just outside of the cvs that i could barely get myself to walk to, there was always a man sitting on the corner, covered in beads of sweat from the thick humidity and sun beating down on his bald head. earlier in the spring, when it wasn’t so hot, he asked for spare change. now, he asks if i can get him a bottle of water. 

heat already kills more americans than all other extreme weather events combined. by 2100, some projections show that deaths from heat may surpass the current rate of deaths from all infectious diseases combined.

and one of the greatest solutions to extreme heat is planting more trees. us cities are pouring millions into tree planting initiatives––washington, d.c., seattle and houston are already on track to meet million-tree planting goals by 2030. i dove into the heat issue last summer when i wrote a piece for the guardian about the shortfalls of these plans. i found that cities are really good at planting trees in high-income neighborhoods, and not so good at planting trees in low-income, majority minority neighborhoods, where it can be up to 15 f hotter.

the issue becomes even more complex when you factor in tree micro inequalities––yes, it’s actually a thing. boston seems to be doing pretty well in distributing tree canopy across all neighborhoods. but david meshoulam, president of boston tree nonprofit speak for the trees, described that low-income neighborhoods rank well in tree canopy because they have big parks nearby, which factor into the neighborhood total. boston is really struggling to plant street trees, which offer that shade on your walk to the grocery store, but you can’t see that in the data.

we really don’t know where to plant trees if we look at tree totals by neighborhood, like we have been. those totals will hide those micro inequalities that cities should be targeting. so, if houston has a goal to plant 1.6 million trees, where should they put them? 

that’s exactly what 100 community scientists in the city set out to answer.

on august 7, the nature conservancy and the city of houston had scientists with thermal sensors attached to their cars and bicycles to cover 300 square miles––the largest geographical mapping effort in u.s. history––in hopes to produce a detailed thermal map to inform their tree-planting decisions.

these 100 scientists, who i like to think were armed in their white lab coats, thick glasses and wirey hair––the archetype of a scientist––pedaling all over town with their heat-sensing devices, are sparking a trend across the country. the nature conservancy also has similar projects going on in phoenix, denver, los angeles and new york.

jaime gonzalez, tnc’s lead on the urban heat map community event, said strategic mapping like this will solve multiple problems at once. not only will it help with heat mitigation, but it will also fix inequities and help the city to laser-focus their mitigation efforts on areas that need it the most. 

many cities are starting to realize that many steps come before actually planting the trees. initiatives like finding where to put them are just as important as the planting itself––what’s another tree in an already tree-heavy area going to do? and it’s becoming more and more important as our summers continue to get hotter.

“this year there were 10 days that felt 105 f or greater in houston,” gonzalez said. “by 2065, if no actions are taken, that jumps to 74 f. that’s an entirely different city to live in, and we already see the inequity and we know that that’s going to get worse.”

as we see more lab coats hit the streets, hopefully we’ll also see city planners fill in those tree gaps. although we have a break from the heat for a little while, we can still prepare for what’s to come in just a few months.

i stumbled into science reporting, so i thought lisa palmer’s science reporting class would be a good way to dive in.

in class, we learned how essential science reporters are for the public’s knowledge of what goes on around them, and it became even more apparent as coronavirus news dominated discussions in class. my mentor for my environment reporting internship at the guardian, emily holden, simply puts it in her twitter bio, “i report what people do to the environment and what it does back to them.” 2020 is a banner year for science reporting – news sources are our lifelines for coronavirus information and interpreting the effects of climate change, which are only getting worse. as simple as it is, i came back to emily’s twitter bio often throughout my internship.

my first and second stories were studies that emily picked up from alerts – a new study showed that 1,000 metric tons of microplastics rain down on our protected parks each year and the other linked air pollution to an increased risk of childhood obesity. they were both short write-ups but came with plenty of lessons about fact-checking and connecting that science to the audience, which we talked a lot about in professor palmer’s class. science reporters are interpreters. it’s hard for scientists to communicate with the general public. their studies are filled with complex figures and niche terms that are lost on the public, and interviewing them means being willing to ask dumb questions to get to the meat of their research. 

