CLIMAS blogs

UHI Workshop - 10/31/2023 - Follow Up

sreece — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:02:00 +0000

Monday, November 13, 2023

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UHI Workshop - 10/31/2023 - Follow Up

Thank you to everyone who registered to attend the 14th Urban Heat Island (UHI) Workshop hosted by The City of Tucson’s Landscape Advisory Committee (LAC) in collaboration with University of Arizona CLIMAS.

“Mythbusting on Heat” Discussions will focus on finding opportunities for Tucson to develop innovative solutions to mitigate the Urban Heat Island(UHI) effect and effectively communicate about and respond to extreme heat events.

Recording of the UHI Workshop is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogva89GQ410 and presentations are hyperlinked below:

Alison Meadow - Associate Research Professor, Office of Societal Impact, University of Arizona “Climate Assessment for the Southwest” (0:00)
Irene Ogata - Tucson Water, Conservation & Stormwater Resource Division “Introduction to the UHI Workshop” (5:25)
Mike Crimmins - Professor & Extension Specialist - Climate Science, University of Arizona “Climate Change in Arizona” (7:00)
Ladd Keith - Assistant Professor of Planning & Sustainable Built Environments, CAPLA, University of Arizona “Improving Urban Heat Planning and Media Coverage of Extreme Heat“ (43:00)
Tom Dang - Science and Operations Officer, National Weather Service - Tucson “The National Weather Service - Urban Heat Island Workshop” (1:17:00)
Kristi Currans - Associate Professor, Urban Planning, CAPLA, University of Arizona “Assessing Cool Corridor Heat Resilience Strategies for Human-Scale Transportation” (1:59:00)
Josh Behounek - Business Development Manager, Davey Resource Group “Decreasing the Feedback Loop with Smart Tree Inventories” (2:27:00)
Mark Norton - Director, Arizona Division of Occupational Safety & Health “ADOSH Heat Illness Prevention SEP” (2:59:00)

Resources:

Berkeley Earth - July 2023 Temperature Update

Planning for Urban Heat Resilience

Plan Evaluation for Heat Resilience: City of Tucson, AZ

Assessing Cool Corridor Heat Resilience Strategies for Human-Scale Transportation Project Website

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Re-Thinking Land and History: Working with Navajo Mountain Soil Water Conservation District Members

sreece — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 20:31:25 +0000

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Re-Thinking Land and History: Working with Navajo Mountain Soil Water Conservation District Members

By: Majerle Lister

Diné lands were intentionally chosen for development interventions by soil scientists and Federal administrators. By 1937 the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), a branch of the Federal government, had already implemented a few rounds of voluntary livestock reduction in the Navajo reservation to mitigate overgrazing and soil erosion. Livestock reduction was justified on the belief that Diné livestock practices were to blame for soil erosion and silt accumulation in the Hoover Dam (originally called Boulder Dam). After 1937, more rounds of livestock reduction were imposed on Diné people and plans to compensate them for their loss of livestock income failed. Livestock reduction increased poverty in the Navajo reservation and increased pressure on Diné to seek wage work rather than traditional subsistence practices that provided a cushion of independence. Diné pushed back against the reduction but the psychological, spiritual, and economic damage continues today. As an historical event retold by elders, Diné today draw upon it to understand the world and it serves as a warning toward government overstepping its authority. As a Diné PhD candidate, the livestock reduction influences my research question regarding Diné lands, development, and sovereignty. These themes are articulated together by Diné people, elected officials, and administrators in formal and informal meetings. Land development and political questions about land use are conjoined by depoliticized discourses about soil erosion, livestock units, and range management. Thus, political questions about land are naturalized by scientific measurement. This emerged from the historical soil investigation and experiment conducted in the Navajo Nation.

During the livestock reduction, the BIA sent out soil technicians into the Navajo Nation to study the health of the soil and current land practices. These soil technicians were the vanguard of the US Department of Interiors Soil Erosion Service (SES) and the subsequent US Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Services (SCS). These technicians created soil laboratories and demonstrations to measure the soil as well as teach Navajos about soil use and degradation. Additionally, the SCS produced land management surveys that were housed at University of Arizona’s Special Collections and University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research and Special Collection. In each report, Diné land was categorized as ‘inaccessible and barren’, ‘waste’, ‘mountainous’, or ‘area producing run-off’. Except for the names of Diné land users, Diné people, histories, and cosmologies were absent in the soil studies. The data collected in each report was geared towards identifying sites of intervention to make land and soil more productive and economically valuable.

The vocabulary of land productivity and value parallels the Federal government’s attempts to transform Diné livestock owners either into small farmers or wage workers during this time of livestock reduction. SCS prioritized land and soil improvement that could be accomplished by water management. The engineering report for Tonalea (Tó Nehelį́į́h) advocated for irrigation projects that included dams, dikes, sand fences, and wire rocks to control water flows and flooding that would increase farming lands and make them more productive with rational water use.

Without historical context, these land management surveys read as disinterested and interconnected reports of the US Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service. Each Navajo land survey opens with a heavy description of the site; telephone location, roads, water flows, vegetation, rodents, family sizes and numbers, livestock capacity, cultivated lands, farming methods, wage work, typologies of land, and climate. These descriptions are directed towards identifying a plan of intervention on behalf of the Diné people by the Federal government. A picture is created using these descriptions with a focus on land improvement –Diné land emerges as an object of study and intervention in these land management reports.

The reports conducted on my community felt distant despite my recognition of the description of geographic features, community buildings, and roads. I spent time at the University of Arizona Special Collections archive looking at 1930s’ Navajo land management surveys. The written findings from these land management surveys incorporate engineering studies, land planning reports, range management reports, agronomy reports, and sociological surveys of different Diné communities. After sharing what I found in the archives, the maps were of great interest to other Conservation District members. They were interested in connecting local histories to the land management surveys by locating some sites designated for improvement projects.

Each community survey read like echoes devoid of life and experiences that are tied to places. In my meetings with Navajo Mountain Soil and Water Conservation District (NM-SWCD) members we noticed that local histories that we were familiar with were absent from the surveys. The five of us looked over the reports commenting on the writing style and data collected. The lands and communities document looked familiar and dissimilar to each of us. The members were impressed by the data and often wished they could conduct a similar survey in their communities.

