Welcome to the Thriving Earth Exchange’s (TEX) blog space. The purpose of the blog is to inspire thinking, open-participation and discussion on particular topics or themes. We encourage you to leave comments on any blog post by clicking through to each post and sharing your thoughts at the bottom.
In their May 2017 of PM Magazine, TEX partner, the International City and County Management Association (ICMA), highlighted stories from three ICMA communities collaborating with TEX scientists. Bob Hart, formerly of Kennedale, TX (now with Corinth, TX), Laura Allen (Berlin, MD), and Becky Merrow (Colebrook, NH) describe how their scientific partners are helping their towns […]
The Santa Cruz, CA team met each other and commenced their community science project in late February. Since then, the team, comprised of Tiffany Wise-West, with Santa Cruz’s Climate Action Program, Ben Preston, RAND, and Juliano Calil, University of California – Santa Cruz, have made significant strides towards updating the city’s climate vulnerability assessment. Ben Preston will […]
The March 23, 2017 issue of the Bayside Gazette featured an article about the remediation of Berlin Falls and the community’s partnership with TEX to determine the types of bacteria present in the sediment. Click here to read the article.
In their first meeting (via phone because Dave Ellerbroek, the scientific lead, is remote), the Colebrook team discussed the data the town has shared. They are now ready to move on to what the information means. Becky had prepared a sheet of the different treatment options that the town is considering which proved useful to the […]
The DC team met on March 13th to discuss the preliminary results. The data that they received from the DC Fire and Emergency Management Services (FEMS) Department reveals that there is a high incidence if 911 calls in Wards 2, 5, 7 & 8. Many downtown calls had no home address, presumably indicating that they […]
The Brandywine, MD-TEX project team had their first meeting on February 28, 2017 in the classroom of a JoAnn Fabrics store in Brandywine, Maryland. Kamita Gray, President of the Brandywine BTB Coalition, Akua Asa-Awuku, Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, and Melissa Goodwin, Project Liaision for the Thriving Earth Exchange used the 1-hour meeting […]
The Brandywine, MD-TEX project launched in January 2017. BTB Coalition president Kamita Gray will work with Dr. Akua Asa-Awuku, an associate professor at the University of Maryland – College Park. Kamita and Akua will work together to assess the air quality impacts from local industrial activity and communicate those impacts to local residents to facilitate […]
In 2017, TEX will expand the number of projects we support, develop new ways to advance community science, and raise funds to sustain and grow our impact. Even as we look ahead, the TEX team would like to thank you and celebrate what we’ve accomplished together in 2016. Community Impact TEX has launched nearly […]
WASHINGTON, DC – The Resilience Dialogues, a public-private collaborative effort to help local communities address climate-related vulnerabilities, today announced 10 communities will participate in the collaboration’s beta phase. Through the Resilience Dialogues, the communities will explore their risks from climate variability and change and work through a series of facilitated online dialogues with subject matter […]
Laura Allen attended AGU’s 2016 Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA to present a poster highlighting recent accomplishments and next steps for the Berlin TEX project. Click here to download her presentation! Berlin, Maryland – How One Small City is Using Science to Change its World Small cities are uniquely challenged to mitigate environmental issues […]
The City of Boulder created a poster to share the goals and outcomes of their TEX collaboration at the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting. Click here to download the poster! Developing Capacity for Cities to Adapt to a Changing Climate–a Case Study in Boulder, Colorado The City of Boulder in Colorado has undertaken many progressive […]
Lorenzo Mastino attended the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA to present a poster highlighting recent accomplishments and next steps for the Las Vegas TEX project. Click here to download his poster! Assessment of Vulnerability to Climate Change Effects on Urban Stormwater Infrastructure in City of Las Vegas, NV In the spring […]
JJ Gourley attended the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA to present a poster highlighting recent accomplishments and next steps for FLASH. Click here to download his poster! Development of a mobile app for flash flood alerting and data cataloging No matter how accurate and specific a forecast of flash flooding is […]
Christa Hasenkopf attended the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA to present a poster highlighting recent accomplishments and next steps for OpenAQ. Click here to download her poster! Stories from OpenAQ, a Global and Grassroots Open Air Quality Community Air pollution, responsible for more deaths each year than HIV/AIDS and malaria, combined, […]
Work on the TEX-Hermosa Beach project has officially begun! Lon Peters will work with the community lead, Kristy Morris, to conduct a study of feasible renewable energy technologies for Hermosa Beach to consider as it pursues its carbon neutrality goals. Additionally, the project team welcomed a new collaborator this month, Abhishek Rao. Abhishek is a […]
