Sustainable LA Grand Challenge and LA Sanitation collaborate on first ever Biodiversity Index for the city of Los Angeles

Sustainable LA Grand Challenge (SLA GC) team members met with officials from LA Sanitation and Los Angeles’ Chief Sustainability Office to discuss a framework for the first ever Biodiversity Index for the city of Los Angeles. The meeting follows a year-long collaboration between UCLA researchers and LA Sanitation, coordinated by SLA GC, to develop a tool to monitor the city of Los Angeles’ native biodiversity.

Isaac Brown, a doctoral student at the Institute for Environment and Sustainability at UCLA and project coordinator at LA Sanitation, is the lead researcher on the project and the author of the biodiversity report for the city of Los Angeles. The report seeks to quantify the current baseline of flora and fauna in the city of Los Angeles, which will help direct future policies that aim to protect and enhance our critical ecosystems and species. Brown’s SLA GC research project, titled “A framework for urban ecosystem health and indicators for Los Angeles county,” helped inform the report.

Findings from Brown’s report will inform the ecosystem and health goals outlined in Los Angeles’ 2019 Sustainable City pLAn update, set to be released in 2019.

Meeting attendees included:

SLA GC

• Mark Gold (leader of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge; associate vice chancellor for environment and sustainability)
• Cassie Rauser (director of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge)
• Elizabeth Reid-Wainscoat (Research and Policy Analyst of the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge)

LA Sanitation

• Mas Dojiri (assistant general manager at LA Sanitation)
• Isaac Brown (doctoral student in the Institute for Environment and Sustainability at UCLA; project coordinator at LA Sanitation)

LA Chief Sustainability Office

• Katie Mika (water policy advisor with the LA Chief Sustainability Office; postdoctoral researcher at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability)