Succinct Science—Audio Interviews from SESYNC
By The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC)
Succinct Science—Audio Interviews from SESYNCAug 31, 2023
Disasters
On the episode of Succinct Science, SESYNC's Erin Duffy has a conversation with Dr. Lori Peek, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, about questions, such as:
How "natural" are natural disasters?
What are the dimensions of "risk" that combine to form disasters?
What is sociology and how can it be integrated with other disciplines such as engineering to reduce the risk of harm and suffering from disasters?
Enjoy and thanks for listening!
For the full transcript, visit SESYNC's website, here.
Socio-Environmental Resilience
From more intense wildfires and hurricanes to displacement and increased vulnerability to and from poverty—some effects of climate change are already here. And while there is still much to be done to heal our earth, a poignant question arises: How do we adapt to the atmospheric shifts that are irreversible? How do we make strategic plans for the future amid cascading uncertainties and mounting risks? Can we co-evolve solutions that benefit both humans and nature, utilizing the wisdom and ingenuity of both people and planet? Today on SESYNC Audio Interviews we’re talking to Dr. John Matthews … "We work in this decision space around water and climate. And we think about resilience as the glue between those two domains…" about his SESYNC work on sustainable water management in a dynamic world. Today, we are talking about socio-environmental resilience.
Get ready for some #climatehope.
To read the full transcript check out the interview on our website.
Trailer: Socio-Environmental Resilience
From more intense wildfires and hurricanes to displacement and increased vulnerability to and from poverty—some effects of climate change are already here. And while there is still much to be done to heal our earth, a poignant question arises: How do we adapt to the atmospheric shifts that are irreversible? How do we make strategic plans for the future amid cascading uncertainties and mounting risks? Can we co-evolve solutions that benefit both humans and nature, utilizing the wisdom and ingenuity of both people and planet? Today, on SESYNC Audio Interviews, we’re talking to Dr. John Matthews … "We work in this decision space around water and climate. And we think about resilience as the glue between those two domains..." about his SESYNC work on sustainable water management in a dynamic world. Today, we are talking about socio-environmental resilience.
Land Management Decision-Making
Did you know that most of the land in the United States is privately owned? Approximately 60% of it, in fact. Therefore, how this land is managed has vast implications for the overall health of our environment—including our air and water. But, who makes a majority of those decisions and how do they go about doing it?
In this episode, Dr. Robyn Wilson and Dr. Rebecca Epanchin-Niell discuss their teams’ efforts to model private land management decision making using theories from economics, sociology, and psychology. The goal is that with a greater understanding of the decision-making processes of landowners, we can better design programs, incentives, and policies that benefit all.
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Special thanks to: Alaina Gallagher & Jill Gallagher for developmental editing assistance.
Read the transcript here.
SESYNC team project and paper info: Modeling Stewardship Decisions; Private land conservation decision-making: An integrative social science model
Additional Interesting Sources:
Zarook, R. (2022, December 9). Map of the Week: Mapping Private vs. Public Land in the United States. UBIQUE. American Geographical Society. https://ubique.americangeo.org/map-of-the-week/map-of-the-week-mapping-private-vs-public-land-in-the-united-states/#:~:text=Today%2C%20private%20individuals%20and%20corporations,%2C%20while%2032%25%20are%20forests.
Merrill, D., Pendleton, D., Alexander, S. et al. (2019, September 9). Here’s Who Owns the Most Land in America: The 100 largest private landowners in the U.S. own 40 million acres—an area the size of Florida. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-largest-landowners-in-us/?leadSource=uverify%20wall
Climate Modeling
The issue of climate change is both existential and urgent. Climate activists around the world continue to call for systemic changes from governments, green technology investments from industries, and sometimes even scientific acceptance from individuals. But that begs some questions, what if we did change our behaviors? What if we as individuals, conglomerates, and perhaps most importantly, political governing bodies, headed our own advice—how much would that change the projected increases in global temperatures?
Today we are talking with experts in the rather new field of integrating human behavior into climate change models, Drs. Brian Beckage and Katie Lacasse.
For a full transcript of this interview, see SESYNC's learning materials page here.
Developmental editing assistance from Alaina Gallagher.
Trailer: Climate Modeling
The issue of climate change is both existential and urgent. Climate activists around the world continue to call for systemic changes from governments, green technology investments from industries, and sometimes even scientific acceptance from individuals. But that begs some questions, what if we did change our behaviors? What if we as individuals, conglomerates, and perhaps most importantly, political governing bodies, headed our own advice—how much would that change the projected increases in global temperatures?
Today we are talking with experts in the rather new field of integrating human behavior into climate change models, Drs. Brian Beckage and Katie LaCasse.
Stay tuned for the full episode—out soon!
CLIP from Air Quality Inequality
This clip from episode 2: Measuring Air Quality to Improve Health Equity with Dr. Kelly Jones highlights the issue of air quality inequality.
Protected Areas
Protecting habitats is essential to the preservation of species and as such, conservationists stress the importance of not only maintaining, but expanding, what are known as protected areas. However, at the same time, there is an increasing demand for food production. As cropland is responsible for widespread habitat loss, this presents an increasingly urgent issue, especially in areas with both high biodiversity and high food insecurity. To address this problem, Dr. Varsha Vijay, who is a former SESYNC postdoctoral fellow, and her colleagues published a paper in which they established a baseline estimate of where and why cropland occurs inside of protected areas globally. Join us as we discuss their findings and how they envision this new information can be used to help ensure the long-term efficacy of protected areas in meeting both ecological and socio-economic goals of conservation.
See the full transcript here: https://www.sesync.org/full-transcript-%E2%80%93-interview-preserving-species-by-protecting-habitats-with-dr-varsha-vijay
Check out Varsha's work here: https://www.varshavijay.com.
Learn more about SESYNC here: https://www.sesync.org.
Developmental editing assistance by Christine Maietta.
Air Quality Inequality
Breath. It gives us life. From the moment we enter the world and throughout our days we take in the air around us. But for some of us taking each breath is not always easy. Asthma affects approximately one in eight individuals in the United States and has effects ranging from minor inconveniences to loss of school time for children or even loss of life. But, in order to ameliorate this problem, a better understanding of what causes asthma is needed. For instance, how does the neighborhood environment relate to hospitalizations due to respiratory illness for children? This is the question that former SESYNC postdoc and registered nurse, Dr. Kelly Jones wanted to answer...
Full transcript available here.
Developmental editing help from: Alaina Gallagher
Musical Attributions:
Dirtbike Lovers by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Food Waste
Food. We all need it, and most of us love it. It keeps our bodies moving, sometimes encourages us to learn new skills, and brings us together. But what about the food that goes uneaten? Well, there is hardly a person today who is not aware to some extent that food waste, especially in the United States, is a problem. But here at SESYNC, we are focused on finding solutions—solutions to complex environmental problems—and food waste is no exception.
But how do we do it? The answer is interdisciplinary science. Today, we’re talking with Dr. Quentin Read about his research to find real-world solutions to this intractable situation and how these efforts are one piece in a larger puzzle to create a more sustainable food system.
Quentin is a data scientist at SESYNC who helps international teams of researchers process, analyze, and manage big complex datasets. Starting out as a postdoctoral research fellow at SESYNC, Quentin and his team focused on modeling the impacts of the food system on human and natural communities by using techniques from ecology, environmental science, and economics. Let’s hear what they’ve found...
Full transcript available here.
Development editing assistance from Christine Maietta.
Musical Attributions:
Dirtbike Lovers by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Wind chimes harmony.mp3 by Almusic34 is licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International License.