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Community Resilience In Vermont After The 2023 Flooding Event, Alex Poniz Jan 2023

Community Resilience In Vermont After The 2023 Flooding Event, Alex Poniz

Family Medicine Clerkship Student Projects

Between July 10th-11th 2023 Vermont experienced catastrophic flooding after receiving prolonged heavy rainfall of up to 9” over 48 hrs. Damage from the 2023 event rivals the historic destruction of Hurricane Irene in 2011 and is exceeded only by the Great Vermont Flood of 1927, an event predating modern flood controls. We collected oral histories from Vermonters to better understand their lived experience of the flood and its impacts, and identifed common themes related to community and individual resilience.


Climate Impacts Associated With Reduced Diet Diversity In Children Across Nineteen Countries, Meredith T. Niles, Benjamin F. Emery, Serge Wiltshire, Molly E. Brown, Brendan Fisher, Taylor H. Ricketts Jan 2021

Climate Impacts Associated With Reduced Diet Diversity In Children Across Nineteen Countries, Meredith T. Niles, Benjamin F. Emery, Serge Wiltshire, Molly E. Brown, Brendan Fisher, Taylor H. Ricketts

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

It is widely anticipated that climate change will negatively affect both food security and diet diversity. Diet diversity is especially critical for children as it correlates with macro and micronutrient intake important for child development. Despite these anticipated links, little empirical evidence has demonstrated a relationship between diet diversity and climate change, especially across large datasets spanning multiple global regions and with more recent climate data. Here we use survey data from 19 countries and more than 107 000 children, coupled with 30 years of precipitation and temperature data, to explore the relationship of climate to child diet diversity while …


Water Use Governance In A Temperate Region: Implications For Agricultural Climate Change Adaptation In The Northeastern United States, Rachel E. Schattman, Meredith T. Niles, Hannah M. Aitken Jan 2020

Water Use Governance In A Temperate Region: Implications For Agricultural Climate Change Adaptation In The Northeastern United States, Rachel E. Schattman, Meredith T. Niles, Hannah M. Aitken

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Climate change and access to water are interrelated concerns for agriculture and other sectors, even in temperate regions. Governance approaches and regulatory frameworks determine who has access to water, for what purpose, and when. In the northeastern United States, water governance has historically been conducted by states through a combination of statutory guidance and common law. However, it is unclear what effect if current governance approaches will be sufficient for achieving resource conservation and equitable allocation in a changing climate. To provide insight into these issues, we conducted the first review of freshwater governance in the 12 states that comprise …


Smallholder Farmers Spend Credit Primarily On Food: Gender Differences And Food Security Implications In A Changing Climate, Marissa Carranza, Meredith T. Niles Jul 2019

Smallholder Farmers Spend Credit Primarily On Food: Gender Differences And Food Security Implications In A Changing Climate, Marissa Carranza, Meredith T. Niles

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

In many low-income nations agriculture is used as the primary source of income, which in the face of a changing climate, is known to be at considerable risk for the smallholder farmers that rely on it. Financial resources may enable smallholder farmers to implement adaptation practices and diversify income and investments, which has the potential to affect household income and food security. Here we explore relationships between access to different types of financial resources among male and female-headed households and women vs. men, use of financial resources, and its relationship to food security. We use data from the CGIAR Climate …


A Comparative Analysis Of Governance And Leadership In Agricultural Development Policy Networks, Jessica Rudnick, Meredith Niles, Mark Lubell, Laura Cramer May 2019

A Comparative Analysis Of Governance And Leadership In Agricultural Development Policy Networks, Jessica Rudnick, Meredith Niles, Mark Lubell, Laura Cramer