In our discussions, they told local histories with traditional names for mountain ranges, washes, canyons, and valleys. Two district members, Willie Greyeyes and Betty Dodson, talked about a map of a farming area near Shonto that was included in land range management surveys (See map 1). With the help of the district members, I quickly sketched the surrounding area with the names of the canyons while talked about the local histories of these canyons that included the direction of water flow, family settlements after the 1864 Long Walk, early traders (S.I. and Cecil Richardson and the Wetherhills), other tribes (Paiutes), and Diné cosmologies (See Sketch 1). With the help of my very rough sketch, the land survey farming map felt more familiar to them. This prompted me to think about the local histories and traditional geographies that were absent which made these land survey maps feel distance and alien.

Furthermore, I visited two sites from the land management surveys, Tonalea (Tó Nehelį́į́h, “where the water emerges/collects) and Cows Springs (Béégishii Bí Tó). In my search for these sites, I was joined by Vicki Kee, a Navajo Mountain Soil and Water Conservation District member (NM-SWCD). Tonalea is one of three districts where I plan to find land improvement sites, along with Shonto and Kayenta. We drove through dirt roads passing homes and corrals looking for signs of the SCS project. The first site we searched for was four miles south of the old trading post. There was no map of this site but the surveys provided a description that we followed. After following the direction of Vicki Kee, we found that the site is located in the Hopi Partitioned Lands (HPL), a land status that emerged from the 1974 Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute. It was covered by overgrown vegetation and required four-wheel drive. We found dikes that had been built to divert water away and stop the flooding of crops. Vicki Kee told me that Diné families used to live and farm in the area until they were relocated because of the land dispute.

I also visited Cow Springs (Béégishii Bí Tó) to find any signs of the Cow Springs Irrigation Project proposed in the land management survey (see map 2). Cow Springs is located seven miles northeast of old trading posts along US-160. The next stop was finding any signs of the Cow Springs Irrigation Project proposed in the land management survey. Cow Springs is located in Navajo Partitioned Lands (NPL), another land status created the Navajo-Hopi Land dispute. The project proposed building a dam with a spigot to provide water for the farms south of the springs. This would have increased the number of productive lands and the crop production of farming lands. But this project proved difficult because the whole area was overgrown with invasive tree species that inhibited travel (see photo 1). The spring and lake were dried out. No such dam was found but there were other earth dams with unknown origin dates. We speculated that the dam may have been built but was destroyed with the construction of the railroad that would transfer coal from Black Mesa to the now-demolished Navajo Generating Station. This railroad was built in the 1960s because of the controversial Peabody Coal mining project in the Navajo Nation. The railroad cuts through where the proposed dam was located.

Working with the Navajo Mountain Soil and Water Conservation District and the Land Management Surveys, my research unpacks the political history of Diné land and soil through development projects. The land management surveys tells one side of history. I am interested in connecting local histories to the archived land management surveys to produce local histories from the NM-SWCD perspectives. This connection is important to me because it reveals a complex political history that is obscured by these soil maps devoid of Navajo participation and meaning. NM-SWCD provided great insight into what was missing and how these maps could be repurposed for benefit of Diné. The NM SWCD district members noted that such history would be beneficial to younger Diné interested in local history, soil science, agriculture, or livestock.

The group meetings where we examined maps revealed the lack of Diné geographies and histories that made each community familiar and complete. Willie Greyeyes and Betty Dodson added to the maps a sense of history, experience, and practice that was absent. In exploring old sites of SCS projects with Vicki Kee, the local history of Tonalea and Cow Springs became entwined with the materiality of old and missing infrastructure. The infrastructure of dikes in the first site prompted discussions between Vicki Kee and I about unused farm areas, relocated families, and emotions associated with the land dispute. The missing, or perhaps never built, Cow Springs dam infrastructure prompted discussions of the land dispute, water storage, fishing, climate change, and coal leases and mining. The SCS projects were oriented towards framing, planning, and intervening in Diné communities – now eighty-six years later they are part of a layered history of land dispute and management. The SCS projects made Diné lands and soil into objects of study and intervention with intended ideas of future use. But a land dispute altered where Diné would be living, what lands were considered Diné, and added additional layers of institutional arrangements in Tonalea. The Cow Springs area and accompanying development plans are shaped by the history of coal extraction.

I plan to conduct more visits to mapped areas and sites of agricultural development in the land surveys accompanied by NM-SWCD members. Additionally, I am interested in exploring the possibility of creating maps with the NM-SWCD members that include traditional Diné names of geographic features.

Map 1: Piute Canyon Farms (Moyles, 1938)

Sketch 1: Sketch of Canyons created with Willy Greyeyes and Betty Dodson

Cow Springs Irrigation Project Map, (Moyes, 1937).

Photo 1: Cow Springs, Navajo Nation

Moyes, C.L. (1937a). Engineering Report Unit One. Reports of a Land Management Survey, Navajo Reservation (Box 1, Folder 1). University of Arizona Special Collections, Tucson, Arizona.

Moyes, C.L. (1938). Engineering Report Unit Two. Reports of a Land Management Survey, Navajo Reservation (Box 1, Folder 1). University of Arizona Special Collections, Tucson, Arizona.

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What's going on with the rains?

sreece — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 20:18:13 +0000

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

What's going on with the rains?

By: Talia Anderson

“Había más regularidad unos diez años atrás,” recalled a farmer as he took a break from bending his corn stalks in half to dry, explaining how the rains in Guatemala were more regular 10 years ago. His account of how the rains had changed was one among many from the families we interviewed in the departments of Totonicapán and Chiquimula, Guatemala in fall 2022. The timing and amount of rainfall are especially important for farmers in these regions – the vast majority of them have incredibly small farms and rely on the rains to produce food for the year.

Corn drying after harvest to be used later for tortillas or next year’s seeds. Only the best cobs get saved for seeds.

While many farmers have noticed recent changes in climate – the rains aren’t as regular as they used to be or they are arriving late – a clear climate change signal has yet to emerge from measurements of rainfall from weather stations and satellites across most of Guatemala. My research focuses on understanding this mismatch and why the climate data don’t seem to show the same changes the farmers have noticed.

To start, I, along with a team of 16 undergraduate students and community members from Totonicapán and Chiquimula, interviewed over 700 farming households. We asked them about patterns in rainfall over recent years and how they compare to their memories from a decade or even longer ago. One farmer indicated that 2022 was the year that broke the “7 años de verano” (7 years of summer). Another shared that they planted before the rains started in the past, but now they wait until they have arrived, indicating the timing is not as reliable as it once was. Their accounts provide unique insight into what changes have occurred in their communities and on their farms.

