not being held accountable for landfilling their waste, then it becomes a bit more difficult.”

Miller and her team are in a “constant cycle of innovation,” needing to figure out how they’re going to upcycle waste materials before they take on new clients. 

Miller is now also studying for a Ph.D., with her doctoral research focusing on energy efficiency and affordability in public housing. She hopes eventually to return to her original ambition, which is to upcycle textile waste and make building insulation for social housing which she can sell directly. Currently she sends the raw material to insulation companies who manipulate and treat the product.

“A big ambition of mine,” Miller says, “is to manufacture our own housing insulation products that can be sold in big box hardware stores.”

This story has been updated to correct Miller’s name and father’s occupation.

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We’re finally back in LA, and reality has come crashing down. 

It’s almost been a month since my partner, Maurice, and I lost our Palisades condo in the fires. As I was six months pregnant, we temporarily headed up the coast, to the cleaner air of Oregon and Washington, and relied (in some cases) on the kindness of strangers to take us in. But LA is our home, even though I’m from the UK originally, and we’ve come back to the city to try to pick up the pieces.

The aftermath of destruction is emotionally, physically and financially draining. I’m still dealing with endless administration, including calling our water delivery company to make sure they’re not going to charge us for the bottles we can’t return, and Spectrum to ensure we don’t pay for equipment that burned. It’s the small things like this that tip me over the edge.

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While a friend had offered us her AirBnB for a few nights, we moved into a Hilton hotel in Santa Monica, as we managed to qualify for the seven free nights they were offering to victims of the fire. I was terrified about the air pollution, but figured being next to the ocean might help. I was also looking forward to being back on LA’s “West Side”– near my old neighborhood, and around familiar places.

Following another long day of admin, driving around running errands, and me trying to work in between all of this, a car pulled out in front of us suddenly, causing Maurice to brake hard. The seatbelt dug deep into my belly, which was quite painful. I burst into tears — not really from the pain, but from the shock. I realized my body was so oversaturated with adrenaline that my nerves were completely frayed. “I just want to go home!” I wailed. “To England?” Maurice asked me. “No! To the Palisades.” I felt like a child, but I couldn’t help it. I just needed to have a tantrum.

I was fine after a few minutes, of course, but I simply felt exhausted. Tired of putting on a brave face and of seeing the silver lining in all of it. I just wanted to be in my own home. We were picking up Maurice’s two boys for the first time since the fire and I was feeling stressed about that, too – how they were going to react not being able to go home, and how we were all going to cope being squeezed into a hotel room for a week. The kids are homeschooled and I work from home. I also hate not being able to cook my own food. On top of that, it was his youngest’s 9th birthday and I wanted it to be special for him, amidst all this chaos. All of their Christmas presents had been destroyed in the fire, and he’d burst into tears when we’d told him all his stuffed animals had gone.

But yet again, we were taken care of by some higher power. When we checked in at the Hilton, I asked about an upgrade. The receptionist took pity on us, and said she could move some things around and that she’d give us a suite, complimentary. I wanted to lean over and kiss her. The kids arrived and were exuberantly excited to be in a hotel — with a pool! At 5 a.m. the next morning, I got up quietly and crept into the living room to decorate it with balloons and birthday banners while Maurice wrapped presents. Oliver had a wonderful birthday, although it felt bittersweet for us.

We’re nearing the end of our Hilton stay, and the kids will go back to their mom’s for a week, before coming back to us again. They’re asking us where we’ll be staying the next time they visit, and we don’t have an answer for them. 

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We’ve tried to find another place to rent, but the price gouging is out of control. In the Palisades, a notoriously expensive area, we were paying $3,500 for a two-bedroom condo with a patio. In Santa Monica, we can’t find a one-bedroom apartment for under $3,600. I haven’t bothered looking in other areas because now, I’m not even sure I want to stay in this city. 

I’ll be flying back to England at the end of the month, where my family is, and where I can get free healthcare to have my baby. I won’t have to worry about wildfires or toxic air or racking up a health bill I can’t afford. We’ll come back to the States, of course, because Maurice’s kids are here. But none of us want to be in LA anymore — or even California. Most of our friends are talking about leaving, or have already left, setting up home in Oregon or Washington or Idaho — driven out by high taxes, natural disaster or insurance companies revoking their home policies. Because if an insurance company refuses to write you a wildfire, or flood, or earthquake policy, the value of your home takes a plunge. Topanga, once the coveted canyon of LA’s wellness elite, is emptying out — house prices have dropped in a neighborhood that’s always been in high demand because insurance rates went up for some homeowners by 400%.