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Agricultural development initiatives feature many public and private organizations working together across sectors and scales to pursue the goals of food security and climate resilience. Policy networks are considered a crucial ingredient for the learning and cooperation needed to effectively implement agricultural development projects and increase community resiliency, yet very little comparative empirical data has been collected to assess where and how these networks operate. We contribute to filling this gap by characterizing the governance and leadership patterns within agricultural development policy networks that connect organizations working on climate resilience and food security activities in 14 smallholder farming communities across …


Food And Earth Systems: Priorities For Climate Change Adaptation And Mitigation For Agriculture And Food Systems, Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Bruce M. Campbell, Peter J.M. Cooper, James W. Hansen, Todd Rosenstock, Eva Wollenberg Mar 2019

Food And Earth Systems: Priorities For Climate Change Adaptation And Mitigation For Agriculture And Food Systems, Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Bruce M. Campbell, Peter J.M. Cooper, James W. Hansen, Todd Rosenstock, Eva Wollenberg

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Human activities and their relation with land, through agriculture and forestry, are significantly impacting Earth system functioning. Specifically, agriculture has increasingly become a key sector for adaptation and mitigation initiatives that address climate change and help ensure food security for a growing global population. Climate change and agricultural outcomes influence our ability to reach targets for at least seven of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. By 2015, 103 nations had committed themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, while 102 countries had prioritized agriculture in their adaptation agenda. Adaptation and mitigation actions within agriculture still receive insufficient support across …


Does Household Capital Mediate The Uptake Of Agricultural Land, Crop, And Livestock Adaptations? Evidence From The Indo-Gangetic Plains (India), Sameer H. Shah, Courtney Hammond Wagner, Udita Sanga, Hogeun Park, Lia Helena Monteiro De Lima Demange, Carolina Gueiros, Meredith T. Niles Jan 2019

Does Household Capital Mediate The Uptake Of Agricultural Land, Crop, And Livestock Adaptations? Evidence From The Indo-Gangetic Plains (India), Sameer H. Shah, Courtney Hammond Wagner, Udita Sanga, Hogeun Park, Lia Helena Monteiro De Lima Demange, Carolina Gueiros, Meredith T. Niles

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains produce much of the wheat and rice grown in India. However, food production and millions of farm-based livelihoods in this region will continue to be adversely affected by hydro-climatic change and variation, reduced land productivity, and declining groundwater levels. Thus, agricultural adaptations are essential for protecting and improving upon intersecting goals of food security, poverty alleviation, and wellbeing. Household “capital” (e.g., natural, human, financial, physical, and social) is commonly cited as an indicator of livelihood adaptability and innovation. We develop a series of mediated structural equation models to empirically evaluate the validity of capital as …


The Climate-Smart Village Approach: Framework Of An Integrative Strategy For Scaling Up Adaptation Options In Agriculture, Pramod K. Aggarwal, Andy Jarvis, Bruce M. Campbell, Robert B. Zougmoré, Arun Khatri-Chhetri, Sonja J. Vermeulen, Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Leocadio S. Sebastian, James Kinyangi, Osana Bonilla-Findji, Maren Radeny, John Recha, Deissy Martinez-Baron, Julian Ramirez-Villegas, Sophia Huyer, Philip Thornton, Eva Wollenberg, James Hansen, Patricia Alvarez-Toro, Andrés Aguilar-Ariza, David Arango-Londoño, Victor Patiño-Bravo, Ovidio Rivera, Mathieu Ouedraogo, Bui Tan Yen Jan 2018

The Climate-Smart Village Approach: Framework Of An Integrative Strategy For Scaling Up Adaptation Options In Agriculture, Pramod K. Aggarwal, Andy Jarvis, Bruce M. Campbell, Robert B. Zougmoré, Arun Khatri-Chhetri, Sonja J. Vermeulen, Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Leocadio S. Sebastian, James Kinyangi, Osana Bonilla-Findji, Maren Radeny, John Recha, Deissy Martinez-Baron, Julian Ramirez-Villegas, Sophia Huyer, Philip Thornton, Eva Wollenberg, James Hansen, Patricia Alvarez-Toro, Andrés Aguilar-Ariza, David Arango-Londoño, Victor Patiño-Bravo, Ovidio Rivera, Mathieu Ouedraogo, Bui Tan Yen