Half of our research team on their way to interview households.

To complement the interviews, we installed a set of new weather stations across the complex mountain terrain. Measuring rainfall differences across gradients of the steep slopes provides another way to evaluate changes. The stations allow us to see if rainfall measurements captured from high above by satellites can record the differences in rainfall on the ground from the highest peaks to the lowest valleys.

By combining the accounts of farmers, the weather station measurements, and satellite information, I will be able to assess change and variability in rainfall and extreme events from multiple perspectives and across spatial and temporal scales. Because much of Guatemala lacks long-term historical weather station records, this integration of diverse sources will lead to a better understanding of current and future changes. This is critical as Central America is a global hot spot for future drying, meaning less rain and warmer temperatures. These future decreases will create new challenges for millions of farmers and their families, like the ones we interviewed who rely on rainfall for agriculture.

One of the weather stations we installed in the department of Chiquimula among a field of corn that has been bent over to dry out before harvest.

As I start my CLIMAS fellowship, I am just beginning to combine information from interviews and the climate data, and have yet to understand why the mismatch exists. So why should we care about this mismatch? Since my first fieldwork experience – 8 years ago coring trees to study past rainfall patterns in Guatemala – I have been fascinated not only by learning new research methods to study the complexities of climate across mountain landscapes, but also by the ways in which humans are affected by and adapt to changing environments. My current work builds on collaborations I have developed since then with Agroclimate groups who provide seasonal forecasts to farmers, as well as my interests in climate variability and human experiences of environmental change. Resolving the mismatch between what farmers have observed and the climate data can help us better understand changes that are occurring now and in the near future to improve forecasting efforts and to create more useful climate information that supports farmers and their agricultural decision-making.

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Flood Justice in South Texas

sreece — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 21:59:12 +0000

Friday, September 22, 2023

Flood Justice in South Texas

By: Lucas Belury

It was an open and blue Texas sky on the 3.5-hour drive south from San Antonio, Texas to the Rio Grande Valley. Yet when I arrived in this four-county region at the southern tip of Texas-Mexico border, I quickly realized the topic of this research trip – destructive seasonal floods – were predicted to happen that very week. In meeting after meeting with community-based environmental justice organizations, I heard similar stories about the ongoing challenges of flood injustice in the colonias – low-income, largely Mexican and Mexican-American, informal communities that are particularly susceptible to flooding. Within 48 hours of arriving, sandbags filled the entrances of storefronts and tornado watches were in effect. I began checking weather reports hourly out of concern that these potential floods would inundate the very communities I was there to serve. I thought to myself, how can I support these post-aid efforts? Would I just be in the way? Selfishly, I wondered if this would derail the carefully planned workshop I had been organizing and had travelled to facilitate.

Perhaps most jarringly, I began to read about free sandbag distribution programs that city governments throughout the Valley offered. All you needed to receive this simple flood mitigation tool was an address to prove residency in these cities. Providing an address sounds innocuous, but the very people most at risk of these seasonal floods are unincorporated colonia communities, the very communities I aimed to support with this research, and the communities who would be denied this simple flood mitigation support because they lived on the outskirts of these cities. While there were ultimately no floods from this storm, a deadly tornado swept through a colonia near Brownsville, Texas – a border town on the eastern edge of this region.

Photo by author: While facilitating the FLUJOS RGV launch heavy rains and floods were predicted. This small business used sandbags to block the potential inundation.

My connection to the Texas-Mexico borderlands is not simply intellectual, it’s also personal. I was raised in a mixed-race family with relatives on both sides of the border. As children we would visit the home of my Abuelitos [grandparents] in the rural mobile home where my mother and her brothers and sisters were raised. As a child in Austin, Texas the racial segregation of the city was (and remains) palpable where Black and Latinx families fight for affordable housing in a rapidly gentrifying, but historically redlined, East Side. This experience inspired my career in advocacy and restorative justice. I worked in the housing and environmental justice space for several years with community-based organizations across the US, many along the US-Mexico border. During this time, I learned the devastating cost of floods on homes, health, and economic prosperity in the Rio Grande Valley.

The vulnerability to flooding in these communities is perpetuated by FEMA’s denial of post-flood aid and the limited support for flood mitigation infrastructure by the local and federal government. Often FEMA denies aid based on ‘deferred maintenance’, meaning the quality of the home was too poor to justify aid. The result has been exclusion of these already low-income and largely Latinx communities. This injustice – which, given the predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American population of these communities is largely racialized – is precisely what these community-based organizations are fighting against. A critical barrier for these community organizations, which includes housing and legal aid non-profits, labor organizers, and public health organizations, is the lack of quantitative data. Put simply, we have no database showing where repeat floods are happening nor the duration or impact of inundation events. Without these data, convincing the local government to provide flood support has been challenging and local organizations worry that federal flood mitigation infrastructure grant applications are less competitive.

To fill this data gap, I co-developed a research project with Dr. Beth Tellman’s Social[Pixel] Lab called FLUJOS - RGV (Flood Justice Utilizing Satellite Observations – Rio Grande Valley). This collaborative research project includes several community-based organizations, with the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) as our chief collaborator and utilizes satellite imagery to detect the extent and duration of past flood events. FLUJOS - RGV launched with an in-person kickoff in May 2023 and brought various organizations together to discuss how satellite imagery might support their advocacy efforts. The research project is driven by the question: how can satellite imagery for flood detection empower communities to challenge flood injustice? To ensure that the data produced by this project is impactful, FLUJOS – RGV utilizes the human centered design concept of co-production. Human centered design serves as a model that not only sees researchers and collaborators as equal contributors but centers local perspectives in developing the project database and in understanding how this database can be utilized to challenge flood injustice. As contributors we are asking our partners to share not only their knowledge of floods, but to walk us through their specific and detailed data challenges. In doing so, FLUJOS centers the local knowledge of partner organizations and the lived experience of colonia residents. Now that we’ve launched FLUJOS RGV I am excited about our upcoming workshops (September 2023) to co-develop a comprehensive list of major flood events in the region and better understand the Theories of Change for our partner organizations.

