written by researchers with uw’s global health institute and department of life sciences communication, the report identified several unique threats to the health of wisconsinites brought on by climate change. 

director of the global health institute and author on the study jonathan patz said in a panel with health professionals about the report tuesday night that experts have known about climate change’s health impacts for a while, but the situation has become increasingly urgent as experts gain a better understanding of the crisis.

“i think it’s the largest environmental public health challenge of our times … there are major opportunities for health in solving the climate crisis,” patz said. “to get to a clean energy economy offers amazing health benefits.”

the authors of the report identified several key impacts climate change has — flooding, extreme heat, and an increase in infectious disease. 

wisconsin in particular has seen increased flooding in the past few years, according to the report, and patz said this will only continue. flooding can lead to dangerous algal blooms, drinking water contamination through waste runoff, and more. 

similarly, increasing temperature trends lead to hotter, wetter summers — ideal conditions for ticks and mosquitoes, which can transmit infectious diseases, according to the report. 

in terms of extreme heat, the report predicted wisconsin will see three times as many days with temperatures reaching above 105 degrees fahrenheit by 2050, which patz said can have a variety of health impacts. 

dr. chirantan mukhopadhyay works in milwaukee as an ophthalmologist, or an eye doctor. he described the potential impacts of climate on eye health. 

“the eye is a very small delicate organ. it’s two centimeters, squishy, and we’re putting it in an oven. and like the rest of the human body it’s very affected by levels of heat and humidity,” mukhopadhyay said.

climate change puts delicate physiological components like the eye and the immune system, that often tend to be important to bodily function, at an increased risk, mukhopadhyay said. therefore, mitigating climate change means protecting people’s bodies. 

emergency medicine physician dr. caitlin rublee pointed out that climate change doesn’t affect everyone equally. often, low-income populations, houseless populations, incarcerated populations and others disproportionately feel these climate impacts. rublee said it’s important to assess the resilience of health systems to make sure healthcare is accessible and ready to address climate change. 

“how do we build resilient health systems and prepare now so that we are able to respond and be there for these communities?” rublee said. “right now the planet is sick, and … we have this opportunity to act, and it’s really exciting to be able to prescribe, essentially, health benefits for our neighbors and ourselves.”

the authors of the report also outlined how taking action against climate change now will reap benefits for wisconsinites. medical director for the kickapoo valley medical clinic dr. joel charles said transitioning to a clean energy economy will save an estimated 1,900 lives a year through the health system.

charles said every day he sees his patients impacted by climate change — for example, waste runoff makes people sick, increased rainfall causes dehydration and living in areas with air pollution leads to asthma and respiratory conditions. 

and these impacts aren’t equally distributed, charles said. communities of color produce the least amount of pollution, and yet they’re impacted the most. 

“this is a justice issue,” charles said. “if we transition away from fossil fuels, this is a major gain for equity in this country. because if we can stop the pollution from fossil fuels, we can make major gains in creating more equity in health outcomes.”

but to a small selection of researchers, that’s where all the action happens. underneath the snow lies a whole other world, an ecosystem of tunnels where many rodents, insects, microbes, and hibernators live over the cold winter months. it’s called the subnivium, and as global temperatures rise, climate change threatens this little haven and the organisms that rely on it. 

the subnivium forms under very specific conditions — conditions which can vary depending on the type of vegetation and climate of the area. in much of the northern midwest, where university of wisconsin wildlife ecologist jonathon pauli conducts fieldwork, the subnivium forms after a snowfall of around 15 centimeters (nearly 6 inches) and at temperatures at freezing or below.

according to pauli, the snow has to reach a certain thickness before it’s able to provide any insulation for the animals that live down there — too thin, and it’s just going to melt, or the cold will get through. usually, the subnivium temperature hovers around the freezing mark, pauli says, much warmer than the sub-freezing temperatures above and the perfect conditions for the organisms that call the subnivium home to thrive. 

“the way it forms is that you get enough snow that solar radiation will go through the snow and heat the ground. and so you’ll get a heat differential — the soil will be slightly warmer than the snow, just above freezing,” pauli says. “and when that happens, then you get melt. and warm air carrying that evaporated snow then moves up from the ground into the snow column, and it creates this pocket right at the interface of the soil and the snow.”

the subnivium can be as small as a little pocket of air beneath the snow in some areas, to as large as a network of tunnels navigable by small animals in others, pauli said. the size and breadth of the subnivium depends on the conditions allowing it to form, and researchers still aren’t sure what its scale is in many places, since it’s so difficult to study. 

many of the organisms that live in the subnivium depend on it to survive the long winter. but as temperatures increase across the globe, the creation of the subnivium, its geographic distribution, and the length that it lasts could come under fire. 

