It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, October 27, 2023
Clear holographic imaging in turbulent environments
Innovative transformer eliminates image degradation caused by arbitrary turbulence
SPIE--INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR OPTICS AND PHOTONICS
IMAGE:
LEVERAGING SPATIAL COHERENCE AS A PHYSICAL PRIOR TO GUIDE THE TRAINING OF A DEEP NEURAL NETWORK, TWC-SWIN METHOD EXCELS AT CAPTURING BOTH LOCAL AND GLOBAL IMAGE FEATURES AND ELIMINATES IMAGE DEGRADATION CAUSED BY ARBITRARY TURBULENCE.
CREDIT: X. TONG ET AL., DOI 10.1117/1.AP.5.6.066003.
Holographic imaging has always been challenged by unpredictable distortions in dynamic environments. Traditional deep learning methods often struggle to adapt to diverse scenes due to their reliance on specific data conditions.
To tackle this problem, researchers at Zhejiang University delved into the intersection of optics and deep learning, uncovering the key role of physical priors in ensuring the alignment of data and pre-trained models. They explored the impact of spatial coherence and turbulence on holographic imaging and proposed an innovative method, TWC-Swin, to restore high-quality holographic images in the presence of these disturbances. Their research is reported in the Gold Open Access journal Advanced Photonics.
Spatial coherence is a measure of how orderly light waves behave. When light waves are chaotic, holographic images become blurry and noisy, as they carry less information. Maintaining spatial coherence is crucial for clear holographic imaging.
Dynamic environments, like those with oceanic or atmospheric turbulence, introduce variations in the refractive index of the medium. This disrupts the phase correlation of light waves and distorts spatial coherence. Consequently, the holographic image may become blurred, distorted, or even lost.
The researchers at Zhejiang University developed the TWC-Swin method to address these challenges. TWC-Swin, short for "train-with-coherence swin transformer," leverages spatial coherence as a physical prior to guide the training of a deep neural network. This network, based on the Swin transformer architecture, excels at capturing both local and global image features.
To test their method, the authors designed a light processing system that produced holographic images with varying spatial coherence and turbulence conditions. These holograms were based on natural objects, serving as training and testing data for the neural network. The results demonstrate that TWC-Swin effectively restores holographic images even under low spatial coherence and arbitrary turbulence, surpassing traditional convolutional network-based methods. Furthermore, the method reportedly exhibits strong generalization capabilities, extending its application to unseen scenes not included in the training data.
CAPTION
Qualitative analysis of performance across varying intensities of oceanic and atmospheric turbulence. The network trained with coherence as physical prior information can effectively overcome the impact of oceanic and atmospheric turbulence on imaging and improve image quality.
CREDIT
Credit: X. Tong et al., doi 10.1117/1.AP.5.6.066003.
Qualitative analysis of performance across varying intensities of oceanic and atmospheric turbulence. The network trained with coherence as physical prior information can effectively overcome the impact of oceanic and atmospheric turbulence on imaging and improve image quality.
CREDIT
Credit: X. Tong et al., doi 10.1117/1.AP.5.6.066003.
This research breaks new ground in addressing image degradation in holographic imaging across diverse scenes. By integrating physical principles into deep learning, the study sheds light on a successful synergy between optics and computer science. As the future unfolds, this work paves the way for enhanced holographic imaging, empowering us to see clearly through the turbulence.
A new Antarctic ice sheet modeling study from scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography suggests that meltwater flowing out to sea from beneath Antarctic glaciers is making them lose ice faster.
The model’s simulations suggest this effect is large enough to make a meaningful contribution to global sea-level rise under high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.
The extra ice loss caused by this meltwater flowing out to sea from beneath Antarctic glaciers is not currently accounted for in the models generating major sea-level rise projections, such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If this process turns out to be an important driver of ice loss across the entire Antarctic ice sheet, it could mean current projections underestimate the pace of global sea-level rise in decades to come.