I’m writing this sitting in my hotel, looking out over the smoggy Interstate 10 freeway. On the other side of the freeway is a soup kitchen; all day, every day, there are lines of unhoused individuals waiting for a hot meal. It’s this sight that keeps me grateful. No matter how stressful the last few weeks have been, I’ve always had somewhere safe to sleep and a meal to eat.

But it’s hard to ignore that California, once the golden state of opportunity, feels like a crumbling, unreliable wreck that’s shut its doors to anyone who doesn’t earn above a certain wage.

Lucy Sherriff is a British journalist with over 10 years experience reporting on the environment, social justice and human rights. She is a regular contributor to The Story Exchange.

The post An Expectant LA Mom Makes a Tough Decision appeared first on The Story Exchange.

Nobody tells you just how much admin there is when your house burns down. Trying to find the mental space to complete mundane, tedious admin tasks whilst holding emotional space to process the trauma of what you’ve just been through is a difficult juggle to say the least.

I’m lucky, we had renters insurance. That means we’ll receive money for what was inside our house – although it won’t cover anywhere near what we owned.

Some of my neighbors didn’t. That’s left them turning to FEMA for help. On the phone, a FEMA agent will visually walk you through what was in your house – every room is reduced to a list with a price tag attached. The agency will then calculate roughly how much the belongings in your home are worth, and pay you a fraction of what they cost. One neighbor, who’d lived in her house for almost two decades with her family of four, was offered $11,000 for everything that was inside it. She broke out in hives and told me it had retraumatized her.

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I’m actually doubly lucky. Our insurance company, by some act of God, decided that we wouldn’t have to individually itemize every single belonging we had ever bought. That’s what my other neighbor, a single mom, is going through right now. Can you imagine sitting down and making a list of everything you owned, and then trying to remember what you paid for it – and then tracking down the receipt? I burst into tears with relief when I found out I wouldn’t have to do that, and I mentally added it to my list of blessings that I’ve been counting since the fire broke out.

It’s funny actually, I’ve never been so grateful as I have been these last two weeks. (Has it really only been two weeks?!) I’ve certainly played mental gymnastics with myself. As soon as I start thinking about our home and community in the Palisades – about the now-destroyed public library where we homeschooled the kids, their karate dojo, the farmer’s market on Sundays, our tiny patio where I grew herbs, the way the morning sunlight streamed through the French doors at the back and hit the breakfast table just right – I pull myself out of it and I count our blessings.

For example, a group of women I spent a few days with on a fellowship back in 2023 pooled together and Venmo’d me money so I could buy some essentials. “If we lived closer we’d be bringing you food and clothes,” they told me. I haven’t spoken to these women since the fellowship, and I was deeply, deeply touched. Another friend I met up for breakfast with when I was in Seattle for two nights for a reporting job handed me a box of maternity clothes and baby onesies. She’d been collecting them for me, and a friend of hers – who I’ve never met – had gone out and bought me some brand new maternity bras. 

And finally, the innumerable emails from complete strangers that I’ve received after TV interviews I’ve done, offering myself and my family a place to stay. One woman emailed me all the way from Seattle. She had seen CNN interview me, and I happened to do the interview from my car, because I had no other place to call in from. “You are so welcome to stay in my home for as long as you need,” she said in this email, telling me a bit about herself – a widow in her seventies, with two dogs. In a strange twist of fate, this was right before my reporting job in Seattle. My gut told me to reply, and I did, and we ended up staying with her for the two nights, and making a friend for life.

It’s truly these acts of kindness – and there are so many more I don’t have room to mention – that have pulled me through the past two weeks. On top of everything, I’m six months pregnant. These acts of kindness have kept me grateful, they’ve humbled me, and they’ve shown me that in the midst of all of this chaos and darkness and turbulence, there is so much generosity out there. 

Los Angeles has a reputation for being a cold, detached city, where everyone lives in their self-centered silos, trying to “make it.” But this tragedy has united the city in a way I’ve never seen before. The entire city has banded together to volunteer and look after those of us who have been ousted from their homes. People have opened doors that have been shut for decades, offering to take in anyone who needs a bed. It’s given me a fondness for the city I never had before. 

I’m driving back south along the I5 now, heading towards home. We’ve made the most of the credits AirBnB distributed to fire victims, but they’re about to run out. We have a complimentary hotel room booked for seven nights, thanks to LA’s 211 nonprofit partnership with the Hilton. I’m half dreading it – wondering whether this is when what I’ve lost will really hit home, when the four of us are all either trying to work and take Zoom calls or do schoolwork and online classes, all from the same hotel room. The other half of me can’t wait to get back to my community and pitch in to help where I can. 

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I’m deeply worried about the pollution, and the impact it might have on my unborn child. The air quality index I usually rely on tells me the air in LA – and even in the Palisades, the worst hit neighborhood – is “good.” I can’t believe that. Other reports tell me chlorine and lead levels have soared. One friend who lives in Santa Monica, where we will be staying in our hotel room, says the neighborhood is blanketed in ash. We tried to find a hotel room in a different part of the city but it feels as if the entire city is unsafe. We can’t go too far east because of the Altadena fires. At least this way we’ll be by the ocean breeze, which I figure will help dispel at least some of the pollutants. But to be honest, I’m just guessing.

As for the future, we’re trying not to think too far ahead. The next events on the horizon I’m focusing on are my stepson’s 9th birthday, and my 28-week scan – they’ll both take place while we’re staying at the Hilton. After we’ve exhausted our hotel stay, who knows where we’ll go. 

Lucy Sherriff is a British journalist with over 10 years experience reporting on the environment, social justice and human rights. She is a regular contributor to The Story Exchange. We’ll be checking back with her to see how she (and baby) are doing. 

The post On the Road Back to Los Angeles…And Feeling Grateful appeared first on The Story Exchange.

The author wearing borrowed clothes from a friend.

What It’s Been Like to Be Pregnant and (Now) Homeless in LA

Our writer Lucy Sherriff lost her condo in the fires. She shares her raw story – and her concerns about the impact of toxic air on her unborn baby’s health.

January 15, 2025

By Lucy Sherriff

It’s been a week since my home burnt to the ground in the Palisades fire. 

Decades of journals, my partner Maurice’s artwork, yellowing recipe books passed down through generations, the kids’ bikes we bought second-hand for Christmas. A falling apart bear called Clifford. Hard drives with years of documentary filming and photography. A small drawer I’d cleared out, empty save for a tiny onesie — our unborn baby’s first piece of clothing. 

I could go on, and on, and on.

But it’s all gone…reduced to ashes in a blazing inferno that’s still raging.

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We’re not alone, though. And the thought that we’re part of a collective trauma and experience has saved me from plummeting into a bottomless pit of self-pity and “why me?!” narrative innumerable times.

Thousands have lost their homes in the Palisades and Eaton fires. Tens of thousands are still being evacuated. In a city that already had a housing crisis, this is a disaster in the truest sense. Where will we all go? On top of all of it, I’m six months pregnant. I’ve been terrified about the toll all of this will take on my unborn child. 

I’ve already had a terrible scare. After we finally evacuated to a friend’s house in nearby La Crescenta, I noticed something wet between my legs. “Oh my god,” I thought, “have my waters broken from the stress?” I rushed to the bathroom, but it was only my pants that were wet, soaked from when I’d hosed our condo down, a vain attempt to protect it from going up in flames. I forced myself to breathe and slow my heart rate down – but it was a brutal reminder that my body wasn’t going through this alone. I wasn’t just in flight-or-fight mode – I had to be in protect mode, too.

We originally thought our home had made it. And it had, through that first night, as a neighbor had called early last Wednesday to let us know. But by the time we made it over to the Palisades (thanks to my press credentials) just a few hours later to check on it, we were greeted by a pile of rubble, still on fire. I doubled over when I saw it. The false hope, and then the visceral shock of seeing our family’s home, the place we were going to raise our child, completely levelled to the ground, literally felt like a punch in the gut. Now I know what that phrase means. 

Two firefighters stood nearby, faces covered in ash — and, I noticed, mask-free. “Is that your home?” they asked. I nodded, sobbing and clutching my bump.

“We’re sorry we couldn’t save it,” they told me. 

I pulled myself together enough to tell them what an incredible job they were doing, and to thank them for somehow, saving my car – a treasured old Honda that I’d slept in during the pandemic and I was deeply attached to. I’d expected to see a charred skeleton but miraculously it was covered in ash, completely unscathed.

I asked them when the condos went up. They were already on fire when they arrived two hours ago, they told me. “You must be exhausted,” I said. They just nodded.

I told my partner I was going to get out of the smoke. One firefighter looked at my bump and nodded. “Yeah, you need to get out of here.” 

I thought about asking why he wasn’t wearing a mask, but it felt like a silly question in the moment. Nobody talks about that though, the impact all this smoke from things that really shouldn’t burn has on firefighters, particularly on women. Female firefighters experience higher rates of miscarriage than the general population. There’s a dearth of research, simply because there aren’t that many of them. They’re working in an industry with little knowledge of how their jobs could very likely impact their reproductive health.

I am aware enough of the impacts of smoke that I forced myself to get back into the car. Maurice drove my car out – over downed power lines and through burning brush.

We regrouped at my friend’s house. I checked my phone – I had an email from my OB-GYN. My blood sugar levels were high, so I needed to go back for a 3-hour glucose test for gestational diabetes. I put off calling until the next day. The UCLA receptionist told me the hospital would be closing early due to the fires, and it would remain shut on Friday, too. I still haven’t been back, and that’s weighing on my mind, too. I wondered about all the other women who might be pregnant right now – or who had just given birth, and wondered how they were coping. Yes, there’s diapers and baby formula up for grabs in the donation drives, but where are they sleeping? Breastfeeding? One of my neighbor’s has a 4-month-old, and I felt immensely grateful my child was still inside me.

We stayed in LA as long as we could. But the smoke kept getting worse, and even wearing a mask, I was concerned for my baby. Eventually, on Friday afternoon, we made the painful decision to leave LA and head north. We drove out of the city, the massive billowing cloud of smoke on our left, a reminder that the Palisades was still burning. We sought refuge at another friend’s house who lives in the forest on the coast – a blissful off-grid set-up that usually brings me a lot of peace. But I couldn’t relax. I hated being off-grid. I wanted to be connected to my friends, to the news, to the world. 

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Despite the serene surroundings, my entire adrenal system was still firing on full cylinders. We would drive into the nearest town every day so we could obsessively check the containment percentage, and so I could do the numerous interviews various media had been requesting. I have been working the whole way through – it’s my coping mechanism and it’s helped me dissociate. Unhealthy I’m sure, and it’ll hit hard at some point. But for now I’m just trying to survive. 

Eventually we packed up again, and headed further north. I have a story up in Seattle that I have to do – we need the money now more than ever – and we figured it would kill a few days. 

We’re waiting for the smoke to die down before we go back. We want to be a part of LA right now, part of the collective grief. We want to help others who aren’t as fortunate as us – we have our health, we have our car, and we have great friends. We want to be around our neighbors, all scattered across the city but forever bound by this fire. We’re taking it day by day, being grateful we’re still alive, and blessed by the support and generosity that both friends and strangers have shown us. We’re not thinking too far ahead, and for now that’s about all I can manage. 

Lucy Sherriff is a British journalist with over 10 years experience reporting on the environment, social justice and human rights. She is a regular contributor to The Story Exchange. We’ll be checking back with her to see how she (and baby) are doing. 

The post What It’s Been Like to Be Pregnant and (Now) Homeless in LA appeared first on The Story Exchange.

Editor’s note: Meet all five winners of our 2024 Women In Science Incentive Prize here.

Valerisa Gaddy grew up on the border of Arizona and New Mexico – in Navajo Nation. “I was constantly [shuttling] back and forth between res and non-res communities, because my parents wanted me to attend schools that weren’t on the reservation,” the research scientist remembers. 

The huge disparities between these two communities didn’t hit her until she was at college, though. “I saw how easy it was for people to call and ask their parents for help – my parents just couldn’t do that. I never had that net where, if I fell, they’d be able to catch me, because they were struggling themselves.”

As an Indigenous student, Gaddy came up against a number of other challenges. “Indigenous knowledge is still not recognized as science, and my dissertation kept getting sent back because there was ‘too much Indigenous knowledge’ in it. I was told if I want to be taken seriously as a scientist, I have to reduce the amount of Indigenous knowledge in there.” 

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Against the odds – and in spite of the discrimination she received – Gaddy defended her dissertation, receiving a PhD and master of science in environmental science from the University of Arizona, as well as a bachelors in microbiology from New Mexico State University. She now works as the community conservation director at the nonprofit Watershed Management Group, helping communities across Southern Arizona thrive in the Sonoran Desert. 

One of Gaddy’s projects is Cool Tucson, which aims to reduce the city’s temperature by 5 degrees. The average temperature has increased by 11 degrees over the past century, with half of that increase attributable to the urban heat island effect: Streets and buildings absorb more heat than green spaces, making cities hotter than rural areas. Urban heat islands disproportionately impact low-income people and people of color, and the project plants tree canopies in these neighbourhoods, helping lower the temperatures.

