children are our future, as the song goes, and it turns out they are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat. unfortunately, temperatures continue to rise as a result of climate change. multiple factors put children at a higher risk of heat illness or exhaustion, including an absence of school heat policies and a lack of resources — in addition to children’s inability to identify when they are starting to overheat.

the good news is there are many solutions that we have identified through our research in south phoenix, arizona, that could be implemented to help reduce the impact of rising temperatures on children’s health.

extreme heat is dangerous to children because their thermoregulatory systems are still being developed, which influences their ability to recognize how hot/cool their bodies actually are, and in turn negatively impacts their classroom performance, health, and cognitive abilities. 

with so many other challenges facing children today, we need to give educators the tools to create solutions that can help reduce the compounding effects of increasing temperatures.

the challenge is schools often lack the appropriate resources for preparing youth and staff to manage the negative impacts of extreme heat. problems such as tight budgets, old infrastructure, and gaps in awareness of the issues and resources available prevent schools from taking action. 

therefore, we are studying how schools in south phoenix are adapting to high heat, and what they perceive are the most important elements of supporting schools to prepare for heat. 

our vision is to create heatready schools: those that are increasingly able to identify, prepare for, mitigate, track, and respond to the negative impacts of schoolyard heat. in collaboration with the city of phoenix’s heatready city program, our goal is to focus on community-level heat action plans that are correlated to city-wide plans to help boost the connectivity of mitigation and adaptation strategies. 

during our research, we conducted surveys and interviews and identified some potential solutions to the extreme heat that schools and communities experience. 

one of the most arduous challenges for schools experiencing extreme heat is funding for resources, such as shade coverage to increase adaptability. 

our interviewees and survey panelists offered their recommended solution to this, which is applying for grants to build shade structures and partnering with funders who share like-minded goals and values. 

in addition to partnerships for funding, it would be beneficial for a heatreadyschool to partner with local environmental and health organizations such as arizona sierra club, hue, arizona forward, dignity health, and phoenix children’s hospital. in doing so, heatreadyschools can access outside resources to fund school-wide initiatives, promote awareness of extreme heat, and educate community members about how heat affects them and how it will be resolved over time. a collaboration would also help alleviate and redistribute the weight of responsibilities that school staff carry already, creating more space for efforts to improve heat readiness within their school.

rio verde, arizona—at bartlett lake and other reservoirs around the state, arizona game & fish department volunteers are building plastic cubes to serve as fish habitat. 

the “fish cities” are called georgia cubes, which were first developed by the georgia department of natural resources. the cube’s design looks like a long-lost prop from a cheap sci-fi movie. pvc pipe is assembled into a 4-foot cube and secured with glue. holes are drilled into lengths of flexible tubing that are woven through and attached to the pvc cube. 

cord is used to lash two cubes together, cinder blocks are attached, then they’re dropped off the back of a pontoon boat. several hundred “fish cities” have been deployed in roosevelt and bartlett lakes this year. 

“these structures are beneficial to the lakes of arizona, especially these low-elevation desert lakes because they’re all very old,” said david weedman, aquatic habitat program manager for game & fish. “so at the end of this part of this phase of the project, we’ll have about 500 structures out here (at bartlett).”

the beds of artificial lakes in arizona are often inhospitable to fish because they’re simply desert floor and soil covered by water, weedman said. 

bartlett lake was created by damming the verde river in 1939. 

“most of the natural structure, the flooded trees that were in existence when the lakes were built, have all decomposed and broke down,” weedman said. “basically the shoreline is a barren sand and gravel flat. very poor habitat for fish.”

anglers also will benefit from the program. gps coordinates and photographs of the georgia cubes are published on the arizona game & fish website to guide anglers to where the fish are. if an angler has a boat equipped with sonar, they’ll also be able to find the cubes underwater.

hunter pauling is an intern with the department’s aquatic habitat program, as well as an avid fisherman. he’s excited for this project, especially because he’s at bartlett lake often. 

“at roosevelt (lake), we installed the same exact structures and got excellent feedback from pro fishermen who were saying that it was just wonderful that fish were just stacked up on it, and it was working way better than expected,” he said. 

weedman said the department finished dropping nearly 500 cubes in bartlett lake in early august. he said funds aren’t available to start similar work in other arizona lakes, but the department wants to continue enhancing habitat for fish in the future. 

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this story is part of elemental: covering sustainability, a new multimedia collaboration between cronkite news, arizona pbs, kjzz, kpcc, rocky mountain pbs and pbs socal.

negotiate with the government of mexico. reach an accommodation regarding the digging of an underground access tunnel from nogales, arizona to the mar de cortés. that distance is approximately 125 miles. the mar de cortés is the body of water that lies between the baja peninsula and the mainland of mexico.

in addition, build a grand-scale seawater desalination plant near nogales, arizona. the plant would be solar powered with conventional power back-up to allow the plant to be in continuous operation.

the us southwest has been water-starved throughout history. hundreds of thousands of square miles of desert and marginal land in the region lie barren and unproductive due to a lack of water.

with seawater access and a seawater desal facility arizona could serve as a freshwater hub for the entire us southwest. pipelines, trucks and or trains could deliver the water to cities, farms and households in the region.