in search of the canary tree by lauren e oakes

She is Conservation Scientist and Climate Adaptation Specialist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University. Oakes is the author of In Search of the Canary Tree (Basic Books 2018), a book about finding faith in our ability to cope with the impacts of climate change.

She’ll draw from her research in Alaska, current climate adaptation work, and experience in crafting narrative in science to shape this event around meaningful work that addresses a breadth of environmental issues. Oakes will share her perspectives on storytelling in science and the ways in which she finds optimism amidst the many climate change impacts occurring across the planet. What they found would also profoundly change Oakes’s understanding of how people respond to the reality of climate change, and what is needed to spur them to action. To her surprise, Oakes discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again after years of exposure to stressful conditions. Her recent book, IN SEARCH OF THE CANARY TREE: The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World, chronicles the six years Oakes and her team spent studying thousands of trees and countless plants and interviewing locals whose lives are directly affected by the loss of yellow cedar, a species impacted by climate change. She found herself immersed in an even bigger, and totally unexpected story: how the people of Alaska were adapting to the species’ disappearance, and how the forest was adapting to the changing climate conditions. Oakes set out to study the mass die-off of yellow cedar trees on the outer coast of Southeast Alaska.

The Art, Science, and Adventure of Environmental Storytelling: Discovering nature’s unexpected resiliency in a rapidly changing world through environmental research

In search of the canary tree by lauren e oakes