Seasonal (0-3 months) climate forecasts and near-term decadal (10-30 years) climate change projections provide valuable information for improving seasonal and long-term planning of water and energy management. Given that the climatic attributes over these time periods are typically expressed as probabilistic information, we propose an adaptive water and energy management framework that uses probabilistic inflow…

Is nature predictable? If so, how can we better manage and conserve ecosystems? Iterative ecological forecasting is an emerging interdisciplinary research area that aims to improve researchers' ability to predict ecological processes on near-term timescales that can be validated and updated. In this forum, Dietze will discuss the challenges and opportunities in iterative ecological forecasting,…

From deforestation to urbanization, the human footprint on the land surface is ever expanding, converting natural land covers into land uses or intensifying current land uses. Land use change results in loss of biodiversity, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and alteration of hydrological systems, among other impacts. Rates of land use change can be quantified using…

Social media posts are generated both in space and time, and in the context of disaster situations, they can provide minute-by-minute and location-by-location awareness of an event and users' concerns and feelings about crises. In this forum, we investigate the relationship between natural disasters, social media, user actions and traditional media coverage. We will examine…

In this forum, Dr. Wentz shares the goals and outcomes from Arizona State University’s Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER). KER is a boundary organization with the intent to build community resilience in Maricopa County, Arizona. Here, community resilience is defined as the capacity of a community to withstand and respond to long term stresses and…

The world is getting hotter and in many cases wetter. Impacts on coastal carbon cycling are becoming realized yet our ability to model these processes remain in their early stages. Knowledge gained from specific case studies will form a basis for considering pulses of extreme events occurring amongst the presses of land use change and…

As sensors are getting smaller, cheaper and more efficient, data collection is no longer limited to high-end users. It can now be done from a variety of commodity platforms such as commercial drones, consumer automobiles and even the phones in our pockets. We are now collecting more data than humans can interpret manually, and we…

A community-engaged information-gathering effort is being conducted to inform air quality sampling strategy in Colfax, Louisiana, a low income, majority-Black community which hosts a hazardous materials thermal treatment (TT) facility. Our mixed-methods approach combines mapping with qualitative analysis to synthesize information on exposures within Colfax and the nearby community of The Rock, which are proximal…

The field of neighborhoods and health (sometimes referred to as spatial epidemiology) has grown exponentially in the fifteen years since the publication of the first edition of Neighborhoods and Health edited by Ichiro Kawachi and Lisa Berkman in 2003. The field continues to grow since the revamped second edition of Neighborhoods and Health (Oxford University…

Water is the lifeblood of communities across Eastern North Carolina, many owing their locations and existence to the abundant natural resources provided by rivers, tributaries, floodplains and coastlines. These natural features, including their propensity to flood, have made lasting physical and cultural impressions that continue to shape and influence both town and region. Recent catastrophic…