Image by Cassidy Schoenfelder: I facilitated the FLUJOS RGV launch by discussing with participants what ‘Flood Justice’ meant to them

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Mapping tarps and stories to spotlight inequitable disaster recovery

sreece — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 22:25:38 +0000

Friday, September 8, 2023

Mapping tarps and stories to spotlight inequitable disaster recovery

By: Hannah Friedrich

Amidst the pandemic in 2020, I was living in Corvallis, Oregon, when wildfires lit the sky blaze orange and draped hazy smoke across the state for weeks. A year later, the Pacific Northwest heat dome brought unprecedented temperatures. These two episodes laid bare the impacts of a changing climate. During the fires, homes were destroyed, and people were displaced to nearby hotels and shelters. Hundreds of elderly, houseless individuals, and outdoor workers died from prolonged heat stress during the heat dome.

As time passed, the fires and heat dome faded to the background in state and national news, only to be replaced by the latest disaster. While the news coverage dissipated, the stories and memory of the events lingered with me. I wondered what was still being done for households and individuals without support networks to recover. How many homes were being rebuilt? How many were still living in hotels? How many were without air conditioning? How could answers to these questions be tracked at the individual or building level and be used to inform decision-making about allocating resources or planning for future extreme events?

These thoughts stayed with me on my move to Tucson. During my first week as a Geography PhD student at the University of Arizona in August 2021, another event grabbed headlines, this time hundreds of miles away on the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Ida struck southeastern Louisiana, causing massive electrical outages. My concern about the long-term recovery response to the heat dome and wildfires remained while following accounts of Ida’s aftermath. One article netted my attention. It was a news story about blue tarps being installed on the roofs of damaged homes to protect structures until roofs could be repaired. The blue color of the tarps was striking (e.g., Figure 1).

Figure 1. Blue tarp on a home in North Lake Charles in August 2022. Photo by author.

As a Geographer who uses satellite imagery (images taken from satellites of the Earth’s surface) to understand human-environment interactions, I immediately wondered if the tarps could be seen from space. A quick search of the latest available high spatial resolution imagery confirmed my suspicion that blue tarps were detectable in satellite imagery (Figure 2). Satellite imagery is routinely collected thru time, providing an archive of imagery of the same location. This stream of historical data allows remote sensing scientists to trace changes in features on the earth’s surface. My discovery of the blue tarps seen in satellite imagery was an opportunity to answer the question of how to track recovery in a systematic fashion for months to years after an event.

Figure 2. PlanetScope image scene of 3-meter resolution acquired over a neighborhood in North Lake Charles on November 30, 2020 (two months after Hurricane Laura and one month after Hurricane Delta).

Being from the Midwest with little experience in preparing for and recovering from hurricanes, I spoke with a researcher who studied disaster recovery on the Gulf Coast about my idea of using satellite imagery to map tarps and track recovery. They brought to my attention that while the road ahead for those affected by Ida was long, Hurricanes Laura and Delta, which hit southwestern Louisiana just a year prior in fall 2020, was a series of back-to-back storms that was even further buried in public and national attention. Due to a myriad of reasons, the response to Laura and Delta was severely lacking, owing to prolonged recovery. Imagery from Lake Charles a year after the event still indicated a number of tarps remained on homes. Not only was the duration of tarps remaining on homes startling, but the uneven timing of where and when tarps had been removed showed patterns of disparate recovery rates between majority white and Black neighborhoods in Lake Charles (Figure 3). The different rates of blue tarps being removed indicated that while recovery was delayed for everyone, the delays were more pronounced for communities of color.

Figure 3. PlanetScope imagery shows that tarps remain on longer for majority Black residential areas compared to majority white residential areas.

While satellite maps reveal patterns of recovery as proxied by blue tarps, they do not capture the everyday challenges and decisions individuals and households experience in recovery. I thought back to accounts of wildfire and heat impacted people in Oregon and wondered what stories existed in Lake Charles - stories that needed to be heard and shared. This has led me to develop a dissertation project that marries the maps of tarps with individuals’ experiences of recovery to contextualize patterns revealed in each approach. I’ll be spending the next academic year living in Lake Charles, interviewing residents about what recovery means to them and, in particular, the role that insurance has played in aiding and hindering the recovery process. By using maps and stories to hold the spotlight on places and people that are overlooked, my aim is accumulate evidence of where recovery is inequitable to prioritize areas for rebuilding. In the face of narrow attention and support from past and coming storms, I aspire to have my research advocate for more just recovery and adaptation to future hurricane impacts along the Gulf Coast and beyond.

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Exploring Children’s Drawing as Ecological Engagement

gigi — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 17:09:11 +0000

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

By Rachel Zollinger

Six-point stars in bright purple, sunshine yellow anthers. Fuzzy grey-green leaves with crinkled edges.

Clusters of purple slippers, then spiraled pods. Soft green leaves, in groups of three.

Fat black bees with metallic wings. Grasshoppers, camouflaged in every shade of green and brown.

A rustle in the leaves, then a whip of a tail.

At first, the field looks to be just a messy patch of green, bordered by dry brown dirt with a few pokey weeds. But as we look, and look some more, our eyes adjust. We start noticing the irrepressible silverleaf nightshade alongside the sweet aroma of alfalfa. We realize the bees are far too busy to pay attention to us, and, if we crouch down into the greenery, the grasshoppers look right back at us. If we’re quiet and still, we might glimpse a lizard or two.

I’m knee-deep in this summer field, ostensibly grown for alfalfa but boasting thick tangles of bindweed, amaranth, and various grasses too. A group of children wander the field with me. Some carry magnifying lenses, but mostly they just press their faces up to small wonders. At the moment we’re investigating plant parts, prompted by the question, “What can a leaf do?” At first, the kids offered a few ideas derived from half-remembered school science lessons, but it quickly became clear that in order to answer this question, we must go spend time with plants and their leaves.

Figure 1. Children explore an alfalfa field on a New Mexico farm.

It’s mid-week of a science camp at a working farm in Albuquerque, NM, the collaborative effort of a family-centered science museum, Explora, and the local agricultural community hoping to engage the next generation. For the past eight years I have worked for the museum as an educator, an immensely gratifying job of facilitating lifelong learning opportunities for children and families both inside and outside of the museum, and working with education professionals to enrich K-12 school curriculum. Explora’s approach to learning values hands-on inquiry, learner agency, and connections to everyday life. This small farm, one of many in the traditional agricultural community in this verdant stretch along the Rio Grande, provides an unconventional learning space but one in line with Explora’s pedagogy. Nearby, only a short walk along the acequias (a traditional community-operated irrigation system), are other family and small-scale farms, community gardens, and farmers who work hard to provide food for the community and care for the land.