i became very, very comfortable with asking those dumb questions. in an interview for the article “60% of fish species could be unable to survive in current areas by 2100 – study,” one of the scientists even laughed at one of my questions. it was a blow to my ego, but it ended up being an important part of the article. i learned to fact check every single line because if you get something wrong, readers will let you know, and sometimes they’re not so nice about it. about 15 minutes after i published the story “rare shark attack in maine may be linked to marine protection efforts“, i received an email from a shark scientist accusing me of spreading false alarmist messaging about shark attacks. after a phone call with her, i tweaked the headline and some of the descriptions of shark migration and walked away with the important lesson to always fact check your sources – even if they’re trusted scientists.

then i learned to always relate the science to the readers. microplastics are raining down on protected parks, but so what? that’s where i learned to dig deep and do that extra research to make that human link, like finding health concerns, inequities, or what our political leaders are doing (or not doing) about it. it was challenging to find that connection for some articles, especially “alarm as pesticides spur rapid decline of us bird species,” but also in some other articles like “coronavirus pandemic prompts record drop in global emissions, study finds.” but scientists can help you find that connection too, and i learned to always ask a version of “so what” in my interviews.

in the article “congress approves billions for us national parks in rare bipartisan push,” i had to make that connection to science through policy, which required i brush up on some civics. after reporting mostly studies, this article was a nice break – the policy led me to the science, and usually it’s the opposite. i learned to use people and the money to explain the impact this bill would have on the environment, which was a good reminder to always look at the bigger picture of science in the community.

i struggled with this the most on a feature story i worked on for the entirety of the internship. it was an analysis of trees in america’s big cities, which seems like a trivial topic but once i started looking into it, many cities were bad at planting trees in lower-income and black neighborhoods, taking away their shade in one of the hottest summers on record. it was a frustrating article – i always needed more information, another interview, something else to pull the story together, and then digesting those weeks of reporting into 800 words took a lot of trial and error. but i always came back to what i learned in professor palmer’s class and asked myself, what information do people care about? what science matters in this story? and am i interpreting those facts? looking back, this article was a culmination of all the fact-checking and science communication skills i’d developed in class and throughout the internship. after weeks of analyzing city policy, reading climate plans, and talking to community members, i finally published: “us cities are spending millions on trees to fight heat – but are their plans equitable?“

the most important realization i walked away from this internship with is that science reporting is crucial for the time we’re living in. our feeds are clogged with misinformation and opinions, not facts, about science, and science reporters are on the frontlines of fighting those false narratives. every article i wrote was a piece to a puzzle showing the big picture of climate change. looking back, it’s scary. my articles tell a story of climate change disproportionately affecting minorities, causing major health issues, killing thousands of species, ruining our land. but they all put us one step closer towards understanding the science behind what we do to the earth and what it does back to us.

“this latest capture is disturbing,” said mark fritts, a u.s. fish and wildlife services ecologist based in lacrosse, wisconsin. “we’ve never seen that many fish caught at the same time in this region.”

in the upper mississippi and illinois rivers, asian carp reproduce rapidly, have no natural competitors and out-compete native fish for food supply and space, which devastates native fish populations – in some streams, they make up 75% of fish biomass. asian carp, which can weigh between 60 and 110 pounds, are also notorious for jumping up to three meters out of the water when spooked by boat motors or loud sounds – creating a public safety risk and threatening a $7-billion sport-fishing market.

despite prevention measures, like government-contracted asian carp fisherman and dam barriers, asian carp have been slowly spreading upstream to the upper mississippi river and the great lakes. prior to this, fritts believed that most of the population in the upper mississippi river was confined below the quad-city region in illinois and iowa. now, he’s not so sure.

james lamer, a large river ecologist with the illinois natural history survey, said heavy flooding in the mississippi river basin last spring may have caused the fish to spawn upstream.

or, it could’ve been sheer luck.

according to lamer’s research, asian carp play favorites. from 2013 to 2016, lamer and his team in illinois tagged and tracked asian carp migration through the illinois and mississippi rivers’ channels in search for some sort of pattern. they found that carp species and hybrids are more or less mobile based on different water temperatures, flow and volume, which makes their spread a little bit more predictable.

