Recent ucb_ced_laep_oapdeposits items

Reparative planning through contextual vulnerabilities for disaster mitigation: a Gulf Coast case study

Tue, 2 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Purpose: Reparative planning, when paired with participatory research, can serve as a framework for addressing ongoing harms that enable disaster racism while building toward more equitable disaster mitigation. This paper discusses the intersection between disparate disaster impacts, environmental racism, compounding disasters and the role of contextualizing vulnerability. Design/methodology/approach: A participatory research framework is explored in the context of disaster recovery and mitigation, which led to uncovering the roots of institutional vulnerabilities experienced by the predominantly Black community of North Port St. Joe, Florida. Findings: The main findings include the significance of situated knowledge in the relational participatory process, the importance of redistributing decision-making power and the development of a desire-based reparative disaster mitigation framework in local hazard mitigation planning. Social implications: Disaster impacts compound...

Vertical Planting: tectonics and aesthetics

Thu, 8 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This book, which has been developed from the original presentations at the symposium, presents the thoughts of a select international group of landscape architects and historians who discuss the subject of planting design through the lens ...

Spatial Variation in the Association between Extreme Heat Events and Warm Season Pediatric Acute Care Utilization: A Small-Area Assessment of Multiple Health Conditions and Environmental Justice Implications in California (2005–2019)

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

BACKGROUND: The increasing frequency and severity of extreme heat events due to climate change present unique risks to children and adolescents. There is a lack of evidence regarding how heat's impacts on pediatric patients vary spatially and how structural and sociodemographic factors drive this heterogeneity. OBJECTIVES: We examined the association between extreme heat events and pediatric acute care utilization in California for 19 distinct health conditions. We then assessed how extreme heat's consequences varied at the ZIP code level and identified environmental justice metrics that modulated children's vulnerability to extreme heat. METHODS: This study analyzed 7.2 million unscheduled hospitalizations and emergency department visits for children years old in California between May and September from 2005 to 2019. We first utilized a time-stratified case-crossover design to generate statewide estimates for the association between extreme heat events and care utilization....

The health benefits of reducing micro-heat islands: A 22-year analysis of the impact of urban temperature reduction on heat-related illnesses in California's major cities

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This study investigates the relationship between temporal changes in temperatures characterizing local urban heat islands (UHIs) and heat-related illnesses (HRIs) in seven major cities of California. UHIs, which are a phenomenon that arises in the presence of impervious surfaces or the lack of green spaces exacerbate the effects of extreme heat events, can be measured longitudinally using satellite products. The two objectives of this study were: (1) to identify temperature trends in local temperatures to characterize UHIs across zip code tabulation areas (ZCTAs) in the seven observed cities over a 22-year period and (2) to use propensity score and inverse probability weighting to achieve exchangeability between different types of ZCTAs and assess the difference in hospital admissions recorded as HRIs attributable to temporal changes in UHIs. We use monthly land surface temperature data derived from MODIS Terra imagery from the summer months (June-September) from 2000 to 2022....

Can restoring water and sediment fluxes across a mega-dam cascade alleviate a sinking river delta?

Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hydropower, although an attractive renewable energy source, can alter the flux of water, sediments, and biota, producing detrimental impacts in downstream regions. The Mekong River illustrates the impacts of large dams and the limitations of conventional dam regulating strategies. Even under the most optimistic sluicing scenario, sediment load at the Mekong Delta could only recover to 62.3 ± 8.2 million tonnes (1 million tonnes = 10⁹ kilograms), short of the (100 to 160)-million tonne historical level. Furthermore, unless retrofit to reroute sediments, the dams are doomed to continue trapping sediment for at least 170 years and thus starve downstream reaches of sediment, contributing to the impending disappearance of the Mekong Delta. Therefore, we explicitly challenge the widespread use of large dead storages-the portion of the reservoirs that cannot be emptied-in dam designs. Smaller dead storages can ease sediment starvation in downstream regions, thereby buffering...

Investigating the Links between Climate Injustice and Ableism: A Measurement of Green Space Access Inequalities within Disability Subgroups

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Investigating the Links between Climate Injustice and Ableism: A Measurement of Green Space Access Inequalities within Disability Subgroups

Impacts of sediment derived from erosion of partially-constructed road on aquatic organisms in a tropical river: The Río San Juan, Nicaragua and Costa Rica

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Throughout the humid tropics, increased land disturbance and concomitant road construction increases erosion and sediment delivery to rivers. Building road networks in developing countries is commonly a priority for international development funding based on anticipated socio-economic benefits. Yet the resulting erosion from roads, which recent studies have shown result in at least ten-fold increases in erosion rates, is not fully accounted for. While effects of road-derived sediment on aquatic ecosystems have been documented in temperate climates, little has been published on the effects of road-induced sediment on aquatic ecosystems in developing countries of the tropics. We studied periphyton biomass and macroinvertebrate communities on the deltas of Río San Juan tributaries, comparing north-bank tributaries draining undisturbed rain forest with south-bank tributaries receiving runoff from a partially-built road experiencing rapid erosion. Periphyton biomass, richness and abundance...

The Tsinghua–Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities in China: unlocking the power of cities for a healthy China

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Tsinghua–Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities in China: unlocking the power of cities for a healthy China

Exchange of medicinal plant information in California missions

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

BackgroundMissions were established in California in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to convert Native Americans to Christianity and enculturate them into a class of laborers for Californios (Spanish/Mexican settler). The concentration of large numbers of Native Americans at the Missions, along with the introduction of European diseases, led to serious disease problems. Medicinal supplies brought to California by the missionaries were limited in quantity. This situation resulted in an opportunity for the sharing of knowledge of medicinal plants between the Native Americans and the Mission priests. The purpose of this study is to examine the degree to which such sharing of knowledge took place and to understand factors that may have influenced the sharing of medicinal knowledge. The study also examines the sharing of medicinal knowledge between the Native Americans and the Californios following the demise of the California Missions.MethodsTwo methods were employed in the...

Deploy diverse renewables to save tropical rivers

Tue, 26 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A strategic mix of solar, wind and storage technologies around river basins would be safer and cheaper than building large dams, argue Rafael J. P. Schmitt, Noah Kittner and colleagues.

Planning dam portfolios for low sediment trapping shows limits for sustainable hydropower in the Mekong

Fri, 15 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The transboundary Mekong Basin has been dubbed the "Battery of Southeast Asia" for its large hydropower potential. Development of hydropower dams in the six riparian countries proceeds without strategic analyses of dam impacts, e.g., reduced sediment delivery to the lower Mekong. This will impact some of the world's largest freshwater fisheries and endangers the resilience of the delta, which supports 17 million livelihoods, against rising sea levels. To highlight alternatives, we contribute an optimization-based framework for strategic sequencing of dam development. We quantify lost opportunities from past development and identify remaining opportunities for better tradeoffs between sediment and hydropower. We find that limited opportunities remain for less impactful hydropower in the lower basin, where most development is currently planned, while better trade-offs could be reached with dams in the upper Mekong in China. Our results offer a strategic vision for hydropower in...

Dis/orientation machines: journeys into labyrinthine landscapes

Tue, 7 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Dis/orientation machines: journeys into labyrinthine landscapes

Aerial visions/ground control: The art of illustrative plans and bird’s-eye views

Sat, 1 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The horizon represents the key datum and perceptual limit within a landscape. As we move, new territories and events cross the threshold of our individual horizons and enter our field of perception. As representations of both the corporeal world and future projections, landscape design visualizations are also conditioned by their horizons. When included in bird’s-eye views, a horizon provides lift and flight; without this critical orienting datum, the viewer may be vulnerable to perceptual vertigo. For the Cartesian projection of illustrative plans, the horizon takes the form of the edges of the page. Here, the frame separates the field of representation from the background world. In analogue representation, the first act was to define the frame before drawing could commence. However, 1:1 scaled digital mapping allows this definitive act to be deferred indefinitely. This results in weak frames that ineffectively decipher the representation of a portion of the world. Because designs...