“A lot of these heat indexes are quite high on Native American land because of how the government built the houses – on these huge slabs of concrete that are impossible to have gardens on.”

Gaddy has also launched a plan to work with the Pascua Yaqui Nation, which is currently experiencing both extreme flooding and heat stress, to develop rain gardens. “The reservation is hot and dry, and when they do have rain they get flooded so badly that even their one emergency road is underwater, and they can’t go in or out.”

A rain garden is a cost-effective, long-term solution that provides shade and cools the ground – as well as alleviates flooding. Gaddy’s project hosts workshops for tribal members and distributes kits made up of native grasses, shade trees, shrubs and mulch so that the community can build their own garden. “We teach people how to ‘plant the rain,’” she explains, “by first digging a basin and then incorporating the tree and plants within it.”

By digging a basin no more than 12 inches deep, a pocket is created where water can collect. The tree and plants added to the basin help absorb the water, and the mulch helps prevent unwanted weeds and keeps the basin hydrated by slowing evaporation. A workshop held this past spring built 15 basins throughout the Pascua Yaqui Nation, which varied from 3 feet to 25 feet in size. The workshop’s success has led to requests for Gaddy to host workshops for other tribes.

Holding onto her Indigenous knowledge has been a driving force for Gaddy. “There’s a need for it to be recognized and acknowledged as scientifically valid, and that keeps me going as a professional – making sure that I intertwine that knowledge with my work.”

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Editor’s note: Meet all five winners of our 2024 Women In Science Incentive Prize here.

Danielle Touma is no stranger to drought. The research professor at University of Texas, Austin, was born in Lebanon and grew up in the drought-prone Middle East. Touma’s childhood shaped her career. 

“When I did my civil engineering undergrad I focused on water resources, and a lot of the things we talked about in class reminded me of the conditions we had growing up,” she says. “So it all came together later on in my life.”

Touma, who has a PhD in earth system sciences, has spent her career working to understand how extreme climate events have changed in a warming world. She uses model simulations and statistics to understand the changes in the frequency, duration and geographic areas of wildfires, droughts and heavy rain. But she’s recently taken a different turn and stepped out from the research lab and into the field – into Karuk territory, a tribe in Northern California, to be exact.

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Touma was doing her postdoc at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, modeling wildfire risk, when she was approached by a University of Washington academic to help with a joint NCAR project. “This person has really deep ties to the Karuk tribe and was developing a hydrology model for the tribe. They wanted to understand more about wildfire risk in the territory and they knew I was working on that already, so they brought me into it.”

She visited the tribe last June, and it “cemented” her goal of helping the tribe understand the wildfire risks they faced. “I realized I wanted to continue working with them. They want to understand what these risks mean for their cultural practices and their livelihoods.”

Climate change has been proven to impact the food sources of tribes across the U.S., affecting the supply and quality of traditional foods. Tribal nations are disproportionately impacted by climate change – including extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and threats to traditional livelihoods. Tribes have been stewards of the Earth for centuries, possessing an in-depth knowledge of the land and ocean, but climate change is making weather increasingly unpredictable. The number of large fires – ones that damage 10,000 acres or more – has increased in California in the past two decades, with 10 of the largest fires burning in 2020 and 2021. 

Touma’s aim is to help the Karuks prepare for the climate challenges they’re facing. “They know the minute details of how their land works,” she says,” and how everything comes together – hydrologically, ecologically, culturally. They know what’s good for their land.” Tribes are better at managing the land because they simply have more experience doing so.

She plans to develop a climate projection framework that integrates tribal climate and land observations with Earth system model simulations – essentially combining modern science with traditional ecological knowledge. The result will empower the tribe to quantify future wildfire, drought and extreme rainfall risks in Karuk territory, and enable them to assess best methods for dealing with the risk – such as carrying out prescribed burning to limit wildfires. “That will be new for me,” adds Touma, “translating what I know about extremes from these global climate models and regional climate models to how they can be used on the ground.”

Touma says she’s excited to work with the tribe, and hopes the partnership will create a blueprint for other scientists to work with Indigenous populations. 

“Co-creating research with scientists and tribal communities is really what we need to be doing to address extreme weather risks.”

