Pilot Grants
The pilot funding initiative intends to foster previously unfunded research projects, collaborations, and creative works that address coastal climate-related impacts and solutions.
Fifteen pilot projects were selected that received up to $100,000 each. Funds for these grant programs came from the California State Budget Act of 2022-23.
“Coastal Monitoring for Adaptation Planning and Beach Safety Using Network of Video Cameras,”
led by Alex Pang, professor of computer science and engineering.
Project details
California is home to 840 miles of beautiful coastline that hosts diverse marine lives, natural resources, and vibrant local economies and residents. Sea level rise affects coastal communities, making them more vulnerable to tidal and storm events, affects erosion, geomorphology, and hydrodynamics. This study will focus on coastal monitoring to help us understand the rate of sea level rise at a local scale, and with the same technology also promote beach safety using machine learning-based analysis of video from a network of webcams in Santa Cruz. The video analyses will extract shorelines at different time scales, beach use, as well as presence of rip currents. The methodology used in this pilot, as well as data and analyses that are generated, will be documented and made available via open-source software.
“Working Group Proposal: Accelerating Biological Adaptation to Climate Change,”
led by Beth Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Project details
Climate change is altering habitats across California, often at a rate that outpaces a species’ capacity to adapt, but a new suite of tools informed by genomics, including translocation and gene editing, promise to accelerate the rate of adaptation. While these approaches are promising, their application for biodiversity conservation introduces novel risks, some of which are as yet unknown or undescribed. This potential risk profile has led to hesitancy toward adoption, governance challenges, and questions of environmental justice. Our working group will convene to identify coastal climate risks that might be addressed through the application of new biotechnologies; explore barriers and opportunities to using new biotechnologies to address these risks, including questions of environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty; and clarify strategies to influence policy and decision-making specific to the implementation of new biotechnologies to biodiversity conservation.
“Disaster rebuilding costs and climate adaptation and mitigation: are we building back better?”
led by Galina Hale, professor of economics.
Project details
Due to increasing frequency and severity of climate-related disasters, such as flooding and wildfires, large sums of public and private funds are spent on rebuilding. Yet the equity of access to such funding is in question, as is the effectiveness of policies directed at rebuilding more resilient and “greener” structures. In the process of restoring their real estate, financially vulnerable households and small businesses might not have the ability to rebuild in a way that is consistent with climate mitigation and adaptation needs. As a result, their vulnerabilities will intensify, furthering climate injustice. This project will identify the key financial factors and policies that underlie the ability of households and businesses to rebuild in ways consistent with climate adaptation and mitigation and improve communities’ climate resilience.
“Greener Greenhouses: LiFi and RF-Backscatter Enabled IoT Monitoring for Drought Resilient Food Production,”
led by Katia Obraczka, professor of computer science and engineering.
Project details
The goal of this project is to develop next-generation open-source greenhouse monitoring technology to improve greenhouse food production while minimizing greenhouse water use, which will build drought resilience for the coastal agricultural sector. The proposed greenhouse monitoring system uses a visible-light (LiFi) and RF-backscatter enabled Internet of Things (IoT) system to autonomously and continuously monitor greenhouse conditions to optimize food productivity while reducing greenhouse resource consumption, e.g., water and power usage. Additionally, the LiFi and RF-backscatter IoT can operate battery-free which is environmentally friendly and also contributes to further reducing greenhouse resource consumption footprint. Our “greener” greenhouses will serve as a model for how technology can increase coastal climate resilience to drought and other extreme weather while helping improve food. production.
“Evolutionary resilience in kelp for climate adaptation,”
led by Malin Pinsky, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Project details
The extent of climate and heat tolerance provided by rapid evolution, and the populations most likely to evolve, remain largely unknown. Both questions are critical for guiding climate adaptation in management and restoration, particularly for foundation species such as giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) and bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana). Populations with heat- and climate-tolerant genotypes and evolutionary resilience to climate change may sustain ongoing harvest, while populations unable to rapidly evolve are likely to require restoration or assisted evolution. This proposal will develop genomic tools, community partnerships, and a proof of concept with kelp for integrating evolutionary resilience into restoration and conservation. Considerations of evolutionary resilience remain in their infancy for all species, providing an opportunity for rapidly scaling this demonstration to other regions and species.
“The Probability Engine: Using Augmented Reality and 3D Printing to Envision Futures of Resilience to Sea Level Rise,”
led by micha cárdenas, associate professor of games and playable media.
Project details
The Probability Engine aims to tell stories that move audiences to act for climate justice. Thisseries of artworks, including an Augmented Reality app, 3-D printed sculptures, and short stories that embody possible climate futures, will engage audiences through multiple senses that allow them to feel themselves within the story of California coastal resilience to climate change. The forms these sculptures and objects take will be determined by interviews with climate scientists, activists, and artists, in dialogue with the fields of climate fiction, augmented reality, bioart, and virtual sculpture. The first and title sculpture in this series, The Probability Engine, is inspired by artists and intends to make clear to audiences that there is a way to choose our futures together.
“Engaging Coastal Climate Vulnerable Communities in CA Policy Making on Solar Geoengineering,”
led by Sikina Jinnah, professor of environmental studies.
Project details
Solar geoengineering (SG) is an emerging climate technology which would enhance climate resilience by reflecting 1% of incoming sunlight, mitigating global temperature rise. Research indicates potential benefits, especially for vulnerable coastal areas facing climate impacts. Despite increasing global interest, SG remains largely ungoverned in California, nationally, and globally due to equity, governance, and environmental concerns. This project emphasizes environmental justice, and will engage historically marginalized voices—youth, low income, and BIPOC—in weighing the risks and benefits of SG as a climate resilience solution. With national and global policy discussions of SG rapidly increasing, this project will position the state to lead the country and the world in developing equity-centered SG policy that integrates the perspective of climate vulnerable communities into SG research and policy.
“Electrochemical water desalination for coastal homes and agriculture,”
led by Yat Li, professor of chemistry.
Project details
This project addresses coastal freshwater scarcity through the development of cost-effective, efficient, and scalable water desalination systems utilizing capacitive deionization (CDI). As water scarcity intensifies, particularly in coastal regions where rising sea levels threaten freshwater supplies, harnessing CDI methods to desalinate water with low to medium salinity (e.g., brackish water) is a compelling alternative to pressure-based approaches. Unlike traditional methods, CDI consumes minimal energy, extracts salt ions efficiently, and has the advantage of utilizing simple equipment which is easy to operate, making it possible to scale for use in coastal or remote areas. In addition, brackish water desalination has a lower environmental impact because it generates a brine solution with lower salinity comparable to seawater.
“Climate Action Lab: Combining Science & Art to Help Coastal Communities Understand and Respond to Climate Risks,”
led by Jennifer Parker, professor of art.
Project details
The OpenLab Collaborative Research Center is UC Santa Cruz’s most prominent creator of multidisciplinary art, science, + technology experiences. Seymour Marine Discovery Center is the university’s most prominent public interface, annually welcoming 65,000+ people to campus. OpenLab’s expertise and student engagement, combined with the Seymour Center’s space, staff support, and community accessibility, create the perfect collaboration to launch the Climate Action Lab—a multi-disciplinary and co-creative initiative dedicated to researching and creating place-based responses to the impacts of climate change by prototyping an innovative set of art & science exhibitions, events, and community-engaged experiences.
“Increasing Coastal Climate Change Impacts on Pinniped Breeding Habitat: Prediction, Planning, and Mitigation,”
led by Rachel Holser, assistant research scientist for the Institute of Marine Sciences.
Project details
Global climate change is expected to have myriad impacts on marine mammals, from changes in prey availability to habitat loss. For land-dependent marine mammals such as seals and sea lions, sea level rise and other coastal hazards could result in the loss of habitat required for reproduction and rest. This will likely result in altered distributions of these populations or increased crowding if movement to more favorable sites is not possible. As current haul-out sites disappear, these animals will look for new places to rest and breed, which will increasingly put them in conflict with human activities. Using data from the USGS Coastal Storm Modelling System and in collaboration with reserve managers, this project has the main objective to identify which haul-out sites in central California are most likely to be impacted by sea level rise and coastal climate change.
“Augmenting the California Firefighter Toolkit with Usable and Smart Data-Driven Technology,”
led by Ricardo Sanfelice, professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Project details
The effects of extended droughts, widespread climate change, and a widespread buildup of fuels due to fire exclusion have increased the devastation wrought by recent wildfires. More frequent and severe wildfires are wreaking havoc on communities, infrastructure, wildlife, ecology, and local economies, and underserved communities tend to bear the brunt of the impacts from these fires. Emerging mobile technologies, such as airplanes, helicopters, and operator-supervised drones can provide much needed solutions for the prevention, management, and suppression of wildfires, but adoption of this technology has been challenging. To address this challenge, we propose to deliver a deployable integration of such technologies in a “firefighting toolkit” that can provide locally distributed firefighting crews with global real-time information about fire progression, environmental conditions, and resources available to make more effective yet agile decisions.
“Turning the Tide: Understanding Access Social Inequalities in Coastal California,”
led by Katherine Seto, assistant professor of environmental studies.
Project details
This project will examine the role of coastal access and proximity for understanding central social inequalities. Such inequalities show no signs of diminishing. If we want to turn the tide to mitigate these harmful outcomes, then we must understand: our history of coastal access; current patterns of social inequalities; and which communities are most likely to shoulder the consequences of coastal hazards and lost coastal access. This research will be relevant for policymakers at multiple scales, such the California Coastal Commission and coastal cities and counties. In addition, coastal planning and development agencies are in need of these analyses to inform policy. The work will provide a detailed understanding of how social and biophysical drivers differentially affect disadvantaged communities in the coastal zone. These findings are profoundly relevant to the broad research community and policy and management audiences seeking to mitigate the uneven effects of coastal climate change.
“Dynamic Planning, Sensing, and Policies for Optimized Mobility in the Future Workforce,”
led by Carlos Martinez, assistant professor of Latin American and Latino studies.
Project details
The striking affordable housing crisis in the Bay Area makes clear that the burdens of the jobs-housing spatial mismatch are experienced unequally by people depending on income and occupation. Middle-income households are increasingly moving to more affordable exurban locations, trading off more affordable housing with longer and more expensive commutes. Many low-income households, often including people with multiple low-income jobs, can’t afford the time or costs of commuting, and end up living in overcrowded housing closer to job centers, often with multiple families living in a single house or in trailers and RVs. Our vision is to explore solutions to the jobs/housing spatial mismatch in our coastal region by developing smart schedulers, and help commuters, transportation authorities, employers, and other community service providers (e.g. health providers, child care, schools) use the tools we develop to mitigate the problems of the job-housing mismatch.
“Bio-intensive No-till Research for Climate-Smart Mini-Farms & Urban Gardens,”
led by Joji Muramoto, assistant adjunct professor of environmental studies.
Project details
The goal of this pilot project is to investigate no-till organic cultivation as a climate-smart strategy for small-scale growers raising vegetable and fruit crops on less than five acres. There are well-documented benefits of no-till systems in commodity crops (corn, soy, cotton, wheat) helping to ameliorate climate change through the transformation of soil properties and farm practices: increased water holding capacity, decreased fertilizer applications, decreased diesel fuel use, and increased soil carbon sequestration. However, there has been very little work adapting these systems for organic vegetables and fruits, and only limited studies on small farms practicing no-till in hand-worked systems or with only small implements (no tractors). This project seeks to evaluate the claims around productivity and carbon sequestration for micro farms.
“Designing Just and Fire Resilient Landscapes in Coastal California,”
led by Andrew Mathews, professor of anthropology.
Project details
Climate change is combining with legacies of fire management, population and housing growth, and human-caused ignitions to increase wildfires in the Central Coast of California. Responses to increased wildfire risk include prescribed fire, mechanical vegetation management, land use planning, ignition prevention, and home hardening. This project will study how the densely inhabited forest landscapes of the Central California coast can be made more ecologically resilient and socially just in an era of rapid climate change and increasing wildfires, and directly address the obstacles to and equity impacts of fire risk reduction practices, focusing on the knowledge and perceptions of fire managers, officials, local residents, including home owners, renters, poor people, homeless people, people of color, and Indigenous people.
“Integrated Rainwater to Food Systems for Santa Cruz,”
led by Alexie Leauthaud-Harnett, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics.
Project details
The goal of this pilot program is to design and build integrated rainwater-to-food systems, and work with community members to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities as part of a larger effort to study how the greater Santa Cruz community could benefit from the deployment of such systems. We will study a number of methods for conserving water and measure how long rainwater tanks can irrigate gardens under local conditions and with locally popular crops. Data and experience collected from this program will help to build foundations for local sustainable policy advocacy in Santa Cruz and to apply for larger funding opportunities. Our team is diverse, multifaceted, interdisciplinary, harnessing the creative vision and energy of undergraduates, graduates, and faculty, and builds on existing community relationships with local schools.
Implementation Grants
The implementation funding program supports projects that speak to the impacts to coastal communities from climate change, deliver clear outcomes and solutions, and engage partners to address the challenges from coastal climate change.