Join TreeUtah and other grantees for the Park City Community Foundation discussion with recipients of the Park City Climate Fund to learn about the ongoing work in greater Park City and discuss changes we can all make to reduce carbon emissions and contribute to the sustainability of our community.

Co-hosted with Park City Library, and featuring TreeUtah, Utah Clean Energy, Recycle Utah, and Park City High School Earth Club.

Please join us for this virtual webinar and get ready to take action!

Register/Join!

Alex Porpora is executive director of the Utah Society for Environmental Education

"School closures and the sudden shift to at-home learning have brought significant challenges for families, teachers and even the employers of parents. We applaud the efforts of Utah’s schools and educators who have worked to ensure that students still receive quality instruction and support.

Even with this work, hours of instructional time have been lost, not all families have access to virtual learning, working parents struggle to balance work and school expectations, schools are not designed to accommodate social distancing and the mental health of students, teachers and parents has been impacted.

Today, more than ever before, education is a team effort. We need the support of schools, families and education partners in order to be successful. Around the country and the world, we are re-visioning what school will look like as we continue to address these challenges. As we are rethinking the school building, instruction and all the social services that rely on reaching students through schools, it is critical that we rethink how we use the outdoors and outdoor and environmental learning providers as critical parts of the solution.

The outdoors is a resource for learning, engagement and health, and it should be available to all. Across all age groups, greater access to the outdoors is associated with reduced stress and greater mental health and well-being.

The risks of transmitting COVID-19 are lower in outdoor spaces than indoor spaces. Parks and open spaces around the state have been operating throughout the pandemic and have developed strong health and safety guidelines.

How can we begin to rethink how we use outdoor spaces on the school grounds for learning? How can we rethink the role of local nature centers, science centers, and other community organizations to provide additional indoor and outdoor space for schools to provide needed space for social distancing? How can schools, districts and families partner with local environmental and outdoor education providers who are experts in using the outdoors for learning to develop innovative education solutions?

Recovery and resilience in the era of COVID-19 is a community-wide effort. Adding the outdoors to our toolkit of solutions for schools and families provides another opportunity to meet the challenges we are all facing.

Environmental and outdoor learning providers are working hard to continue supporting schools, communities, and families with online resources and distance learning, continuing to provide high-quality education and connection to nature through virtual experiences, offering physically distanced programming to small groups of students, teacher professional development, curriculum and so much more.

As caregivers, you can share outdoor solutions with your child’s teachers, you can make connections with your local nature centers and community organizations about the opportunities they have to share.

As teachers, you can share outdoor solutions with your principal and administrators.

As school districts, you can reach out to local community environmental and outdoor learning providers to help co-create innovative solutions for your district.

We can all be essential partners in utilizing the outdoors for the recovery and re-opening of schools. Let’s work together to make sure that students continue to thrive and learn."

Marcescence is the phenomenon of plants retaining plant organs that are usually shed, sometimes referring to mushrooms that dry out and later revive, but most commonly used to refer to trees with leaves that change colors but do not drop until outside forces (like wind) remove them from their branches. Trees that experience marcescence are sometimes called “everciduous.” This group of trees includes species of oak and beech. In fact, all oaks display foliage marcescence for at least a portion of their lives, only becoming truly deciduous after reaching their full maturity. The evolutionary advantage of marcescence is not fully understood, but there are two main theories among many. The first being that retaining the leaves will help protect new leaf buds from winter desiccation. The second is that the leaves dropping later in the winter season or even in early spring provide the tree with a delayed source of moisture-preserving mulch, allowing the tree to take full advantage of the snowmelt.

Perhaps more famous than the “everciduous” trees are the evergreens, a group that includes pines, cedars, hemlocks, and spruces. These trees keep their green leaves (called needles) all year long. Instead of shutting down the production of chlorophyll in the winter months, many evergreens continue to produce and benefit from the chemical, one of the necessary ingredients for photosynthesis. With the energy they produce throughout the winter through photosynthesis, evergreens are able to maintain their needles, which allows them to return to full-capacity energy production immediately when spring rolls around. However, some evergreens do cease photosynthesis during the winter months. These evergreens are usually found at higher altitudes, where the soil isn’t as rich in nutrients. The needles of evergreens are able to store vast quantities of nutrients the trees need to survive. These nutrients are typically already scarce in soils at higher altitudes and even harder to access during the winter months due to the cold temperatures. During this time, evergreens are able to use the nutrients stored in their needled to compensate for the lack of nutrients available in the soil around them. The needle-shaped leaves of conifers also help the tree retain water throughout the season by producing a chemical called cutin, a wax-like substance that traps fluids in the needles and protects them from damage. The needles also produce proteins that act like antifreeze by binding to ice crystals, inhibiting their growth and preventing ice damage. These adaptations are also what allow conifers to succeed in drier climates, like Utah. The cutin they produce to retain water works in cold and hot months, lending itself to the trees’ survival all throughout the year.

There are evolutionary advantages in keeping leaves or in dropping them and the evolutionary pathways of tree species depend on the climate in which they find themselves. Deciduous trees found themselves in situations where it was more appropriate to shed their leaves and wait winters out in a dormant state while evergreens found a different way to pass their winters by. Both are marvelous examples of the natural world at work!