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The day before we spoke, Brook Thompson had driven 350 miles to pick up a new fishing boat – hers had broken from years of disuse. Thompson, a PhD student at University of California Santa Cruz, is a member of the Yurok Tribe, whose reservation borders the tail end of the mighty 250-mile Klamath River in Northern California.

Thompson grew up on the reservation, and learned to fish as soon as she could stand. “Before that I was watching my dad fish. I got my commercial fishing license when I was 12 – so it’s not just a pastime, it’s a way of life.”

The Yuroks are known as the salmon people. Salmon is a primary food source for the tribe, who believe the Klamath is their lifeforce – and if the river is sick, so are they. And for almost as long as Thompson has been alive, the river has been sick. Three hydroelectric dams that were installed more than a century ago have contributed to low water flows, high levels of bacteria, and mass salmon die-offs. 

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In 2002, a catastrophic fish kill saw more than 34,000 salmon die in less than 10 days. Thompson, who is now 28, was seven when it happened. “Just imagine, the salmon were almost as big as me. It was apocalyptic. A whole generation of salmon we wouldn’t get back.” 

Following the fish kill, fall chinook salmon numbers fell by more than 90% and spring chinook by 98%.

The event left an indelible mark on Thompson, who knew the dams were at fault. Along with her family, and many other members of the tribe, she began campaigning for their removal.

But Thompson didn’t just protest. She couldn’t study how to remove dams, but she could study how to build them. “There’s no classes on how to take down dams, only classes on how to put them up, but it’s one of those things – you have to know your enemy.”

Thompson has a BS in civil engineering from Stanford University with a focus on water resources and hydrology. “I’ve tailored my entire life to understanding dam removals and how the Klamath River works. And when I have meetings with politicians I see how much more respect I get because I have these degrees – just I’m using different wordage and have these fancy letters at the end of my name.”

The fight to remove the dams had already been underway for decades, but now the tribe ramped up pressure. And against the odds, after years of struggle, in 2022, the go ahead was given to remove the dams. In October 2023 the first dam fell, and almost one year later, at the end of August, the final dam was destroyed. 

“The first dam came down so quickly,” she says.” It was just a pile of dirt. It was so amazing, like ‘wow, it really was this easy to remove them this entire time’.”

Thompson had hoped to be involved in the removal of the dams, considering her background, but never received a response from the construction firm contracted to take them down. It was a disappointment, but that didn’t deter her. Now she’s working as a restoration engineer for the tribe, serving as an integral member in the mammoth efforts to restore the landscape now the river is flowing freely again.

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Tons of pounds of native seeds are being replanted over the 2,200 acres of land that’s emerged from underwater for the first time in a century. (Four reservoirs were emptied when the dams were removed.) For the tribe, it’s a chance to reconnect with traditional ways of knowing, says Thompson. “We have a lot of elders working on the project and you can see how they understand really specific things about plants, like ‘when does this plant bloom? When does it seed? When does it produce the most seeds?’ 

“Having that really in-depth understanding about how plants work is how we rebuild traditional ecological knowledge, which is so important to me.”

The fact that the restoration is indigenous-led is incredibly meaningful, too, she says. “When it comes to restoration, most people have this 5-, 10-year timescape. But when it comes to indigenous mindsets, it’s a 7- generation plan. How is planting this plant going to impact 100 years from now? We have such a strong tie to the land, we know we’ll still be here then. It puts a lot into perspective.”

Although the dam removal is estimated to have a positive impact on the salmon – projections show by 2061 the chinook salmon population will have recovered by an average of 81% – it’s not enough for Thompson.

Her PhD – and the reason she needed a new boat – is for the DNA sampling she’s been carrying out on spring and fall Chinook salmon. They’re currently classed as the same species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. But Thompson is trying to prove otherwise.

“My grandfather was one of the last native speakers of our language, and I know that spring and fall salmon have two different words. Research shows that Native American designation of animal species is pretty close to the classification of the animal kingdoms. If we’ve had thousands of years of observations, there must be something special about these two salmon and a reason why we’re not just calling them one thing.”

According to tribal members Thompson has interviewed, the seasonal fish even taste different.  Spring Chinook salmon are classified as endangered but fall salmon are classed as the same species as the Spring salmon. Thompson hopes her research will mean more research can go into how to protect and revive   fall salmon numbers. On a wider level, Thompson also aims to change how state agencies incorporate indigenous knowledge. 

“The Fish and Wildlife Service can’t take traditional ecological knowledge into account when they make policy decisions because it’s not one of the things they’re allowed to take into consideration. I want to change that.”

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