The Brief

For the past four years, plant biologist Elsa Godtfredsen has trekked to a subalpine meadow in Colorado to study the interactions between wildflowers and bumblebees. The pollinators buzz among fields of purple delphinium and columbine, an iconic image of spring in the Rocky Mountains.

Godtfredsen works at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, a research center set amid evergreens and jagged granite peaks in Gothic, Colorado. Each spring and summer, they track four species of wildflowers from bloom to seed set, using this data to model the impact of climate change on these plants and their pollinators.

“Subalpine and alpine ecosystems are changing rapidly,” Godtfredsen said. “We’re trying to see if these species can persist in ecosystems that are going to continue changing unless we see drastic shifts in policy.”

As winters get warmer, snow in alpine and subalpine regions melts earlier, causing a timing mismatch where flowers bloom before bumblebees emerge from diapause, or insect hibernation. Without enough pollinator visits, plants can’t make seeds and reproduce. That will leave fewer flowers for pollinators next spring — and future springs as well.

“We’re seeing a ubiquitous trend: Generally when snowmelt happens earlier, we see flowering earlier as well,” said Godtfredsen.

Scientists warn that these mountainous ecosystems foreshadow trends that other areas may soon experience, or in some cases, already face. Globally, spring is arriving progressively sooner. Flowers now bloom several weeks ahead of schedule in temperate forests in Japan and an average of 23 days earlier in the United States. Another study in the United Kingdom found that plants flower a month earlier on average.

Most animals and insects rely on temperature cues to start seasonal activities, like migrating, breeding, or emerging from hibernation. When those signals change due to warming temperatures or earlier snowmelt, it can lead to timing mismatches that threaten populations.

For example, insect-eating tree swallows nesting earlier in the spring face higher chick mortality rates due to inclement weather, which reduces insect availability. Arctic plants have also been emerging earlier in Greenland, and many caribou calves have died when spring plant growth preceded caribou’s calving season.

One of the smallest, and potentially most worrisome, animals being affected are insect pollinators, like bees, flies, butterflies, and moths. These arthropods are crucial for our food system: They help pollinate a third of major food crops and contribute around $15 billion annually to U.S. agriculture. Climate change, however, is causing 60 percent of plants and insects to fall out of sync.

Chris Wyver, a postdoctoral scientist at the University of Reading, found that Bramley apples in the United Kingdom now bloom earlier due to warmer springs and increased rainfall. Their pollinators are also emerging earlier, but are less sensitive to temperature cues that trigger apple bloom. If this divergence continues to widen, it could threaten apple yields.

“We saw that in warmer springs, the mismatch was slightly bigger compared with cooler springs,” Wyver said.

In crops like cranberries, Brazil nuts, and passion fruit, bloom times are also occurring weeks earlier.

If timing mismatches worsen worldwide, scientists warn they could also exacerbate pollinator declines. Inadequate pollination currently causes a 3 percent to 5 percent decline in global fruit, vegetable, and nut production annually, leading to over 400,000 deaths due to reduced access to diverse and nutritious diets.

“Probably the impact isn’t going to be felt in the U.K. or the U.S. or Europe — the Global North,” Wyver said. Instead, he noted, the strongest impacts will likely be felt in regions that already experience food insecurity, where supply chains are less reliable.

In some cases, managed honey bees can make up for pollinator losses if timing mismatches cause significant native pollinator declines. Farmers already use honey bee colonies to pollinate crops like apples, nuts, and seed crops.

However, there is concern about supply.

“If we have to turn to honey bees, the question is, will there be enough?” Wyver said. “I worry it’s just going to create a bidding war for honeybees that’s going to make food more expensive.”

People enjoy the daffodils as they walk in a park in Belgium.

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In early April this year, Godtfredsen’s colleagues from the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab skied to the research meadow to lay large black shade cloths on the snow, each around 16.5 feet wide. Over time, the dark fabric spurs snow to melt faster than the surrounding area, imitating pockets of earlier spring. Once the snow melts, they remove the cloths so plants can grow.

“The plants have to grow to a good size and put up flowering stalks, and then flower,” Godtfredsen said. “That’s when I go out.”

Once the plants are ready, usually in late May, Godtfredsen hikes to the meadow. They and a team of research assistants spend the summer counting the number of fruits on the plants they’re studying, observing bees as they move from one flower to the next, and collecting seeds.

“Basically, you get up, walk two feet, squat down, and look at another plant,” Godtfredsen said.

The team then compares data between the black-clothed, early snowmelt plots and normal conditions, comparing flower and pollinator activity.

“What we’re seeing is a common narrative in climate change research,” Godtfredsen said. “Some species are going to benefit from this scenario, and some will suffer.”

One of the research site’s earliest blooming flowers, Nuttall’s larkspur, or Delphinium nuttallianum, had fewer pollinator visits than the other flowers.

Another wildflower species they’re studying, prairie smoke, or Geum triflorum, is doing better under the early snowmelt manipulation. The plant has larger stalks and produces the same number of seeds. But a third species, wild blue flax, or Linum lewisii, is taking hits across the board, with smaller stalks, lower seeds, and more signs of plant stress.

“The narrative is never simple,” Godtfredsen said. Godtfredsen admitted that this may be because the plants they’re studying rely on a variety of animal pollinators, including bumblebees, solitary bees, flies, and hummingbirds.

A hummingbird sips nectar from a mimosa tree in Massachusetts.

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Joseph Prezioso

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Plants that rely on specialist pollinators — those with highly adapted relationships to specific plants — may be significantly more affected by seasonal shifts induced by climate change.

Solitary native squash bees, Peponapis pruinosa and Xenoglossa strenua, for example, are crucial pollinators of squashes, pumpkins, and gourds in the United States, and primarily collect pollen from plants in the squash family. However, a recent study revealed that squash plants in drought conditions produced fewer seeds, threatening squash plants and the bees that depend on them.

“The connections are very direct and limited between specialist bees and the plants they forage on,” said Ed Henry, an ecologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. If those connections are broken, then “those [specialist bees] are going to be in tremendous danger.”

We also don’t know how much tolerance for change is built into our ecosystems, Henry explained, or when we’ll exceed that tolerance to the point where plants or pollinators significantly decline or go extinct.

“It’s like we’re walking in the dark, and we know that there are cliffs, and we don’t know where the edge is,” Henry said. “But we continue to walk forward.”

One of the biggest challenges is the lack of reliable, long-term data on insect pollinators, so scientists know very little about how their populations and timings have changed.

Such a data gap — particularly in the tropics, where pollinators and the farmers that depend on them are especially vulnerable — makes it hard to determine whether conservation efforts are needed to counter timing mismatches.

Bee hives stand on a trailer prior to moving to a new location to ensure a fresh supply of pollen and nectar for the bees.

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“In some places, the data is fantastic,” Wyver said, “but in others, we don’t really know what’s doing the heavy lifting from the pollinator point of view, and trying to address those parts of the world has been a big challenge.”

Henry trains and helps state and local land managers plan and install pollinator forage and habitats on the nation’s working lands through his work at USDA. Pollinator habitats on farms can improve crop yields and reduce the need for pesticides, which can help farmers with climate change adaptation.

Native plants adapted to local climate, soil, and pollinator species can provide food and habitat for pollinators that are more resilient to extreme weather events in a particular region.

To make our food system more climate-resilient, Henry noted, we need to aim for diversity and complexity, not the other way around.

“Whenever you simplify a system,” Henry said, like through monoculture farming, “it’s usually less resilient. Nature creates the most resilient system over time.”

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”