In 2017 I began designing and facilitating STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) curriculum for Explora to get kids out of indoor classrooms and into the bosque, the nearby riparian cottonwood forest lining the Rio Grande. I was motivated by my background as an interdisciplinary artist, a robust interest in natural sciences and environmental issues, and a curiosity for others’ relationships with place and the creative impulses they inspire. This work eventually led to my PhD journey at the University of Arizona in Art and Visual Culture Education.

Two years later, I helped Explora launch a pilot program of science-based environmental education in partnership with the local agricultural community, beginning with day camps for K-5th grade at a working farm. Despite the ensuing pandemic, the program blossomed into seasonal and year-round education and outreach opportunities involving schools, out-of-school-time programs, farmers, and others committed to maintaining agricultural heritage and sustainable agriculture futures. Through listening sessions with our community partners, my fellow Explora educators and I worked to develop learning activities and curriculum based on topics identified as most relevant or significant to the goals of the community, such as soil and compost, pollinators, botany, water and hydrology, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). We then shared these resources with the broader community in digital and nondigital forms to connect children and families to backyard ecologies and local agriculture. We integrated these ideas into Explora’s existent programming as well. Many of the partners contributed in other ways: virtually visiting school classrooms, donating soil and seed samples, hosting field trips, and providing learning spaces.

Figure 2. Children learning about chile farming in New Mexico.

For me, the most interesting thing happens when children are immersed in the ecology of a living space. Out in the field, amid the banquet of nectar, the clacking grasshoppers, and droning bees, the kids learn with the nonhuman community, not just about them. This is affective stuff—these encounters become part of how these kids come see the world, for what they tend to notice and carry on. I know this because threads of these experiences often resurface in the kids’ drawing practices, and how they use visual symbols and gestures to actively create and communicate their knowledge. Drawing, especially for children, is so much more than scribbles or aesthetic rendering; it’s expression, sense-making, representation, observation, and participation. In short, it’s a form of attention to the world.

Figure 3. A child carefully draws a leaf.

My dissertation research focuses on this phenomenon of drawing and its tie to relational ecological identity, or the development of kinship with the places we inhabit. While the efforts of Explora and the agricultural community help facilitate opportunities to learn in this way, it’s crucial to understand plants, animals, and place as key teachers. I’m seeking to understand more about relationships between human learners and nonhuman teachers, and how the capacity of drawing functions as a vivid dialog and artifact of this relationship. Participant observation, visual ethnography, and multispecies ethnography all play roles in working to understand the complexity of these relationships.

Figure 4. A child's drawing about learning on a farm.

Findings from this research aim to help educators like me design more socially and ecologically responsive curriculum and teaching practices that support children’s intellectual and emotional capacities. In turn, these approaches can help build relational ecological identity and capable response to environmental issues. We can then share these insights through educational resources to be used at a museum, home, school, or other learning setting. It’s important to center drawing as a mode of learning because of its support of cognitive development and imaginative possibilities. In other words, the processes involved in drawing can help children make sense of and answer questions about plants, leaves, or anything else, in infinite ways.

The sun is reaching high in the sky and the cicadas have overtaken the sounds of the field. We retreat to shade where the morning’s discoveries and adventures will perhaps reappear, transformed, on paper in technicolor lines and shapes.

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CLIMAS is Hiring a Program Manager

dferg — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 18:58:56 +0000

Monday, October 24, 2022

Are you passionate about climate change issues, community engagement, and science communication? The Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS), a well-established and innovative inter- and transdisciplinary climate research team, is looking for a Program Manager to join our team. We seek someone who can help connect researchers with potential partners, gather information about our research to share with funders and partners, and help promote the work we do locally, regionally, and nationally. The ideal candidate will have basic knowledge of climate change and climate-related issues in the U.S. Southwest, familiarity with grant-funded research, demonstrated skills coordinating diverse groups, and a well-developed set of written and oral communication skills. The position is open until filled, but the first review of applicants will be on Nov. 7, 2022.

For more information about the position and to apply, please visit https://arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/4/home/requisition/12146?c=arizona

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A Social Ecology of Whale-Watching Ecotourism in El Vizcaíno

ben — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 13:33:08 +0000

Friday, April 22, 2022

The Baja California Peninsula is one of the most naturally stunning parts of our globe, split from the mainland of Mexico by the San Andreas Fault. Yet for decades, outsiders saw the area as an isolated and unproductive land with minimal economic value. Especially following the decline of the local whaling industry in the early 1900s, regional economic opportunities were limited to fishing, irrigated agriculture and ranching outside of the rise of the saltworks industry in 1954 (more on that later). However, the ‘secret’ of Baja California’s natural beauty was destined to get out. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the arid landscape was reimagined by locals and officials as a tourist’s paradise complete with beaches, surfing and—at least for a few months a year—the opportunity to get up close to Pacific gray whales.

Figure 1: A Pacific gray whale calf approaches a whale-watching boat. Photo by Michael R. Perry licensed under CC BY 2.0.

As an environmental anthropologist in training, understanding the ways in which humans relate to their broader socioecological community is of the utmost importance to me. In ecotourism projects like those that have developed in Baja, these relationships are multifaceted amongst human beings, non-human beings, and the natural landscape. My research focuses on these relationships in the small community of Ejido Luis Echeverría Álvarez (ELEA), located roughly 70 kilometers from Highway Route 1 and the town of San Ignacio on the West coast of Baja California Sur. It is also within the southernmost confines of El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, the largest wildlife refuge in Mexico, and home to exquisite populations of sea turtles, Baja California
pronghorn, and unique flora across a rich landscape.

Figure 2: Close-up map of Laguna San Ignacio and the ELEA ejido. Map by WiLDCOAST.

And remember those Pacific gray whales I mentioned earlier? Well, it just so happens that ELEA is on the coast of one of the last breeding grounds unmarred by human activity at the end of their migration from the Arctic: Laguna San Ignacio. Unfortunately, at the turn of the 21st century, industry was mounting a threat to the local ecosystem. Within a few hours drive to the North, a joint venture of the Mexican government and Mitsubishi known as Exportadora de Sal, S.A. (ESSA) already operates the world’s largest sea salt facility. This facility also lies on the coast of a whale breeding lagoon known as Laguna Ojo Liebre, and ESSA saw Laguna San Ignacio as a logical location to expand their operation.