“Knowing when and how much global sea-level will rise is critical to the welfare of coastal communities,” said Tyler Pelle, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at Scripps. “Millions of people live in low-lying coastal zones and we can’t adequately prepare our communities without accurate sea-level rise projections.”
The study, published October 27 in Science Advances and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Cecil H. and the Ida M. Green Foundation for Earth Sciences at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at Scripps, modeled the retreat of two glaciers in East Antarctica through the year 2300 under different emissions scenarios and projected their contributions to sea-level rise. Unlike previous Antarctic ice sheet models, this one included the influence of this flow of meltwater from beneath glaciers out to sea, which is known as subglacial discharge.
The two glaciers the study focused on, named Denman and Scott, together hold enough ice to cause nearly 1.5 meters (5 feet) of sea-level rise. In a high emissions scenario (IPCC’s SSP5-8.5 scenario, which assumes no new climate policy and features 20% higher CO2 emissions by 2100), the model found that subglacial discharge increased the sea-level rise contribution of these glaciers by 15.7%, from 19 millimeters (0.74 inches) to 22 millimeters (0.86 inches) by the year 2300.
These glaciers, which are right next to each other, sit atop a continental trench that is more than two miles deep; once their retreat reaches the trench’s steep slope, their contribution to sea-level rise is expected to accelerate dramatically. With the added influence of subglacial discharge, the model found that the glaciers retreated past this threshold about 25 years earlier than they did without it.
“I think this paper is a wake up call for the modeling community. It shows you can’t accurately model these systems without taking this process into account,” said Jamin Greenbaum, co-author of the study and a researcher at Scripps’ Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.
A key takeaway, beyond the understudied role of subglacial discharge in accelerating sea-level rise, is the importance of what humanity does in the coming decades to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, said Greenbaum. The low emissions scenario runs of the model did not show the glaciers retreating all the way into the trench and avoided the resulting runaway contributions to sea-level rise.
“If there is a doomsday story here it isn’t subglacial discharge,” said Greenbaum. “The real doomsday story is still emissions and humanity is still the one with its finger on the button.”
In Antarctica, subglacial meltwater is generated from melting that occurs where the ice sits on continental bedrock. The main sources of the heat melting the ice in contact with the ground are friction from the ice grinding across the bedrock and geothermal heat from Earth’s interior permeating up through the crust.
Prior research suggested that subglacial meltwater is a common feature of glaciers around the world and that it is present under severalother massive Antarctic glaciers, including the infamousThwaites Glacier in West Antarctica.
When subglacial discharge flows out to sea it is thought to accelerate melting of the glacier’s ice shelf – a long floating tongue of ice that extends out to sea beyond the last part of the glacier that is still in contact with solid ground (known as the grounding line). Subglacial discharge is thought to speed up ice shelf melting and glacial retreat by causing ocean mixing that stirs in additional ocean heat within the cavity beneath a glacier's floating ice shelf. This enhanced ice shelf melting then causes the upstream glacier to accelerate, which can drive sea level rise.
The notion that subglacial discharge causes additional ice shelf melting is widely accepted in the scientific community, said Greenbaum. But it hasn’t been included in sea-level rise projections because many researchers weren’t sure if the process’ effect was sufficiently large to increase sea-level rise, mainly because its effects are localized around the glacier’s ice shelf.
Pelle said subglacial discharge came onto his radar in 2021 when he and his colleagues observed that East Antarctica’s Denman Glacier’s ice shelf was melting faster than expected given local ocean temperatures. Puzzlingly, Denman’s neighbor Scott Glacier’s ice shelf was melting much more slowly despite virtually identical ocean conditions.
To test whether subglacial discharge could reconcile the melt rates seen at the Denman and Scott ice shelves, as well as whether subglacial meltwater might accelerate sea-level rise, the team combined models for three different environments: the ice sheet, the space between the ice sheet and bedrock, and the ocean.
Once the researchers married the three models into one they ran a series of projections up to 2300 using a NASA supercomputer.
