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I know that Michael Caplan will be asking all of you for feedback on the
discussion later today, but I wanted to pass on an idea that has emerged
in a side conversation I've had with one of our participants. Because
these issues of drought, fires and floods are complex, sometimes
technical in nature, it is often difficult for the public to be able to
understand some of the language and issues, and also to see how these
issues impact their lives and communities. There is a need for greater
literacy for the general public in all these areas. Developing a primer
to help ordinary citizens and students in school understand the
essential issues may be one way of helping bridge this gap.
The BASIN program has sought to develop resources for watershed
literacy, and the website is something of a primer for the Boulder Creek
Watershed in particular and watersheds in general. For this forum we've
pulled together a variety of online resources on the topics of drought,
wildfires and floods, but we haven't really developed a formal primer on
these topics. Do any of you have thoughts on the merit of such a
primer? Are there additional resources that we could link to that we
haven't covered? Are there already primers for the general public in
any of the topic areas we've been focusing on?
On another note, is there any interest in continuing this list serve on
an informal basis to share any additional thoughts or resources? I'm
sure most of you get plenty of emails everyday, but if there isn't too
much traffic on this list perhaps some of you might like to continue to
use it as a communications resource.
Again, thank you for being part of this online forum.
Mark McCaffrey
See http://basin.org/forum/fire-flood.html for more information on this list.