Environmental NGOs, celebrities, and conservationists mobilized over fears that the new facility and the massive ships that would come with it would disrupt Laguna San Ignacio like the original ESSA plant had done at Ojo Liebre. The pressure eventually convinced former President Ernesto Zedillo to cancel the plan in 2000. Due to concessions by the Mexican government to ESSA just a year later, and other ecological threats including exploratory fossil fuel drilling in the lagoon, groups like Pronatura and WiLDCOAST went the extra step to place conservation easements and non-development agreements into effect with local ejidos in exchange for community funding—the first of which took effect in 2005 across 120,000 acres in ELEA. However, regulations on whale conservation and growing interest in the lagoon threatened to restrict access to the local fishery that many locals had historically relied upon.

Figure 3: A vehicle carries sea salt at the ESSA facility in Guerrero Negro. Image by WHALE MAGIC Tours licensed under Creative Commons.

What resulted was a complex web of relations between fishermen, ecotourism workers, government actors, and the whales themselves. But this relational web doesn’t stop there. It extends to the larger system of ecological relationships the whales inhabit across the thousands of miles they travel to give birth, including the productivity of the benthic ecosystem they rely on in the Arctic for food.

As one of many tourists who had traveled to enjoy the Baja shores (including a visit to Laguna Ojo Liebre in late 2016), I grew interested in how ecotourism, industrial and conservation efforts had impacted local communities. How had my presence contributed to the complex issues facing communities in El Vizcaíno? And when I think of communities, I don’t just imagine families, neighborhoods, and local restaurants filled with patrons. Communities extend to non-human beings too. To understand environmental issues in the social sciences, it is critical to center the roles and agency of plants, animals, and microbes that inhabit space alongside us humans. Other living things aren’t just there to provide value for people, and as we work to address the environmental realities of the contemporary age, we can’t forget that.

Working to supplement the excellent ecological research produced by the Laguna San Ignacio Ecosystem Science Program, my research seeks to understand the socioecological and economic impact of this conservation development deal on the multi-species community of ELEA. During my time in ELEA, I seek to understand the relationships, connections, and outcomes of this project by employing multi-species ethnography and participant observation. Multi-species ethnography works to understand the ‘contact zones’ where the existences of humans and non-human beings collide. To accomplish this, it is critical to frame animals, plants and microbes as central actors in my research. This project centers grey whales, benthic organisms, fish populations, human community members, and the relationship of these beings to the entire biosphere reserve. With insight from these diverse groups, I hope to provide further nuance to our understanding of the dynamic realities of ecotourism in El Vizcaíno—and whether the industry provides the economic and ecological benefits it has promised.

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Our cities are what we eat - 2022 CLIMAS E&S Fellows Introductions

ben — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 13:23:55 +0000

Friday, April 22, 2022

It’s late afternoon and I am sitting on the veranda at my parent’s house in the small mountain town of Montagu in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. In front of me lies a fishpond, inhabited mostly by Koi, and beyond that stretches a green lawn scattered with a variety of fruit trees. Some overripe apples have fallen to the ground, enticing several of the plump hens who have free range in the garden. To my left is a large vegetable patch and the chicken coop where my mother collects fresh eggs every morning. Grapevines creep up and over the latticework above my head, creating a dappled shade, and hummingbirds flit around the birdfeeders that have been hung from the pillars. I wave at Charles, the Malawian man who comes around every week to help tend the garden and do odd jobs around the house. He is whistling a tune while picking some spinach and green peppers for our evening meal – usually, he will take some produce home with him too.

Figure 1: Green peppers growing in my parent’s vegetable garden in Montagu, South Africa. Image credit: Julia Davies

Although I am enjoying the peaceful life in Montagu for a few days, the main reason that I have travelled to South Africa from Arizona is to collect data for my PhD dissertation. As a student in geography, I am researching the drivers of food insecurity among low-income urban households in southern Africa. By studying how people living in cities produce, access, and utilize food (and what challenges they face in this regard), I aim to identify opportunities for developing more sustainable and resilient urban food systems in the region. Such food systems would need to have the capacity over time to provide sufficient, safe, and accessible food to all urban residents, even in the face of shocks and pressures like those caused by climate change.

As I write this, with the autumn sun warming my back, I realize how climate change has been the key thread in my journey. My favorite subject in high school was geography, in which the stern Mr. Lance taught the class about climate systems and the problem of global warming. I went on to complete an undergraduate degree in environmental and geographical science at the University of Cape Town (UCT), and although I wasn’t immune to the social elements of the university experience, I worked hard on my Honors capstone project, which considered how low-income social housing developments could be made more climate resilient.

After a gap year, I returned to UCT to begin my master’s degree with the African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI). I immersed myself in my studies during this time, taking courses in atmospheric science, climate change mitigation, vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation, and managing complex human-ecological systems. My MSc thesis looked at the co-production of municipal climate change adaptation plans in the Western Cape Province. It gave me my first taste of “real” empirical research and inspired me to stay on at the ACDI as a research assistant for the next 18 months. I worked specifically on a collaborative, multi-country research project called “Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions” (ASSAR). I had the opportunity to travel to countries like Namibia, Botswana, and Ghana to learn about climate change impacts and adaptation opportunities in agricultural communities, and to participate in stakeholder engagement activities such as participatory workshops. ASSAR also introduced me to the world of science communication, which is a skill that I am continuously working on and which I hope to develop further during my time as a CLIMAS fellow.

Figure 2: Woman farmer collecting marula fruits in northern Namibia. Image credit: Sophie Lashford, ASSAR project.

In 2018, I met a professor from the University of Arizona at the Adaptation Futures conference in Cape Town, where I was presenting a poster of my research on the cultural dimensions of climate smart agriculture in Namibia [1]. This meeting ultimately led me to Arizona, where I began my PhD journey in 2019 under the supervision of Prof. Tom Evans. I am now part of a collaborative research group that investigates how urban population growth and climate change create food security challenges across rural-urban continuums in Zambia, Kenya, and South Africa. Within this project, I have a particular interest in the role of urban agriculture—the practice of growing crops and raising animals within urban area boundaries. My work on urban agricultureii will form the basis of a webinar and policy brief that I plan to develop and share with stakeholders in Zambia later this year. Through these media I aim to engage stakeholders who are responsible for various functions related to food security in Zambia, including local and district councilors, urban planners, the national Ministry of Agriculture, and representatives from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), both of which have local offices in Zambia.

