Hi everyone,
For those of you participating in our media prep meeting via Zoom at 11:00 am, below are the key messages we developed for the Ice Storm Experiment in January 2016 following a AAAS Science Communication workshop. Also, you can see how the press officer from the Forest Service used our messages to develop a press release in the attached document from last winter.
From the AAAS workshop:
- Identify your communication goals and your audience. Think about the "so what" — why does this matter to your audience?
- Messages are: miniature, memorable, meaningful.
- Aim for 3-4 messages total.
January 2016 messages for the Ice Storm Experiment:
Ice storms are a big deal in our changing world: Ice storms are major causes of disruption in towns, cities, and forests and we expect them to be more frequent and more severe with climate change.
We don’t know much about them! There hasn’t been a lot of research about the short and long term effects of ice storms on the forest — on forest health, vegetation growth, wildlife, how nutrients like carbon and nitrogen cycle in the system.
Ice storms are hard to study because we don’t know when or where they will next occur. Instead of waiting for the next big storm to hit, scientists are going to create an artificial ice storm in a forest in NH to study what happens. They’re using fire hoses to spray water in the forest canopy during a cold snap.
We hope that this work will allow people to be more proactive vs. reactive in the face of a big storm. The more we understand about ice storms, the more people can identify risks like hazard trees on their properties and have plans for what to do after, like planning for salvage cuts.
Talk to you soon—
Sarah