“the water temperatures are still really low, and that’s when they can aggregate,” lamer said. “lacrosse might have got lucky and just got a lot of fish in that one haul just because the carp tend to congregate during those cold-water temperatures in certain areas.”

from his research, lamer knows that april weather brings favorable conditions to asian carp in illinois’ contained backchannels, which is a crucial time for government-contracted fishermen and researchers to extract invasive carp from the streams.

but due to the spread of coronavirus throughout the united states, lamer said they might not be able to get out on the water and curb their spread.

“the only thing that we can do in the meantime is analyze data and try to figure out what we have going on with the data we have,” he said.

but lamer isn’t too concerned – his research gives some hope to midwestern waterways. asian carp are finicky about their environment. their preference for deep waters could keep them out of uninfected areas if the water levels continue at their current low levels, like they have been for the last couple of weeks.

“long story short, i think any damage of not fishing for the one to two months off the water due to coronavirus can be mitigated when fishermen return to the water,” he said.

even if water conditions are perfect, history shows the mississippi’s unpredictable environment can be a natural barrier to carp mobility. for example, lamer’s tagged carp had an abundant year in 2016, but had barely any sign of reproduction the next two years. lamer and his team think it’s because changing water flow pushed unhatched carp eggs out of the upper mississippi’s uninfected waters.

lamer is keeping a positive attitude, but the “ifs” are adding up. in the worst-case scenario, asian carp spread to uninfected waters and decimate native fish populations and the fishing economy.

the midwestern waterways’ fate is up to mother nature.

“asian carp have very variable recruitment and reproduction, and so if we had the water conditions are stable for them like they were in 2016, then it could be problematic if we’re not out there removing fish,” lamer said. “if conditions aren’t conducive to spawning or movement and all of the gates stay in the water because we don’t get major flooding, it may not be as problematic.”

“it’s kind of a gamble – we’re hoping for the latter,” he added.

fritts is less concerned, too. last year mississippi’s flooding set back his team’s research, and he said every year has its own challenges.

“my rocket is set on launch as soon as they give me permission to get back out there. but we’ll just do what we can. these forces are bigger than us and we’ll just do our best,” he said.

oxygen levels of the baltic are so depleted that fish and plant species can’t survive in its waters, making it one of the most polluted seas in the world.

manure and fertilizers from its coastal countries account for large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus in baltic waters. this induces over-enriched seawater to grow excessive amounts of algae, forming “algal blooms.” as the algae dies and sinks to the seafloor, bacteria use up oxygen as they decompose the material, causing “dead zones” – oxygen-depleted areas, in which fish and plant populations are decimated.

the baltic’s waters are among many gasping for oxygen as a result of this process called “eutrophication.” over the atlantic, u.s. scientists are grappling with similarly-polluted waterways in the chesapeake bay, gulf of mexico and the great lakes. earlier this month, marylanders reported “cloudy, streaky-looking water,” alerting algal blooms in six maryland rivers.

“it’s very deadly, it’s very dangerous,” dr. tara scully, biology professor and head of an oyster research lab at george washington university, said. “it causes fish kills, fish just start washing up on shore because this process has occurred.”

as with many environmental issues, there’s no single culprit, but european countries surrounding the sea are acknowledging responsibility by experimenting with natural water filters and trying to cut down on harmful sea inputs. 

the baltic blue growth (bbg) project, which ended in 2019, connected a network of research facilities in estonia, poland, sweden, latvia and denmark who have been trialing blue mussel farms to fight algal blooms.

blue mussels are filter feeders, meaning they take up nutrients in their environment and naturally clean the waters. once harvested, the nutrients they contain are recycled for food production or fish and poultry feed, which in turn benefits farmers.

jonne kotta, director of estonia marine institute and bbg partner, said that although countries surrounding the baltic sea have lowered their nutrient runoff by 15 to 30 percent since 1995, it is considered that nearly the entire baltic sea was still being affected by eutrophication as late as 2007-2011. 