Figure 3: Low-income urban households in Zambia growing vegetables to supplement their food needs. Image credit: Julia Davies

The garden that I am sitting in at my parent’s house in Montagu is a good example of how urban residents can become more self-sufficient by producing their own food. However, very few lower-income households in southern Africa have the space, labor, knowledge, or resources that they would need to do this, especially at a scale large enough to alleviate food insecurity [2]. As I found in my recent study of urban agriculture in small cities in Zambia and Kenya [3], only 33% of households were producing food, with many households facing barriers such as settlement informality and a lack of property rights. Rather than producing food, most people living in urban areas depend on food purchases from various retailers such as supermarkets, small shops, public markets, and street vendors [4]. Restaurants and fast-food outlets such as KFC and Hungry Lion are also becoming more common in cities across the region.

Figure 4: A Hungry Lion fast food outlet in an African city. Image credit: Masixole Feni, Consuming Urban Poverty project.

The amount and type of food that people buy, and the type of retailer that they purchase their food from, is very closely tied to their income and to their ability to access affordable retailers, for example by using public transport or buying food from mobile street vendors, which are illegal in many southern African cities [5]. Urban planning and governance are therefore critical for achieving sustainable and resilient urban food systems [6]. I will emphasize this connection through my engagements with stakeholders in Zambia, for instance by highlighting how governments can integrate food systems planning into city planning through land use and zoning regulations that support urban agriculture and the development of traditional public markets in proximity to low-income residential areas. As our recent study on urban food systems in Zambia and Kenya showsiv, these markets are critical to the food sourcing strategies of urban households across the region. My current research (forthcoming) further examines the challenge of urban food governance through the lens of traditional public markets in Zambia.

During my CLIMAS fellowship year, I will develop a second policy brief and webinar that focuses on the topic of public market governance. Like the first webinar and brief on urban agriculture, I plan to share and discuss these findings with government stakeholders from local to national scales and across various departments in Zambia, including market officers, public health officials, and non-government stakeholders such as representatives from the WFP and FAO. In these stakeholder engagements I will highlight the implications of my findings for policy and practice and create a space for rich conversations and new connections.

Figure 5: A traditional public market in Nanyuki, Kenya. Image credit: Corrie Hannah

It feels a bit bizarre that I had to leave my home country and pursue a PhD in Arizona to realize the close connections between food and cities in southern Africa, which I seem to have taken for granted in the past. I think Wayne Roberts (2001) [7] illustrates this connection most compellingly in his statement that “more than with any other of our biological needs, the choices we make about food affect the shape, style, pulse, smell, look, feel, health, economy, street life and infrastructure of our city.” The choices that are made today about food in southern Africa’s cities will therefore play a significant role in how these cities evolve in the coming decades. On the other hand, urban governance and planning decisions will profoundly affect how urban food systems function in future.

It's getting late here in Montagu, and the sun will be setting soon. I can hear my mother in the kitchen preparing dinner, and as I get up to help her, I feel grateful that we have access to fresh and healthy food right on our doorstep.

Davies, J., Spear, D., Chappel, A., Joshi, N., Togarepi, C., & Kunamwene, I. (2019). Considering religion and tradition in climate smart agriculture: insights from Namibia. The Climate-Smart Agriculture Papers, 187-197.
Frayne, B., McCordic, C., Shilomboleni, H., 2014. Growing out of poverty: does urban agriculture contribute to household food security in Southern African Cities? Urban Forum 25 (2), 177–189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-014-9219-3.
Davies, J., Hannah, C., Guido, Z., Zimmer, A., McCann, L., Battersby, J., & Evans, T. (2020). Barriers to urban agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. Food Policy, 101999. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2020.101999
Hannah, C., Davies, J., Green, R., Zimmer, A., Anderson, P., Battersby, J., ... & Evans, T. P. (2022). Persistence of open-air markets in the food systems of Africa's secondary cities. Cities, 124, 103608.
Battersby, J., & Watson, V. (2019). Urban food systems governance and poverty in African cities. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315191195
Haysom, G. (2021). Integrating Food Sensitive Planning and Urban Design into Urban Governance Actions. In Urban Forum (Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 289-310). Springer Netherlands.
Roberts, W. (2001). The way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. Toronto: Published by the Toronto Food Policy Council.

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Reflections on 2021 as a CLIMAS Environment & Society Fellow

ben — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 17:53:47 +0000

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

In late August of 2021, I called Rebecca Jim holding back tears. I had met Jim around 2013 when I was working with a coalition to raise awareness about tar sands extraction and to oppose the construction of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. Jim is the director of Local Environmental Action Demanded (LEAD), and she has devoted much of her life to bringing attention to the Tar Creek Superfund Site and other environmental justice issues in Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Jim’s work was inspiring and exciting to me, and from 2013 to the present, we maintained a relationship centered around our shared concern for environmental justice issues in Oklahoma. As I began my PhD program and envisioning my dissertation research project, I contacted Jim and asked her if there was some way my research could be useful to her and LEAD. She was excited about the possibility, and over time, we developed a collaborative research project focused on residents’ stories and experiences of water and work throughout processes of industrial development, environmental remediation, and ongoing environmental concerns around the Tar Creek Superfund Site.

Superfund sites are designated areas in need of clean-up due to their toxic effects. Among these sites, the EPA has referred to the Tar Creek Superfund Site, as one of the “most challenging” and “most complex” environmental remediation projects in the United States. Named for Tar Creek, which runs through the county and connects with multiple waterways, the site has no clearly defined boundaries but is broadly made up of areas in Ottawa County affected by the legacy of lead and zinc mining and other industrial practices. The area is dotted with large mounds of mining waste known locally as “chat piles.” They are made up of lead, zinc, cadmium, and other metals discarded and abandoned through mining processes. These metals seep into the soil and pollute groundwater. The overflowing toxic waters of flooded mine shafts have led to deeply entangled forms of water and soil pollution at and around the site. Importantly, Ottawa County is made up of the territories of the Quapaw, Seneca-Cayuga, Miami, Modoc, Wyandotte, Ottawa, Peoria, Shawnee, Eastern Shawnee, and Cherokee tribal nations, and the site embodies the ongoing and entangled processes of industrial development, environmental injustice, and settler colonialism in Oklahoma/Indian Territory.