The projections featured three main scenarios: a control that featured no additional ocean warming, a low emissions pathway (SSP1-2.6), and a high emissions pathway (SSP5-8.5). For each scenario, the researchers created projections with and without the effect of present-day levels of subglacial discharge.
The model’s simulations revealed that adding in subglacial discharge reconciled the melt rates seen at Denman and Scott Glaciers. As for why Scott Glacier was melting so much slower than Denman, Pelle said the model showed that “a strong subglacial discharge channel drained across the Denman Glacier grounding line, while a weaker discharge channel drained across the Scott Glacier grounding line.” The strength of the discharge channel at Denman, Pelle explained, was behind its speedy melt.
For the control and low-emissions model runs the contributions to sea-level rise were close to zero or even slightly negative with or without subglacial discharge at 2300. But in a high emissions scenario, the model found that subglacial discharge increased the sea-level rise contribution of these glaciers from 19 millimeters (0.74 inches) to 22 millimeters (0.86 inches) in 2300.
In the high emissions scenario that included subglacial discharge, Denman and Scott Glaciers retreated into the two-mile-deep trench beneath them by 2240, about 25 years earlier than they did in the model runs without subglacial discharge. Once the grounding lines of the Denman and Scott Glaciers retreat past the lip of this trench their yearly sea-level rise contribution explodes, reaching a peak of 0.33 millimeters (0.01 inches) per year – roughly half of the present-day annual sea-level rise contribution of the entire Antarctic ice sheet.
Pelle said the trench’s steep slope is behind this explosive increase in sea-level rise contribution. As the glacier retreats down slope, its ice shelf begins losing thicker and thicker slabs of ice from its leading edge. This process of ice loss quickly outpaces ice accumulation at the ice sheet’s interior, causing further glacial retreat. Researchers refer to this process as "Marine Ice Sheet Instability," and it can promote explosive ice loss from glaciers like Denman and Scott.
Researchers refer to topography such as the trench beneath Denman and Scott Glaciers as a retrograde slope and worry that it creates a positive feedback loop by which glacial retreat begets more retreat. Large areas of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, such as Thwaites Glacier, also have retrograde slopes that, while not as dramatic as the Denman-Scott trench, contribute to fears of broader ice sheet instability.
“Subglacial meltwater has been inferred beneath most if not all Antarctic glaciers, including Thwaites, Pine Island, and Totten glaciers,” said Pelle. “All these glaciers are retreating and contributing to sea-level rise and we are showing that subglacial discharge could be accelerating their retreat. It’s urgent that we model these other glaciers so we can get a handle on the magnitude of the effect subglacial discharge is having.”
The researchers behind this study are doing just that. Pelle said they are in the process of submitting a research proposal to extend their new model to the entire Antarctic ice sheet.
Future iterations of the model may also attempt to couple the subglacial environment with the ice sheet and ocean models so that the amount of subglacial meltwater dynamically responds to these other factors. Greenbaum said that the current version of their model kept the amount of subglacial meltwater constant throughout the model runs, and that making it respond dynamically to the surrounding environment would likely make the model more true to life.
“This also means that our results are probably a conservative estimate of the effect of subglacial discharge,” said Greenbaum. “That said, we can’t yet say how much sea-level rise will be accelerated by this process – hopefully it’s not too much.”
Part of Greenbaum’s upcoming fieldwork in Antarctica, supported by NSF and NASA, aims to directly investigate the impacts of subglacial meltwater in both the East and West Antarctic ice sheets. In collaboration with the Australian Antarctic Division and the Korea Polar Research Institute, Greenbaum and his collaborators will be visiting the ice shelves of Denman and Thwaites Glaciers in East and West Antarctica, respectively, looking for direct evidence that subglacial freshwater is discharging into the ocean beneath the glaciers’ ice shelves and contributing to warming.
In addition to Pelle and Greenbaum, the study was co-authored by Christine Dow of the University of Waterloo, Adrian Jenkins of Northumbria University, and Mathieu Morlighem of Dartmouth College.
ITHACA, N.Y. – More than merely cracks in the ice, crevasses play an important role in circulating seawater beneath Antarctic ice shelves, potentially influencing their stability, finds Cornell University-led research based on a first-of-its-kind exploration by an underwater robot.
The remotely operated Icefin robot’s climb up and down a crevasse in the base of the Ross Ice Shelf produced the first 3D measurements of ocean conditions near where it meets the coastline, a critical juncture known as the grounding zone.
The robotic survey revealed a new circulation pattern – a jet funneling water sideways through the crevasse – in addition to rising and sinking currents, and diverse ice formations shaped by shifting flows and temperatures. Those details will improve modeling of ice shelf melting and freezing rates at grounding zones, where few direct observations exist, and of their potential contribution to global sea-level rise.
“Crevasses move water along the coastline of an ice shelf to an extent previously unknown, and in a way models did not predict,” said Peter Washam, a polar oceanographer and research scientist at Cornell University. “The ocean takes advantage of these features, and you can ventilate the ice shelf cavity through them.”
Washam is the lead author of “Direct Observations of Melting, Freezing and Ocean Circulation in an Ice Shelf Basal Crevasse,” published in Science Advances.
The scientists in late 2019 deployed the Icefin vehicle – roughly 12 feet long and less than 10 inches around – on a tether down a 1,900-foot borehole drilled with hot water, near where Antarctica’s largest ice shelf meets the Kamb Ice Stream. Such so-called grounding zones are key to controlling the balance of ice sheets, and the places where changing ocean conditions can have the most impact.
On the team’s last of three dives, Matthew Meister, a senior research engineer, drove Icefin into one of five crevasses found near the borehole. Equipped with thrusters, cameras, sonar and sensors for measuring water temperature, pressure and salinity, the vehicle climbed nearly 150 feet up one slope and descended the other.
The survey detailed changing ice patterns as the crevasse narrowed, with scalloped indentations giving way to vertical runnels, then green-tinted marine ice and stalactites. Melting at the crevasse base and salt rejection from freezing near the top moved water up and down around the horizontal jet, driving uneven melting and freezing on the two sides, with more melting along the lower downstream wall.
“Each feature reveals a different type of circulation or relationship of the ocean temperature to freezing,” Washam said. “Seeing so many different features within a crevasse, so many changes in the circulation, was surprising.”
The researchers said the findings highlight crevasses’ potential to transport changing ocean conditions – warmer or colder – through an ice shelf’s most vulnerable region.
“If water heats up or cools off, it can move around in the back of the ice shelf quite vigorously, and crevasses are one of the means by which that happens,” Washam said. “When it comes to projecting sea-level rise, that’s important to have in the models.”
The research was funded by Project RISE UP (Ross Ice Shelf and Europa Underwater Probe), part of NASA’s Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research program, with logistical support provided by the National Science Foundation through the U.S. Antarctic Program. It was facilitated by the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute, Aotearoa New Zealand Antarctic Science Platform and the Victoria University of Wellington Hot Water Drilling initiative.
JOURNAL
Science Advances
ARTICLE TITLE
Direct Observations of Melting, Freezing and Ocean Circulation in an Ice Shelf Basal Crevasse
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
27-Oct-2023
UCLA researcher finds first proof of menopause in wild chimpanzees
A study of the Ngogo community in Uganda shows humans aren’t the only primates with long post-fertile life stage
Female chimpanzees in Uganda’s Ngogo community experienced a menopausal transition similar to women.
Fertility among chimpanzees studied declined after age 30, and no births were observed after age 50.
The data can help researchers better understand why menopause and post-fertile survival occur in nature and how it evolved in the human species.
A team of researchers studying the Ngogo community of wild chimpanzees in western Uganda’s Kibale National Park for two decades has published a report in Science showing that females in this population can experience menopause and postreproductive survival.
Prior to the study, “Demographic and hormonal evidence for menopause in wild chimpanzees,” these traits had only been found among mammals in a few species of toothed whales, and among primates — only in humans. These new demographic and physiological data can help researchers better understand why menopause and post-fertile survival occur in nature, and how it evolved in the human species.
“In societies around the world, women past their childbearing years play important roles, both economically and as wise advisors and caregivers,” said Brian Wood, UCLA associate professor of anthropology. “How this life history evolved in humans is a fascinating yet challenging puzzle.”
Wood, first author of the paper, worked closely with Kevin Langergraber from Arizona State University, Jacob Negrey of University of Arizona, and Ngogo Chimpanzee Project founders and co-directors John Mitani and David Watts.
“The (study) results show that under certain ecological conditions, menopause and post-fertile survival can emerge within a social system that’s quite unlike our own and includes no grandparental support,” Wood said, referring to the grandmother hypothesis.
That hypothesis, which has been used to explain the existence of human postmenopausal survival, proposes that females in their postreproductive years may be able to pass on more of their genes by helping to raise the birth rates of their own children or by caring directly for grandchildren, thereby increasing grandchildren’s odds of survival. And indeed, several studies of human grandmothers have found these positive effects. But chimpanzees have very different living arrangements than humans. Older female chimpanzees typically do not live near their daughters or provide care for grandchildren, yet females at Ngogo often live past their childbearing years.
While substantial postreproductive life spans have not previously been observed in other long-term studies of wild chimpanzees, they have sometimes been seen in chimpanzees and other primates in captivity, who receive good nutrition and medical care. This raises the possibility that the postreproductive life spans of female Ngogo chimpanzees may be a temporary response to unusually favorable ecological conditions, as this population enjoys a stable and abundant food supply and low levels of predation. Another possibility, however, is that postreproductive life spans are actually an evolved, species-typical trait in chimpanzees but have not been observed in other chimpanzee populations because of the recent negative impacts of humans.
“Chimpanzees are extremely susceptible to dying from diseases that originate in humans and to which they have little natural immunity,” Langergraber said. “Chimpanzee researchers, including us at Ngogo, have learned over the years how devastating these disease outbreaks can be to chimpanzee populations, and how to reduce their chances of happening.”
An extraordinary effort
The team of researchers examined mortality and fertility rates of 185 female chimpanzees from demographic data collected from 1995 to 2016. They calculated the fraction of adult life spent in a postreproductive state for all the observed females and measured hormone levels in urine samples from 66 females of varying reproductive statuses and ages, ranging from 14 to 67 years.
Thousands of hours of fieldwork at Ngogo were needed to collect the observations and samples needed for this study. Hormone samples were analyzed by Tobias Deschner and Melissa Emery Thompson.
“This study is the result of an extraordinary amount of effort,” Negrey said. “It’s only because our team has spent decades monitoring these chimpanzees that we can be confident some females live long after they’ve stopped reproducing. We also spent thousands of hours in the forest to collect urine samples from these chimpanzees with which to study hormonal signals of menopause.”
The researchers measured hormone levels associated with human menopause, which include increasing levels of follicle-stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone, as well as decreasing levels of ovarian steroid hormones including estrogens and progestins.
As with other chimpanzee populations and humans, fertility in the chimpanzees studied declined after age 30, with no births observed after age 50. The hormone data showed that the Ngogo females experienced a menopausal transition similar to that of humans, beginning around age 50.
Also like humans, it was not unusual for these female chimpanzees to live past 50. A female who reached adulthood at age 14 was postreproductive for about one-fifth of her adult life, about half as long as a human hunter-gatherer.
“We now know that menopause and post-fertile survival arise across a broader range of species and socio-ecological conditions than formerly appreciated, providing a solid basis for considering the roles that improved diets and lowered risks of predation would have played in human life history evolution,” Wood said.
The researchers say that it will also be critical to track the behavior of older chimpanzees and observe how they interact with and influence other group members.