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Increasing weather risks threaten agricultural production systems and food security across the world. Maintaining agricultural growth while minimizing climate shocks is crucial to building a resilient food production system and meeting developmental goals in vulnerable countries. Experts have proposed several technological, institutional, and policy interventions to help farmers adapt to current and future weather variability and to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper presents the climate-smart village (CSV) approach as a means of performing agricultural research for development that robustly tests technological and institutional options for dealing with climatic variability and climate change in agriculture using participatory methods. It …


Mountain Forests And Sustainable Development: The Potential For Achieving The United Nations' 2030 Agenda, Georg Gratzer, William S. Keeton Aug 2017

Mountain Forests And Sustainable Development: The Potential For Achieving The United Nations' 2030 Agenda, Georg Gratzer, William S. Keeton

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

The world is facing numerous and severe environmental, social, and economic challenges. To address these, in September 2015 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the resolution Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The United Nations' 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and their 169 targets are ambitious, broadly encompassing, and indivisible. They are intended to guide nations and communities toward attaining healthy and peaceful livelihoods free of poverty and hunger. Collectively the goals envision sound and safe environments, where global threats like climate change are successfully combated through both mitigation and adaptation. Agenda 2030 envisages sustainable …


Evaluation Of A Proposal For Reliable Low-Cost Grid Power With 100% Wind, Water, And Solar, Christopher T.M. Clack, Staffan A. Qvist, Jay Apt, Morgan Bazilian, Adam R. Brandt, Ken Caldeira, Steven J. Davis, Victor Diakov, Mark A. Handschy, Paul D.H. Hines, Paulina Jaramillo, Daniel M. Kammen, Jane C.S. Long, M. Granger Morgan, Adam Reed, Varun Sivaram, James Sweeney, George R. Tynan, David G. Victor, John P. Weyant, Jay F. Whitacre Jun 2017

Evaluation Of A Proposal For Reliable Low-Cost Grid Power With 100% Wind, Water, And Solar, Christopher T.M. Clack, Staffan A. Qvist, Jay Apt, Morgan Bazilian, Adam R. Brandt, Ken Caldeira, Steven J. Davis, Victor Diakov, Mark A. Handschy, Paul D.H. Hines, Paulina Jaramillo, Daniel M. Kammen, Jane C.S. Long, M. Granger Morgan, Adam Reed, Varun Sivaram, James Sweeney, George R. Tynan, David G. Victor, John P. Weyant, Jay F. Whitacre

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

A number of analyses, meta-Analyses, and assessments, including those performed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the International Energy Agency, have concluded that deployment of a diverse portfolio of clean energy technologies makes a transition to a low-carbon-emission energy system both more feasible and less costly than other pathways. In contrast, Jacobson et al. [Jacobson MZ, Delucchi MA, Cameron MA, Frew BA (2015) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112(49):15060-15065] argue that it is feasible to provide "low-cost solutions to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of …


Transitions In Climate And Energy Discourse Between Hurricanes Katrina And Sandy, Emily M. Cody, Jennie C. Stephens, James P. Bagrow, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Christopher M. Danforth Mar 2017

Transitions In Climate And Energy Discourse Between Hurricanes Katrina And Sandy, Emily M. Cody, Jennie C. Stephens, James P. Bagrow, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Although climate change and energy are intricately linked, their explicit connection is not always prominent in public discourse and the media. Disruptive extreme weather events, including hurricanes, focus public attention in new and different ways offering a unique window of opportunity to analyze how a focusing event influences public discourse. Media coverage of extreme weather events simultaneously shapes and reflects public discourse on climate issues. Here, we analyze climate and energy newspaper coverage of Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy (2012) using topic models, mathematical techniques used to discover abstract topics within a set of documents. Our results demonstrate that post-Katrina …