Our project was initially designed to focus on peoples’ experiences with water and work throughout environmental remediation and was planned to be my dissertation research focus. But when I called Rebecca this past summer, I stumbled over words and struggled to speak as I told her that I was leaving my PhD program. She knew that I had been considering this for some time, but I had waivered, dug my heels in, tried desperately to stay, and tough it through. At this point, I was navigating numerous personal and mental health challenges and felt as though I had reached my limits. I still felt committed to our project, and I was unsure how to proceed. I felt like the only reason I remained in my program was a feeling of guilt. I felt guilty towards my advisor, fellow graduate students, my committee members, faculty who had mentored me, but most of all, I felt guilty towards Rebecca Jim. I had admired her for years before I even considered doing a PhD, and we had spent months (maybe years) building and dreaming up this project. Our IRB had just been approved. We were finally ready to begin, but I had reached a breaking point in my program and could not move forward.

As the words came tumbling out of my mouth, Jim listened calmy. She responded encouragingly and assured me that her desire to work with me had nothing to do with a PhD As our phone call came to an end, Rebecca said that she wanted me to “find the joy that every day can bring.” After I got off the phone with her, I sobbed, and I felt tremendously grateful for her and the relationship that we had built. Our relationship and our commitments to illuminating peoples' stories in Ottawa County were not reliant on my career or my PhD trajectory, and I wanted to see the project carry on and be realized. I hoped to continue as part of the research team in some way, but I wanted to do whatever was best for the project even if it meant the research carrying on without me. I knew that I would likely navigate and be forced to confront feelings of possessiveness or ownership about the project, and I had to instead embrace the collaborative potential of the project to exist and thrive regardless of my involvement.

Throughout meetings and conversations, I began investigating ways for the project to carry on with or without me. I spoke with the IRB about potential options to continue the research project, and I was notified that the best way to ensure the efficient continuation of the project was to identify a new principal investigator. With thoughtfulness and care, Dr. Laurel Smith, Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Oklahoma, stepped in as the principal investigator and became a new mentor for me and collaborator on the project. Smith brought together a new team of graduate students to carry on and revise the project. The team now consists of Dr. Laurel Smith, Rebecca Jim, Jenna Randall, Valerie Doornbos, and me. Smith has graciously allowed me to remain part of the research team, and she has added valuable insights and points of concern to the project and expanded the scope of the project to include a broader focus that encompasses the collaborative interests and skills of the team.

While the project has shifted significantly and been delayed by personal hardships and life shifts, the project has benefited from the strong relationships, care for one another, and open communication that underpinned the initial imagining of the project. Additionally, these hardships and changes have led to a stronger and more varied research team and focus that will benefit the project in the long term. The year has demonstrated for me the value of relationship building and networking beyond the execution of a particular research project, and the importance of honest, open, and clear communication rooted in care for one another’s well-being, not simply for the efficient completion of an individual research project. Research projects’ success should not be solely measured by their overt outputs, but in the relationship-building and dialogue that collaboration can foster. Collaborative research can shape communities in long-lasting and unexpected ways through dialogue, connections, care for one another, and the emergence of new conversations and lines of inquiry. The fellowship year and these relationships helped me to realize and prioritize how the project could carry on even as my academic career came to an end (or perhaps a pause and redirection).

Some thoughts on leaving my PhD program and writing this blog post:

Broadly, I began studying anthropology because I was searching for a way to direct and explore my concerns and frustrations with aspects of U.S. society and culture, and I was craving deeper connections with human beings through peoples’ stories and experiences. However, something about my PhD program, my own personal experiences, and the practice of doing, reading, and thinking about anthropology made me feel more disconnected from people than I ever had. I still held intellectual curiosity, deep concern for environmental justice issues, and a commitment to exploring connections and aspiring towards more caring environmental and social relationships. But aspects of the anthropological lens and the academic experience left me feeling alienated and disconnected, alone. I am still grappling with why and how I had to leave anthropology and my PhD program. I do not have concrete or definite answers, but I simply know that I could not move forward. I also know that many of the issues I faced resulted from my own mental and emotional struggles, and I want to be clear that I am not trying to criticize anthropology as a discipline in this reflection. Lots of valid and fair criticisms exist, and at the same time, I know that for many people anthropology is a valuable and meaningful tool for critical inquiry and engagement. There were things I valued about it, or I would not have entered a PhD program in anthropology. There were things I questioned, or I would not have left. I am also tremendously grateful to the faculty members who mentored me and the fellow graduate students who pushed my thinking in new and exciting ways at the University of Arizona, and I do not intend to criticize my department in this piece of writing. I was honestly hesitant to write this blog post because I am still navigating complex feelings about all of this, but I decided to share these reflections because I hope other graduate students who hold similar feelings might feel less alone if they stumble upon it. I also hope that as people engaging in research, we find ways to foster relationships, inspire curiosity, and aspire towards more caring collaborations that can thrive within, without, and beyond our individual research projects and academic pursuits. Leaving an academic career track does not have to mean leaving the curiosities that excite me, the relationships that developed, or my engagement with environmental justice issues.

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CLIMAS blogs

UHI Workshop - 10/31/2023 - Follow Up

UHI Workshop - 10/31/2023 - Follow Up

Re-Thinking Land and History: Working with Navajo Mountain Soil Water Conservation District Members

Re-Thinking Land and History: Working with Navajo Mountain Soil Water Conservation District Members

What's going on with the rains?

What's going on with the rains?

Flood Justice in South Texas

Flood Justice in South Texas

Mapping tarps and stories to spotlight inequitable disaster recovery

Mapping tarps and stories to spotlight inequitable disaster recovery

Exploring Children’s Drawing as Ecological Engagement

CLIMAS is Hiring a Program Manager

A Social Ecology of Whale-Watching Ecotourism in El Vizcaíno

Fellow, Climate Assessment for the Southwest

Our cities are what we eat - 2022 CLIMAS E&S Fellows Introductions

Fellow, Climate Assessment for the Southwest

Reflections on 2021 as a CLIMAS Environment & Society Fellow

Fellow, Climate Assessment for the Southwest

Some thoughts on leaving my PhD program and writing this blog post: