Introduction

Communities in Crisis: Student Voices on Climate Change contains entries written by Penn State undergraduate students. All entries originate from the semester-long capstone project for Earth 103: Earth in the Future: Predicting Climate Change and Its Impacts Over the Next Century, in which students research and describe the influences of climate change on six communities. Independently researched and written in their own words, students address specific threats to the communities and why each entity is vulnerable, describe forecasts for the future, and discuss solutions.

Communities in Crisis gives students an appreciation for the threats of climate change and requires them to integrate knowledge from various places in the course, grounding the theoretical aspects of climate change with real life examples. The threats are diverse, ranging from fires and heatwaves to food and water insecurity.  We hope that the compilation of hundreds of student entries, written by the very citizens who will be impacted most, provides a powerful testament to the global threat of climate change.

Student entries are categorized by threat and located on a map so that they can be searched by topic and location. Ultimately, our goal is to cover the globe, present the full array of threats on communities, and chronicle how they are changing through time. We thank our student authors for their passion and energy and are grateful to Halina Dingo, who edited and organized the entries, and for the support of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and the Department of Geosciences at Penn State. We hope you enjoy the wealth of information in Communities in Crisis and welcome your input and feedback.

Thank you,

Timothy Bralower and April Millet

Key

	Drought		Wildfires
	Heatwaves		Flooding
	Hurricanes and Tornadoes		Ocean Acidification + Harmful Algal Blooms
	Sea Level Rise + Ice melting		Endangered Species and Ecosystems
	Adaptation and Mitigation		Food and Water Insecurity
	Pollution, Waste, and Industry		Invasive Species