“To allow such work, it is essential to support the long-term study of primates in the wild,” Wood said.
A team led by CNRS scientists1 has discovered that, just like humans, Guinea baboons develop complex strategies to select partners for cooperation, basing their decisions on past interactions. Humans naturally engage in strategic cooperation in many contexts. For example, when children help schoolmates by lending them their class notes, they may expect the same in return the next time: this is known as reciprocity. But if the favour is not returned, they are likely to seek others with whom to cooperate.
The team’s findings are the fruit of observations at the CNRS Rousset-sur-Arc Primate Centre. The 18 baboons in their study were free to engage or not in the experimental task, which involved an ‘actor’—i.e., decision-making—baboon and a ‘receiver’ baboon. The actor chose between two buttons on a touchscreen: one rewarded the receiver; the other did not. The researchers noted actors more often rewarded receivers who had previously rewarded them. On the other hand, the likelihood of an actor abandoning the task to find another partner was greater when the receiver had earlier made a selfish choice.
The results of the study, to be published in Science Advances (27 October 2023), show that strategic cooperation among humans is a behaviour inherited at least 30 million years ago from an ancestor shared with baboons.
Notes
1 – Affiliated with the Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (CNRS / Aix-Marseille University)
JOURNAL
Science Advances
ARTICLE TITLE
Baboons are strategic cooperators.
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
27-Oct-2023
Cold War spy satellite imagery reveals Ancient Roman forts
An analysis of declassified imagery identifies 396 forts spanning from Syria to Iraq
CREDIT: FIGURE BY J.CASANA ET AL.; CORONA IMAGERY COURTESY U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.
Two-thousand years ago, forts were constructed by the Roman Empire across the northern Fertile Crescent, spanning from what is now western Syria to northwestern Iraq.
In the 1920s, 116 forts were documented in the region by Father Antoine Poidebard, who conducted one of the world's first aerial surveys using a WWI-era biplane. Poidebard reported that the forts were constructed from north to south to establish an eastern boundary of the Roman Empire.
A new Dartmouth study analyzing declassified Cold War satellite imagery reveals 396 previously undocumented Roman forts and reports that these forts were constructed from east to west. The analysis refutes Poidebard's claim that the forts were located along a north-south axis by showing that the forts spanned from Mosul on the Tigris River to Aleppo in western Syria.
"I was surprised to find that there were so many forts and that they were distributed in this way because the conventional wisdom was that these forts formed the border between Rome and its enemies in the east, Persia or Arab armies," says lead author Jesse Casana, a professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the Spatial Archaeometry Lab at Dartmouth. "While there's been a lot of historical debate about this, it had been mostly assumed that this distribution was real, that Poidebard's map showed that the forts were demarcating the border and served to prevent movement across it in some way."
For the study, the team drew on declassified Cold-War era CORONA and HEXAGON satellite imagery collected between 1960 and 1986. Most of the imagery is part of the open-access CORONA Atlas Project through which Casana and colleagues developed better methods for correcting the data and made it available online.
The researchers examined satellite imagery of approximately 300,000 square kilometers (115,831 square miles) of the northern Fertile Cresent. It is a place where sites show up particularly well and is archaeologically significant, according to Casana. The team mapped 4,500 known sites and then systematically documented every other site-like feature in each of the nearly 5 by 5 kilometer (3.1 mile by 3.1 mile) survey grids, which resulted in the addition of 10,000 undiscovered sites to the database.
When the database was originally developed, Casana had created morphological categories based on the different features evident in the imagery, which allows researchers to run queries. One of the categories was Poidebard's forts—distinctive squares measuring approximately 50 by 100 meters (.03 x .06 miles), comparable in size to about half a soccer field.
The forts would have been large enough to accommodate soldiers, horses, and/or camels. Based on the satellite imagery, some of the forts had lookout towers in the corners or sides. They would have been made of stone and mud-brick or entirely of the latter, so eventually, these non-permanent structures would have melted into the ground.