Impacts Of Projected Climate Change Over The Lake Champlain Basin In Vermont, Justin Guilbert, Brian Beckage, Jonathan M. Winter, Radley M. Horton, Timothy Perkins, Arne Bomblies Jan 2014

Impacts Of Projected Climate Change Over The Lake Champlain Basin In Vermont, Justin Guilbert, Brian Beckage, Jonathan M. Winter, Radley M. Horton, Timothy Perkins, Arne Bomblies

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

The Lake Champlain basin is a critical ecological and socioeconomic resource of the northeastern United States and southern Quebec, Canada. While general circulation models (GCMs) provide an overview of climate change in the region, they lack the spatial and temporal resolution necessary to fully anticipate the effects of rising global temperatures associated with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Observed trends in precipitation and temperature were assessed across the Lake Champlain basin to bridge the gap between global climate change and local impacts. Future shifts in precipitation and temperature were evaluated as well as derived indices, including maple syrup production, days above …


Land Use Adaptation To Climate Change: Economic Damages From Land-Falling Hurricanes In The Atlantic And Gulf States Of The Usa, 1900-2005, Asim Zia Jul 2012

Land Use Adaptation To Climate Change: Economic Damages From Land-Falling Hurricanes In The Atlantic And Gulf States Of The Usa, 1900-2005, Asim Zia

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Global climate change, especially the phenomena of global warming, is expected to increase the intensity of land-falling hurricanes. Societal adaptation is needed to reduce vulnerability from increasingly intense hurricanes. This study quantifies the adaptation effects of potentially policy driven caps on housing densities and agricultural cover in coastal (and adjacent inland) areas vulnerable to hurricane damages in the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal regions of the U.S. Time series regressions, especially Prais-Winston and Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) models, are estimated to forecast the economic impacts of hurricanes of varying intensity, given that various patterns of land use emerge in the Atlantic …


The Limits To Prediction In Ecological Systems, Brian Beckage, Louis J. Gross, Stuart Kauffman Nov 2011

The Limits To Prediction In Ecological Systems, Brian Beckage, Louis J. Gross, Stuart Kauffman

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Predicting the future trajectories of ecological systems is increasingly important as the magnitude of anthropogenic perturbation of the earth systems grows.We distinguish between two types of predictability: the intrinsic or theoretical predictability of a system and the realized predictability that is achieved using available models and parameterizations. We contend that there are strong limits on the intrinsic predictability of ecological systems that arise from inherent characteristics of biological systems. While the realized predictability of ecological systems can be limited by process and parameter misspecification or uncertainty, we argue that the intrinsic predictability of ecological systems is widely and strongly limited …


Heating Up The Forest: Open-Top Chamber Warming Manipulation Of Arthropod Communities At Harvard And Duke Forests, Shannon L. Pelini, Francis P. Bowles, Aaron M. Ellison, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Nathan J. Sanders, Robert R. Dunn Oct 2011

Heating Up The Forest: Open-Top Chamber Warming Manipulation Of Arthropod Communities At Harvard And Duke Forests, Shannon L. Pelini, Francis P. Bowles, Aaron M. Ellison, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Nathan J. Sanders, Robert R. Dunn

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

1.Recent observations indicate that climatic change is altering biodiversity, and models suggest that the consequences of climate change will differ across latitude. However, long-term experimental field manipulations that directly test the predictions about organisms' responses to climate change across latitude are lacking. Such experiments could provide a more mechanistic understanding of the consequences of climate change on ecological communities and subsequent changes in ecosystem processes, facilitating better predictions of the effects of future climate change. 2.This field experiment uses octagonal, 5-m-diameter (c.22m 3) open-top chambers to simulate warming at northern (Harvard Forest, Massachusetts) and southern (Duke Forest, North Carolina) hardwood …