Joel Cruz

On Sunday morning (4/27/25), I attended a 2 hour tour of the Ballona Wetlands Freshwater Marsh given by the Friends of Ballona Wetlands. This was my first time at Ballona and what I immediately noticed was the hustle and bustle around the area. There were people running, walking, another environmental group was meeting next to where the tour was starting, and there was a lot of sports activity taking place at the park and nearby elementary school.

The tour started at the Ballona Discovery Park where the main guide and assistant introduced themselves. Us visitors were given binoculars and informational plant and wildlife leaflets to borrow on our tour. Before we set off, our guide gave us a historical overview of the Ballona wetlands. My knowledge that the LA River used to flow into the wetlands was confirmed. What I didn't know was that weather events in the late 19th century(?) was the main cause of that redirection. I also learned that there used to be a lot of oil extraction around the area and that some remnants of that still remain. The wetlands are important because it is where water can enter the soil and replenish aquifers (groundwater reserves). The guide confirmed my knowledge that wetlands clean water.

When we set off on our tour, I noticed an interactive piece of art in the form of big rectangular stone pillars. Our guide informed us that the piece represented the watershed and how the water flows through the city landscape. Similarly, the placement of large stone 'tiles' on the floor was deliberate; it represented how urban concrete cover could be thought of differently and include places where water can seep into the soil.

One place we stopped at briefly was a hut where we learned about the indigenous Tongva people. I learned that the Tongva people would make their huts and canoes using wetland 'tuli' reed plants. I even got to hold one; they were light and aery (the cross-section had a lot of tiny holes) which pointed to their natural properties of buoyancy and ventilation. The Tongva made use of their wetland ecosystem knowledge of other plants such as the 'lemonade berry', which they used as a source of vitamin C before the introduction of European citrus, and willow bark, which contained salicylic acid (a main component of aspirin).

We spent the rest of the tour admiring the rich plant and birdlife that resided at and around the freshwater marsh part of the wetlands. The experience overall helped me to reflect on the significance of the Ballona Wetlands as a historical site, whose history of one of people living with the environment, rather than in spite of it. It also helped me reflect on the ways by which we can better live with historic ecosystems like these.

Today (Monday 4/28/2025), I spent a little more than 10 minutes reviewing and reflecting on Project Drawdown's Sector Summary - Coastal and Ocean Sinks article. The article makes an interesting assertion that I hadn't thought about before: that the ocean makes land livable. Prior to reading this article, I understood that life relies heavily on water and that water has dominated Earth' s history (land is only a small fraction of the Earth's surface), but I had never thought that relationship between the land and sea could be that intimate.

An interesting complication I recognized was that, though oceans remain an effective solution to the effects of climate change, its life and ecosystems suffer as a result. This made me rethink my own frameworks for action in the sense that I now understand that the reduction of emissions is a necessary supplement to the protection of sequestering biomes.

On Sunday (4/27) morning, I spent 30 minutes reviewing Project Drawdown's Coastal Wetland Protection page (https://drawdown.org/solutions/coastal-wetland-protection). I learned that coastal wetlands can consist of mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes and that together, they can hold on to carbon for hundreds of years; they can hold on to large amounts of it, in fact, despite their relatively small share of the Earth's surface. The article also mentioned that it is in the wetland soils, rather than the water itself, that contains the carbon. This confirmed the knowledge that I gained from my soils class last quarter (GEOG M102). Development and agriculture are the given causes for wetland loss, and Project Drawdown's solution is for laws to be enacted for their protection. In terms of Regeneration Nexus' Frameworks for Action, Project Drawdown intends to achieve a reduction in emissions through legal protection of wetlands.

The article mentions that "given the small area of coastal wetlands, the high urgency due to degradation of unprotected coastal wetlands, and the high mitigation value of protection, several scenarios emphasized early peak adoption by 2030" (Project Drawdown). Reading this gave me hope that there may already be many incentives for legal protections to be enacted. However, I thought back to a newspaper article I read about California state officials battling the Supreme Court on this very topic. I came to the conclusion that the best thing that I can do as a Californian is to support our state officials, who have demonstrated their resolve in protecting state wetlands and the right of Californians to clean water.

I am joining the Drawdown Ecochallenge out of respect for the land I call home. I've been an Angeleno (an LA resident) for all my life and only this year have I considered what that means to me. When I reflected on my past, in order to more clearly see my future, I realized how much I enjoyed living in LA. When exploring my thoughts about moving for work, what came to mind were the ways that California's people and natural environment reached me deeply. My family, my lifelong friends, and the beautiful nature that I've enjoyed with them, have all influenced who I am today. The land itself reflects my memories--those of my friends, of being outdoors, and of forming new relationships. The land will continue to reflects these memories long after I am gone, because, through my life, I will have altered the environment. Whether my life will have a net positive or negative effect on LA and California in the future, is something I will begin to address with this new step.
I will be graduating next Spring (2026) with a B.A. in Geography and hope to find employment in fields such as urban planning, hydrology, environmental science, and disaster relief, by highlighting my skills in GIS, remote sensing, and cartography. As I ideally plan on staying in California, my fears for the future include lack of water and more intense/frequent wildfires which would put unprecedented burdens on my work, my future livelihood, and the livelihoods of my fellow Angelenos. To address these fears, I plan to do research on wetlands as a solution to the climate crisis and focus my initial Ecochallenges on 'coastal, ocean, and engineered sinks' actions.
The pictures are all from a trip my friends and I took where we surveyed Northern California's gorgeous nature (the last picture is of a wetland we visited!).