Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning

Significant wetland losses and continuing threats to remnant habitats have motivated extensive restoration efforts in the San Francisco Bay–Delta estuary of California, the largest in the western United States. Consistent monitoring of ecological outcomes from this restoration effort would help managers learn from past projects to improve the design of future endeavors. However, budget constraints and challenging field conditions can limit the scope of current monitoring programs. Geospatial tools and remote sensing data sets could help complement field efforts for a low-cost, longer, and broader monitoring of wetland resources. To understand where geospatial tools could best complement current field monitoring practices, we reviewed the metrics and monitoring methods used by 42 wetland restoration projects implemented in the estuary. Monitoring strategies within our sample of monitoring plans relied predominantly on field surveys to assess key aspects of vegetation recovery while geospatial data sets were used sparingly. Drawing on recent publications that focus on the estuary and other wetland systems, we propose additional geospatial applications to help monitor the progress made toward site-specific and regional goals. These include the use of ecological niche models to target on-the-ground monitoring efforts, the up-scaling of field measurements into regional estimates using remote sensing data, and the analysis of time-series to detect ecosystem shifts. We discuss challenges and limitations to the broad-scale application of remote sensing data in wetland monitoring. These notably include the need to find a venue to store and share computationally intensive data sets, the often cumbersome pre-processing effort needed for long-term analyses, and multiple confounding factors that can obscure the signal of remote sensing data sets.

Large-scale ecosystem restoration projects seldom undergo comprehensive evaluation to determine project effectiveness. Consequently, there are missed opportunities for learning and strategy refinement. Before our study, monitoring information from California’s middle Sacramento River had not been synthesized, despite restoration having been ongoing since 1989. Our assessment was based on the development and application of 36 quantitative ecological indicators. These indicators were used to characterize the status of terrestrial and floodplain resources (e.g., flora and fauna), channel dynamics (e.g., planform, geomorphology), and the flow regime. Indicators were also associated with specific goal statements of the CALFED Ecosystem Restoration Program. A collective weight of evidence approach was used to assess restoration success. Our synthesis demonstrates good progress in the restoration of riparian habitats, birds and other wildlife, but not in restoration of streamflows and geomorphic processes. For example, from 1999 to 2007, there was a > 600% increase in forest patch core size, and a 43% increase in the area of the river bordered by natural habitat > 500 m wide. Species richness of landbirds and beetles increased at restoration sites, as did detections of bats. However, degraded post-Shasta Dam streamflow conditions continued. Relative to pre-dam conditions, the average number of years that pass between flows that are sufficient to mobilize the bed, and those that are of sufficient magnitude to inundate the floodplain, increased by over 100%. Trends in geomorphic processes were strongly negative, with increases in the amount of bank hardened with riprap, and decreases in the area of floodplain reworked. Overall the channel simplified, becoming less sinuous with reduced overall channel length. Our progress assessment presents a compelling case for what needs to be done to further advance the ecological restoration of the river. The most important actions to be taken relate to promoting river meander and floodplain connectivity, and restoring components of the natural flow regime.

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.

WILDERNESS / UX - DESIGN RESEARCH “Design & Planning Opportunities for the Big Sur Region” THIS RESEARCH WAS SUPPORTED BY THE PEDER SATHER CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY AT UC BERKELEY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING UC BERKELEY LDARCH 203 - FALL 2023 Isaiah Rapko Olivia Jones Lynsey Coke-Ferreira Aishwarya Dharmarajan Eli Demosthenes Lulu Liu Dongni Ma Luis Lu Jie Han Aishvarya Dubey Alex Jordan Claudia Lamberty Instructor: Richard