“the amount of nutrients stored in the baltic sea ecosystem are so huge that even if all land based activities which cause eutrophication in the baltic stopped tomorrow, it would still take generations for the baltic to recover to an acceptable state,” kotta explained.

environmental policy is starting to show that reducing nutrient inputs hasn’t changed the already nutrient-excessive waters. this is an especially salient concern for a body of water with such limited water exchange – water exchange with the north sea takes about 30 years.

“while land-based pollution control measures can and will continue to make an important contribution to solving the baltic sea eutrophication problem, it is a mistake to think they are enough to solve the problem,” kotta said.

dr. scully studies another bivalve – the eastern oyster – as a solution to the chesapeake’s nutrient pollution and algal blooms. the chesapeake oyster alliance, a coalition of organizations aiming to restore the health of the bay, even launched an initiative to add 10 billion oysters to the bay by 2025 to combat algal blooms eutrophication.

the bivalves’ kryptonite 

but nils hedberg, marine ecotoxicologist at stockholm university, believes bivalves are not necessarily the answer for baltic-like environments. 

although he said the blue mussel clean-up method is attractive because it’s pitched as a low-cost solution with potential to stimulate new farming markets, hedberg co-authored a report highlighting the limitations of relying heavily on bivalves to clean the baltic.

it’s unclear if the baltic’s waters can support the large-scale farms that would be required to make a significant difference to the baltic’s nutrient content. examples from the united states, new zealand, sweden, and the netherlands have shown that bivalve cultivation alters the ecosystem in a negative way and can even increase nutrient levels in affected waters.

“the risks will increase with the scale and intensity of the farm, and it is very likely that we need quite large farms to compensate for the slow growth and the high production costs,” he explained. “small farms will not cause any significant problems but will probably not solve any either.”

there is still very little research about the environmental impact of large mussel farms. in theory, hedberg explained mussels will eat most of the plankton in large farming areas, which makes it harder for fish to thrive there. 

he is instead a proponent of external methods which aim to decrease nutrients by changing land conditions so less nutrients reach the sea. 

external methods include agricultural nutrient recycling – farming methods that reduce the amount of nutrient-rich fertilizers. current practices, like intensive animal farming and overusing fertilizers, cause extra nutrients to leach into the soil and, through groundwater and streams, find their way into the baltic.

meanwhile, the baltic’s brackish waters – water with salinity levels between sea water and fresh water – limit bbg’s circular economy plan. blue mussels are native to high-salinity waters: this is true of western baltic waters, but the eastern waters are either brackish or have a lower salinity, which causes the mussels to grow more slowly and be smaller overall.

smaller mussels are harder to sell on the seafood market, making it a challenge for farmers in the east to commercially benefit from a push for mussel cultivation.

kotta said bbg still found ways to cultivate larger volumes of mussels in more areas of the batlic than originally thought possible, through developing farming technologies.for example, kotta said one of the new pieces of equipment was the “fuzzy rope,” which allows more surface area for mussels to grow.

next steps

kotta is now focusing on kicking off a mussel farm off estonia’s coastline, one of the most distant coastlines from the open sea.

hedberg explained one of the biggest issues is the knowledge gap in understanding the baltic’s seascape, like ecosystem habitats and currents. with the little research there is now, it’s hard to predict at the rate negative aspects of mussel cultivation will occur.

it is still unclear if the baltic’s waters can support the large-scale farms that the project requires.

“i think it is safe to say that we researchers never agree on all the details, and in this complex case, with a lot of knowledge gaps and large scale processes, we have a lot to debate,” said hedberg.

“perhaps it is possible to find a perfect balance.”