Ajay Kalra and Marco Velotta continue to work together to assess drought risk and vulnerability in Las Vegas. Over the past weeks, the project team has obtained important information including model and climate data, which will help them in determining drought risk. They have also begun creating future climate scenarios for the impact of climate […]
The Hermosa Beach TEX project team had their first in-person meeting on August 25, 2016 in Hermosa Beach, CA. Lon Peters and community lead Kristy Morris discussed the project workplan , toured potential project sites, and met with Tom Bakaly, Hermosa Beach City Manager. During this meeting, they discussed the likely technologies that could be pursued […]
The Pittsburgh project team made significant progress toward their goal of developing a robust carbon inventory for the city and its Climate Action Plan. During the partnership’s first month, the team sat down with local utility representatives to discuss procedures for sharing data, as well as the format and resolution that could be expected. The […]
Raj Pandya, Program Director of the American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange, was a keynote speaker at the National Environmental Monitoring Conference (NEMC) on 9 August 2016. The NEMC provides a forum for scientists and managers in the private and public sectors to discuss policies and technical issues affecting environmental monitoring and environmental programs. Raj […]
On 25 July 2016, Natasha Udu-gama, Director of Community Partnerships for the American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange, moderated a panel on “Effective Scientific Partnerships with Frontline Communities” for the AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition Meeting: Climate Change and Human Rights. The Coalition meetings serve as an avenue for scientists, engineers, community leaders, and […]
In recent months, TEX has matched scientists to attend and present at Lisbon, Portugal’s Agenda Setting Workshop and Medellìn, Colombia Strategy Release Event. Upon 100RC’s request, Dr. Pedro Manuel Alberto de Miranda of Universidade de Lisboa gave a presentation on climate change impacts on the elderly in Lisbon at their May 25th Agenda Setting Workshop. […]
The Hermosa Beach-TEX project officially launched on July 27. The newly formed team consists of Community Lead Kristy Morris (Environmental Analyst, Hermosa Beach, CA) and Scientific Partner Lon Peters (President, Northwest Economic Research, Inc.). Morris and Peters will collaborate to explore the renewable energy generation capacity within Hermosa Beach in conjunction with implementation of the […]
The Pittsburgh-TEX team had their first meeting on August 8, 2016. The newly formed team consists of Community Leads Ari Lattanzi (Resilience Analyst, City of Pittsburgh) and Sarah Yaeger (Student Conservation Association Green Cities Fellow), and Scientific Partners Dr. Inês Azevedo (Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellow University Department of Engineering and Public Policy), and Dr. Mike […]
Since June 2016, Marco Velotta and Lorenzo Mastino from the City of Las Vegas Planning Department have been working with Dr. Ajay Kalra of Southern Illinois University to do a drought vulnerability assessment for the city. As of July, the team has developed a scope of work to undertake the drought vulnerability assessment. Their goal will […]
The DC team obtained a list of 9-1-1 calls from March 2010 to March 2015 to determine the locations with the greatest density of heat-related incidents in the District. While evaluating the 9-1-1 data, the team discovered that most of the 9-1-1 calls are not being recorded by emergency operators as heat-related incidents. Rather, some […]
Auroop Ganguly’s student team at Northeastern University, led by Dr. Hanieh Hassanzadeh, has analyzed the importance of both social and physical factors in the occurrence of heatwave events in the town. Vulnerability and exposure parameters for each block include a combination of age, poverty, literacy level and the number of one-person households. Preliminary analysis shows […]
By Haley Gannon This piece was originally published in The Plainspoken Scientist on the AGU Blogosphere. As a Conservation Education Presenter at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, I spent every day connecting families to nature through the Wilderness Explorers program. My team spoke to 1.5 million people in our time there, and ensured that each one […]
James Amos, the Economic Development Director of Granite City, and Dr. Jay Turner, Granite City’s scientific partner, are collaborating to help Granite City’s Cool Cities Commission finalize the city’s sustainability plan. Granite City aims to implement specific parts of the sustainability plan with Dr. Turner’s expertise in air quality. Dr. Turner and his team […]
The Berlin, MD team met for their first in-person meeting on June 1st. Laura Allen, Jane Kreiter, Jim Hulbert, Keota Silaphone, and Ellen Silbergeld conducted a site visit to assess the proposed area of remediation – Berlin Falls Park. The park is currently open for passive use (birdwatching, hiking, etc.), but the city has even […]
As an organization that works closely with communities of all types, TEX is always interested in learning the latest strategies and theories regarding their development and structure. According to the authors of Urban Neighborhoods in a New Era: Revitalization Politics in the Postindustrial City, there has been a definitive shift in how communities organize. […]
