THIS YEAR’S HIGHEST TIDES are hitting the Bay Area through Saturday, with another set arriving Jan. 2-3. Local and state organizations are preparing a slate of public events designed to spotlight the growing risks of sea level rise and coastal flooding, and citizen scientists are asked to participate in gathering photographic evidence.

Known as king tides, these extreme water levels offer planners a preview of how climate change may reshape California’s shorelines in the decades ahead. The contributed images help scientists and policymakers assess local flooding vulnerabilities and compare real-world conditions to their own sea level rise projection models. 

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.