College of Environmental Design

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 historic and ongoing environmental racisms, resulting in racialized disasters. Legacies of historic harms such as the placement of waste, infrastructural disinvestment and discriminatory housing policies present immediate and ongoing challenges in disaster recovery and mitigation. The compounding disaster of physical risks, environmental pollution and structural racism is a result of white supremacy and racial hierarchies mechanized through planning institutions, paradigms, co-opted narratives and political power. Originality/value: Reparative planning must be applied to contextualize and address disaster racisms specific to regional historicized political and economic geographies. It is imperative to understand the root of vulnerability as structural racism and to identify the specific institutional mechanisms that enable ongoing harms.

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. We then implemented a within-community matched design coupled with a Bayesian hierarchical model to generate spatially varying effect estimates. Finally, we conducted a random effects meta-regression to examine how community-level characteristics modified heat's impacts across ZIP codes. RESULTS: Extreme heat events were associated with substantial increases in acute care utilization for all causes [odds ratio ; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.03, 1.04] and were attributable for over 30,000 excess acute care utilizations during the study period. Extreme heat events were also associated with increases in heat-related illness (; 95% CI: 1.49, 1.58); endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic disorders (; 95% CI: 1.1, 1.16); other signs and symptoms (; 95% CI: 1.06, 1.08); and injury and poisoning (; 95% CI: 1.05, 1.08). There was substantial spatial heterogeneity in extreme heat events effects, especially in coastal metropolitan areas. Communities with lower incomes and education levels, less access to insurance and air conditioning, and higher percentages of Black, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander residents were most vulnerable during extreme heat events. CONCLUSIONS: Extreme heat events in California are associated with increased pediatric care utilization. There is significant variation in heat's consequences, and historically disadvantaged and under-resourced communities are most impacted. These findings suggest that interventions designed to improve heat resilience should be targeted to protect vulnerable children. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP14236.

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. We categorized ZCTAs (into three groups) based on their monthly land surface temperature trends. Of the 216 ZCTAs included in this study, the summertime land surface temperature trends of 43 decreased, while 161 remained unchanged, and 12 increased. Los Angeles had the greatest number of decreased ZCTAs, San Diego and San Jose had the highest number of increased ZCTAs. To analyze the number of monthly HRI attributable to changes in UHI, we used inverse probability of treatment weighting to analyze the difference in HRI between the years of 2006 and 2017 which were two major extreme heat events over the entire State. We observed an average reduction of 3.2 (95 % CI: 0.5; 5.9) HRIs per month and per ZCTAs in decreased neighborhoods as compared to unchanged. This study emphasizes the importance of urban climate adaptation strategies to mitigate the intensity and prevalence of UHIs to reduce health risks related to heat.

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 against sinking deltas or relative sea level rises.

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 ...

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 study: (1) a comparison of lists of medicinal plants used by various groups (e.g., Native American, Mission priests, Californios) prior to, during, and after the Mission period and (2) a close reading of diaries, reports, and books written by first-hand observers and modern authorities to find accounts of and identify factors influencing the exchange of medicinal information.ResultsA comparison of the lists of medicinal plants use by various groups indicated that only a small percentage of medicinal plants were shared by two or more groups. For example, none of the 265 taxa of species used by the Native Americans in pre-Mission times were imported into Spain for medicinal use and only 16 taxa were reported to have been used at the Missions. A larger sharing of information of medicinal plants took place in the post-Mission period when Native Americans were dispersed from the Missions and worked as laborers on the ranches of the Californios.ConclusionsSharing of information concerning medicinal plants did occur during the Mission period, but the number of documented species was limited. A number of possible factors discouraged this exchange. These include (1) imbalance of power between the priests and the Native Americans, (2) suppression of indigenous knowledge and medical practices by the Mission priests, (3) language barriers, (4) reduction of availability of medicinal herbs around the Mission due to introduced agricultural practices, (5) desire to protect knowledge of medicinal herbs by Native American shaman, (6) administrative structure at the Missions which left little time for direct interaction between the priests and individual Native Americans, (7) loss of knowledge of herbal medicine by the Native Americans over time at the Missions, and (8) limited transportation opportunities for reciprocal the shipment of medicinal plants between California and Spain. Three possible factors were identified that contributed to a greater sharing of information between the Native Americans and the Californios in the post-Mission period. These were (1) more one-to-one interactions between the Californios and the Native Americans, (2) many of the Californios were mestizos whose mothers or grandmothers were Native Americans, and (3) lack of pressure on the part of the Californios to suppress Native American beliefs and medicinal practices.

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 of macroinvertebrates overall, and richness and abundance of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera were higher on the north-bank tributary deltas than the south-bank tributary deltas. These findings were consistent with prior studies in temperate climates showing detrimental effects of road-derived fine sediment on aquatic organisms. A Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) analysis showed the impacted community on the south-bank deltas was influenced by poorly-sorted substrate with greater proportions of fine sediment and higher water temperatures.

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 the Mekong, introduce a globally applicable framework to optimize dam sequences in space and time, and highlight the importance of strategic planning on multiple scales to minimize hydropower impacts on rivers.

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.