“the winter season is shortened because of warmer temperatures,” pauli said. “warmer temperatures mean that precipitation still falls, obviously, but rather than falling as snow, it’s increasingly falling as rain. and so we’re not getting the snowpacks that we used to see. that means the snowpack is getting lighter and that’s not good for the subnivium. and then you get rain on snow events and that can lead to the compression of the subnivium.”

recently, pauli’s lab and fellow uw-madison wildlife ecologist benjamin zuckerberg’s lab investigated the potential implications of climate change on the subnivium with a joint study using tiny greenhouses. 

kimberly thompson, a graduate student in zuckerberg’s lab, helped set up the study using greenhouses at nine different “warming sites” spread throughout the midwest — six in wisconsin, one in minnesota, and two in the upper peninsula of michigan — and in three different cover types — open areas, conifer forests, and deciduous forests. according to thompson, the greenhouses were about eight feet square by 10 feet tall, which is smaller than a normal greenhouse, but still large enough to make setting up in natural forests difficult. 

each site had three greenhouses — one for control, with the inside temperature the same as the outside, one to simulate temperatures three degrees celsius warmer, and one to simulate temperatures five degrees celsius warmer. united nations emissions experts estimate climate warming between 3 to 5 degrees centigrade by 2050, so thompson said they wanted to simulate these temperature changes. the greenhouses had retractable roofs to incorporate the natural rain and snow patterns. 

over the course of the experiment, the team found that at three degrees above, the subnivium didn’t experience too much change. but, in the five degrees above greenhouses, the subnivium area and duration went way down, demonstrating a clear reaction to the increased temperature. 

to thompson, the subnivium persisting at three degrees above current temperature was a positive surprise. but, thompson said it’s important to act now against climate change to prevent dangerous implications down the line. 

“i was happily surprised to see that contrary to my expectations, subnivia can still generally persist throughout the great lakes region with warming of 3 degrees celsius,” thompson said. “while we still hope that more sweeping, global interventions can prevent this level of warming, this resiliency could potentially buffer the subnivium from being completely eradicated and provide land managers with time to manage habitats in a way that promotes a longer lasting subnivium.”

to pauli, protecting the subnivium for years into the future could mean a variety of wildlife management tactics. for one, managing the landscape to support snow persistence — for example, planting certain kinds of vegetation that might take longer for snow to melt off of. or buffering landscapes to minimize the negative effects from snow loss — which could mean creating habitat features for these smaller animals that could take the place of snow. or, as a last resort, setting up wildlife refuges in northern areas where the snowpack will continue to be high for years and years into the future, at least until we can start to mitigate climate change. 

“there are a few different routes we can go to solve climate change, other than just thinking about carbon emission, other than just thinking about how we can attenuate climate change itself,” pauli said. “we can also think about the downstream — what can we manage to promote these species?” 

when the covid-19 pandemic ripped through the u.s. in late march and the nation settled into a springtime quarantine, many hoped by summer or early fall, everything from business operations to schools, and universities to restaurants would return to normal. 

but we all know that’s not what happened. 

“there is really no area of our operations that covid-19 hasn’t impacted,” said jill groednek, assistant market manager of the dane county farmers market in wisconsin. 

the dane county farmers market primarily serves the area surrounding madison, wisconsin. its downtown market, which runs outdoors around the state capitol from june to late fall, attracts thousands every week. because of its high traffic, groednek said wisconsin revoked their outdoor permit for the downtown market at the beginning of the pandemic, forcing them to adapt for the sake of their growers and consumers alike. 

in march, groenek said her team quickly pivoted from an indoor market to a pandemic-safe pick-up format, which ended up being a drive-thru model. customers would place an order from their favorite vendors ahead of time, and then the vendors would place their order contact-free in their cars. 

as spring turned to summer and the dane county team fell smoothly into their drive-up rhythm, they started to expand, and soon even got permission to re-launch a more traditional — yet still socially distanced — outdoor walk-up market. 

groednek said throughout the transition, they tried to support their vendors as much as possible, which included posting vendor information on their website. 

for brad wilson, a local farmer who’s sold herb and vegetable seedlings at the dane county market for 25 years, the pandemic meant an opportunity to branch into new, online marketplaces. 

“this year, i sold plants online using a squarespace website and square for online transactions,” wilson said. “i think this season forced me into selling online and using cards for payment, which is a good thing because there is a lot of potential to develop these techniques into ways to sell more product more efficiently.”

wilson also sells at the nearby baraboo county market, which he could continue to do as it reopened with social distancing measures in place. while wilson said he didn’t make as much this summer as he might usually, it “wasn’t a bad summer.” 

for other vendors, covid meant focusing more on selling to grocery stores, rather than at a market. pam augustyn of canopy gardens — a small farm selling vegetables and herbs — said she doesn’t plan to return to the farmers market until it returns to normal operations. augustyn said they tried out the drive-up format, decided it wasn’t quite right for their operation, and chose instead to focus on their efforts selling to grocery stores. 

“we have adapted and are continuing to adapt with marketing, and we are now looking into packaging more of our items for selling at grocery stores versus the farm market,” augustyn said. “what we plant and offer next year will be based on what we have adapted this year — we have been looking at alternate ways of packing the things we grow to be more accessible for grocery stores to sell.”

like wilson, augustyn said her operation took in less money from the market this year compared to previous — as much as three times less profit than usual in her case. but they’ve also sold more at stores, so while it’s still a loss, augustyn said it’s not as bad as it could have been if they hadn’t changed their delivery methods. 

in light of their new marketing strategies, augustyn said her team is considering not returning to the farmers market at all and instead just selling their produce to stores. 

university of wisconsin extension specialist kristen krokowski, who works with the wisconsin farmers’ market association said while shifting gears to accommodate growers and consumers during the pandemic has been challenging, it’s also taught their organization new skills. 

the wisconsin farmers market association is made up of directors of farmers markets across the state. while they don’t interact directly with growers and consumers much, they provide resources to farmers market organizers, and in a pandemic like this, support farmers statewide. 

“our goal is to support the market managers and the boards and things like that, so that they can provide good markets for their communities and for their farmers,” krokowski said. 

krokowski said the dane county downtown market was the only one of their around 300 markets that didn’t return to some sort of in-person, socially distanced capacity. but she also said the pandemic could have impacted grower-consumer relationships because social distancing can make it harder for farmers and consumers to have meaningful conversations. 

at a farmers market, krokowski said, consumers can ask questions about where their food is coming from, and make a request if there’s a certain item they’d like to see, connecting communities with food systems. plus, farmers markets offer more than just food — local entertainers and small businesses use them as a starting point. 

“they’re really important social structures for communities,” krokowski said. “they’re just really important to kind of reinforce that sense of community and that connectedness.” 

if anything, krokowski said the pandemic has helped people realize how important investing in local food systems are — especially back in march, when grocery stores experienced shortages nationwide. 

“you can go into the grocery store and whole shelves are empty or (find out that) what produce you can get this week’s kind of spotty. and i think for the people who utilize the farmers market or csas or local food, there’s some reassurance there,” krokowski said. “having diversified local agriculture helps with making sure that we can have products locally.”

but one project through the global health institute demonstrates that insects can be so much more — like a sustainable protein alternative. entomophagy, the scientific term for eating insects, is becoming a growing trend — one inciting significant research at uw.

postdoctoral environmental health scientist valerie stull directs the mission to improve global health through insects, an initiative that examines the myriad of implications that might come with eating and farming insects — either for human or livestock consumption.

stull said mighti uses an interdisciplinary lens to analyze the social, environmental and public health-related effects these practices could have.

“we are assessing the impacts of insect farming on people’s livelihoods, health and agroecosystems,” stull said.

stull’s research happens both here and abroad — stull said her team works with communities where entomophagy is already commonplace to study its impacts on public health and environment. they try to determine if these communities that eat insects may also be interested in farming them, and what effects that could have. the locations of these communities range from zambia, south africa, uganda and guatemala.

but why eat insects? to americans who have never heard of entomophagy, the practice could seem unappealing. stull, however, disagrees.

“edible insects are fascinating because while humans have consumed insects throughout history, and about two billion people around the globe regularly consume them now, research on the subject is relatively new,” stull said. “they are under-explored and underutilized on a global scale.”

director of the global health institute jonathan patz works through the institute to support stull’s project, along with uw entomology and the nelson institute for environmental sciences.

patz described some of the environmental benefits entomophagy could have on communities. because insects are rich in high-quality protein and demand only modest resources like food, water, land and energy to rear, they may prove a sustainable alternative to other meat industries.

patz, however, described certain challenges to implementing insect consumption in areas where entomophagy isn’t a cultural commonplace.

“the biggest hurdles that still remain are cultural norms in places unaccustomed to eating insects — like in the u.s.,” patz said. “more research is still needed in address food safety issues, and our feeding studies are aimed to provide an answer in this area.”

stull also cited cultural barriers as potential hindrances to spreading entomophagy.

stull described overcoming these as a process toward cultural competency and communication — one that while difficult, also proves rewarding. it’s important to modify the narrative that insects are not food and share knowledge with groups both locally and globally, she said.

moving forward, stull plans to continue coordinating the logistics of efficient insect farming. one of her goals is to potentially rear insects to feed livestock in wisconsin.

her team is currently researching the “bioavailability of micronutrients found in insects” — essentially the potential nutritional value of insects — in hopes of moving this and other endeavors forwards.

“we plan to continue to investigate the social, environmental and health implications of insect agriculture broadly,” stull said.

patz said mighti aims to have an effect on lower-income countries first to more efficiently enhance nutrition, and stull outlined some of their goals in these countries and regions. stull said mighti hopes to provide user-friendly insect farming kits and training materials to farmers to test the impacts insect farming could have on health and nutrition at the household scale.

stull’s team published several studies on the holistic effects of entomophagy in communities. one study focused on the effect of cooperation between industry, government and academia can have when attempting to implement edible insects. another focused specifically on a case study in zambia, and the most recent study took a microscopic approach by examining the effects of cricket consumption on the human gut.

“i hope my research will have a global impact,” stull said. “simply changing the narrative about insects as food is an important piece of the puzzle.”