The Richardson Lab is actively engaged in many science communication and outreach activities, from participating in the Flagstaff Festival of Science, hosting training workshops for K-12 teachers as well as researchers, and visiting K-12 classrooms in local schools.
The PhenoCam project provides natural opportunities for outreach and community engagement. PhenoCam imagery provides an accessible and tangible entry point for communicating the science of phenology, and by enabling virtual travel in time and space, the PhenoCam archive allows hands-on exploration of the spatial and temporal variation in vegetation phenology. For the 2025 Festival of Science and the Pixels to Enviro Patterns 2026 workshop, we made the video below to highlight the stories of seasons passing in different ecosystem types, as seen through the lens of PhenoCam.
Recently we have also been working on sharing our science through radio and video stories. In December 2021, KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny did a radio story on NAU’s new MICADAS (Mini Carbon Dating System) Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) for radiocarbon analysis, with an emphasis on how we are using that instrument to study redwood trees. In December 2022, NAU TV put together a video story about our redwoods work, featuring field work footage from Big Basin Redwoods State Park and Redwood Experimental Forest, as well as interviews with members of the team. This was a great way to communicate our science to the public in a compelling and accessible manner. The resulting film, “Redwood Survival”, has been accepted to a number of film festivals across the U.S. and was selected “Best Nature Film” at the Environmental Film and Screenplay Festival 2023.