The DC team is taking steps towards gathering heat-related data while maintaining the integrity of human subjects. Alexis Goggans notes that the team intends to overlay different layers of relevant data for determining heat vulnerability (tree cover, building age, etc.) with a map of 911 calls reporting heat-related incidents. The team anticipates that these data […]
With the departure of former city lead, Laura Curtis Hayes, the Brookline team is working with Maria Morelli (Planner, Brookline). The Brookline project will map the impacts of extreme temperature projections on public health, including elderly and economically-disadvantaged. The team has compiled responsibilities of stakeholders, identify key questions and determined key deliverables with a proposed […]
The Fish Creek Stakeholders Group has recently begun to organize an internal scientific advisory committee. The goal of this group is to provide scientifically based opinions to inform remediation options for Fish Creek. Carlin Girard anticipates that Bill Elliot will be formally invited to be a part of this panel, seeing as his expertise and […]
Oakland, California is facing a unique challenge increasingly faced by cities inundated by offers to increase their resilience. In Oakland’s case, competing demands from resilience organizations are precluding the team from being able to define their scope. The city is a member of 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) and Bloomberg Associates, as well as several other […]
Granite City plans to have their sustainability plan complete by June 2016. Dr. Jay Turner has been instrumental in helping the city review its sustainability plan. Because of his work with the city, Turner will be having his students engage in two projects that are based upon Granite City’s existing priorities. One project will draw […]
Jon Gunnerson and Dr. Brian Anderson are collaborating on materials selection strategies for geothermal systems. The city and the scientist were matched by TEX through our TEX Lite process. As of May 2016, the two have had a couple of conversations regarding geothermal systems in Boise, ID. Jon is curious about optimal materials for […]
TEX scientist Dr. Stéphanie Horion is working to identify a series of optimal maps and spatial data layers related to land use/land cover change and soil characteristics for HoAREC&N. In collaboration with a HoAREC&N consultant who specializes in modeling and statistical analysis, they intend to use these spatial layers to help inform water challenges in the […]
The DC team has received new data, and is well on their way to creating the maps needed for their analysis. Updated LIDAR data will provide Juan Declet-Barreto with the land use/land cover information he will need to create maps of predicted areas of extreme heat. Olga Wilhelmi has provided heat-related search terms to […]
The Taking Neighborhood Health to Heart (TNH2H) team has made significant progress in the past several months. They have completed their data collection and now have radon and PERC (two volatile organic compounds) data for 15 homes in their study area. Their experiment used both high quality and low-cost methods so that they might […]
As of March 2016, the Oakland Team has made significant progress on defining their project. Since their last meeting, TEX scientific partners, Patrick Hubbard and Brian Rowley, conducted a field traverse of one proposed site of the project – the Colosseum area. This is a region with significant infrastructure already in place and […]
TEX is about an urgent need to be innovative in how our science, Earth and space science, connects to society. We face enormous collective challenges over the next several decades – challenges that include growing vulnerability to natural hazards, more and more difficulty getting the natural resources we need to thrive (including resources as […]
During the April check-in call with TEX, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) team conveyed that it has kept in very close contact with Chris Watson since the introductory call in February 2016. Regardless of whether they have information to convey, Axum Teferra (MAPC) has been organizing brief weekly update calls to keep all […]
Dr. Karim-Aly Kassam and collaborators have received grant funding through the Belmont Forum, a group of the world’s major and emerging funders of global environmental change research. Learn more. Dr. Kassam states the grant will “contribute to the anticipatory capacity of Pamiri communities by revitalizing calendars. Using participatory research, we will recalibrate historical and existing ecological […]
By: Kylie Caesar In this series, TEX is featuring a number of blogs from student volunteers who assisted at AGU’s Fall Meeting in December 2015. Each volunteer was asked to find community science projects in either oral or poster sessions and describe how the project aligns with the TEX mission and values. On Thursday Morning […]
By: Gabi Serrato Marks In this series, TEX is featuring a number of blogs from student volunteers who assisted at AGU’s Fall Meeting in December 2015. Each volunteer was asked to find community science projects in either oral or poster sessions and describe how the project aligns with the TEX mission and values. Generations of shellfish […]