While most of the forts that Poidebard documented were probably destroyed or obscured by agriculture, land use, or other activities between the 1920s and 1960s, the team was able to find 38 of 116 of Poidebard's forts, in addition to identifying 396 others.
Of those 396 forts, 290 were located in the study region and 106 were found in western Syria, in Jazireh. In addition to identifying forts similar to the walled fortresses Poidebard found, the team identified forts with interior architecture features and ones built around a mounded citadel.
"Our observations are pretty exciting and are just a fraction of what probably existed in the past," says Casana. "But our analysis further supports that forts were likely used to support the movement of troops, supplies, and trade goods across the region."
Casana is available for comment at Jesse.J.Casana@dartmouth.edu. David Goodman '22 and Carolin Ferwerda, a research associate in the Spatial Archaeometry Lab at Dartmouth, also contributed to the study.
Distribution maps of forts documented by (top) Poidebard (1934), compared to (bottom) distribution of forts found on satellite imagery.
CREDIT
Figure by J.Casana et al., created using ArcGIS Pro version 3.0.
Experts in the Texas A&M University Department of Geography are teaming up with civil and chemical engineers and water resource, disaster recovery and public health researchers across the campus in a collaborative effort to better safeguard Texas Gulf Coast communities against climate-related emergencies, fueled by a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Academies Gulf Research Program (GRP).
The project, titled "Climate-LEAD: Climate Effects on Localized Environmental Health Disparities in Overburdened Texas Communities along Gulf Coast," is led by Texas A&M Assistant Professor of Geography Dr. Lei Zou and unites a diverse team of researchers from multiple departments within four Texas A&M colleges and schools — the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, the School of Architecture and the School of Public Health. The interdisciplinary collaboration spans researchers at various career stages, including junior, mid-career and senior professionals
Zou, a faculty fellow in the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center (HRRC), serves as principal investigator for the grant, one of four recently awarded by the GRP to advance the understanding of climate change effects on local health disparities. Collectively, these projects will create a series of models to better understand how environmental hazards influence human health outcomes and how those hazards will be affected by climate change under varying scenarios and time frames.
“Most models and data information products that identify vulnerable areas overburdened by pollution and susceptible to increased climate hazards are typically built on national datasets with limitations in data quality, coverage and scale resolution,” said Daniel Burger, senior program manager of the GRP’s Gulf Health and Resilience Board. “These awarded projects offer an opportunity to develop more robust models that incorporate localized data that enable community stakeholders, planners and decision-makers to fully understand current and future health risks to make the best decisions for their communities.”
Adverse conditions such as extreme heat, sea-level rise, flooding and extreme weather events are occurring more frequently and simultaneously, often interacting with non-climatic risks that threaten human health and well-being, such as heat-related stress and air and water pollution. Communities overburdened by these non-climatic risks are likely to experience more intense health impacts from climate change as adverse conditions compound, resulting in greater health disparities when compared to communities less exposed to environmental hazards. These disparities are particularly relevant to flood-prone communities in proximity to oil, gas and petrochemical facilities such as those located along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Zou notes that the central goal of Texas A&M’s research is to anticipate and address the health consequences of climate change-induced air pollution and water insecurity in at-risk Texas communities situated near petrochemical facilities along the Gulf Coast. Through the seamless integration of recently established databases, localized models, web-based geographic information systems (webGIS), strategic frameworks, and community engagement, the project strives to formulate practical strategies that empower stakeholders to strengthen their ability to withstand evolving environmental pressures and safeguard public health.
“This project will pave the way for the development of state-of-the-art fine-scaled and localized databases, predictive models and innovative tools to combat environmental hazards under climate change,” Zou added.
Founded in 2013, the Gulf Research Program is dedicated to enhancing offshore energy safety, environmental protection and stewardship, and human health and community resilience in the Gulf of Mexico and other U.S. coastal regions.
