Building resilience in the face of growing hazards: Lessons from the Tule River Indian Reservation

Stanford University

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Like many communities, the Tule River Tribe in the western foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range faces mounting environmental hazards like wildfire, drought, and flooding. A new study led by Stanford researchers, in collaboration with the Tribe, sheds light on how a range of strategies can address these compounding hazards and achieve the community’s goals to strengthen its physical, mental, spiritual, and environmental health.

 The paper, published recently in Environmental Research Health, focuses on the perspectives of local emergency managers and health care practitioners on the reservation and offers lessons for communities everywhere. 

“Incremental solutions, like portable air purifiers and clean air centers, are needed to address immediate needs, but they don’t tackle the systemic vulnerabilities that make these environmental conditions so hazardous to communities,” said study lead author Natalie Herbert, a research scientist in Earth system science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “We need to think bigger.” 

Understanding the challenge

The research, supported by a Human and Planetary Health Early Career Award from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and a grant from Stanford’s Sustainability Accelerator, is part of a broader initiative to co-develop data-driven, culturally grounded solutions with tribal partners. 

About 1,600 of the Tule River Indian Tribe’s 2,000 members live on the reservation, and about a third of the community lives below the federal poverty line. The valley where the reservation is located traps wildfire smoke and air pollution, and the nearby South Fork Tule River – an important water source – is alternately prone to running low and flooding. These and other vulnerabilities are amplified by limited access to reliable transportation, fresh groceries, and housing infrastructure to filter air pollutants.

The researchers interviewed health care and emergency response professionals to understand how they characterize the threats and vulnerabilities the community faces, what adaptation strategies could support public health, and how those strategies could be implemented.

Toward transformative resilience

Based on these interviews, the research team developed a conceptual framework illustrating how hazards like wildfire smoke and extreme heat intersect with social vulnerabilities. This framework highlights pathways from short-term fixes to transformative actions, such as upgrading housing stock to include smoke-resistant ventilation and establishing green energy grids to reduce reliance on costly, polluting power sources.

“Our partnership with Stanford researchers has led to a valuable effort in understanding and addressing our Tribal community’s challenges and needs during and prior to environmental hazard events, such as drought, catastrophic fires, impaired air quality, flooding, and virus outbreaks,” said Kerri Vera, director of the Tule River Tribe’s Department of Environmental Protection, a member of the Tribe, and a co-author of the paper. “Our collaboration in data collection and assessment, at a technical and personal level, has helped craft our efforts as we move forward with planning and mitigation in response to a changing climate and future environmental hazards.” 

The research underscores the importance of community-led initiatives and the potential of transformative adaptation to create a more equitable and sustainable future for the Tule River Tribe and other tribal nations.

“The lessons we learn here can inform resilience strategies for communities worldwide facing similar compounding hazards,” said study senior author Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, an assistant professor of Earth system science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a center fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

 

Acknowledgements

Wong-Parodi is also an assistant professor of environmental social sciences in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Other co-authors are from the University of Michigan, the Tule River Indian Health Center Inc., the California Rural Indian Health Board Inc., and RTI International.

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Journal

Environmental Research Health

DOI

10.1088/2752-5309/ada84d 

Article Title

Bridging incremental to transformative hazard management strategies on the Tule River Indian Reservation

Article Publication Date

24-Jan-2025

 

Kenya study highlights complexity of tree-planting schemes

University of Exeter

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A smallholder farm in Vihiga County in Western Kenya

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Credit: Ennia Bosshard

Research with smallholder farmers in Kenya shows that tree-planting schemes must account for complex local issues and preferences.

Tree planting is central to many countries’ climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation goals, and Kenya alone plans to plant 15 billion trees by 2032.

Adding trees and shrubs to farmland (called agroforestry) can boost biodiversity, carbon storage, soil health, food production and income. But many tree-planting schemes overlook diversity and promote a narrow range of species.

The new study – led by the University of Exeter – examined the factors that enable or prevent Kenyan smallholders from increasing the diversity of trees and shrubs on their land.

“In Sub-Saharan Africa, where most food is produced on small farms, many countries are promoting agroforestry to address climate change and protect biodiversity,” said Ennia Bosshard, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

“Farmers play a crucial role in this effort as guardians of the land and trees, making it important to understand their decision-making regarding tree growing.”

The researchers interviewed 620 smallholder farmers in the Kakamega forest landscape in Western Kenya.

“Key factors in their decision-making included past experiences, the influence of other farmers, and the perceived ability to grow different tree species,” Bosshard continued.

Kenyan farmers in the study were generally positive about increasing the diversity of trees on their farms diversifying trees – but the study identified several barriers.

Farmers were worried about negative consequences such as the risk of attracting harmful wildlife and harming the soil, farms being too small, lacking time and knowledge, and following local beliefs about trees.

Bosshard added: “We found that certain farmers were more likely to increase the tree and shrub diversity on their farms, especially if they had higher education (such as a university degree or a diploma), were heads of their households, had higher income, or relied fully on farming for their livelihoods.”

To promote agroforestry that benefits people, nature and the climate, policies should address these barriers and support enabling factors raised by the farmers.

And a similar approach could be used around the world, ensuring that decision-making takes account of local factors.

The study was supported by the One CGIAR Nature+ initiative.

The paper, published in the journal People and Nature, is entitled: “Understanding smallholder decision-making to increase farm tree diversity: Enablers and barriers for forest landscape restoration in Western Kenya.”

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Journal

People and Nature

DOI

10.1002/pan3.10774 

Article Title

Understanding smallholder decision-making to increase farm tree diversity: Enablers and barriers for forest landscape restoration in Western Kenya

Article Publication Date

28-Jan-2025

 

Western Kenyan farmers favor restoring land with native trees. Yet barriers remain

Smallholders in Western Kenya strongly support native-tree restoration due to long-term benefits for landscape restoration, productivity and livelihoods, new research shows. Digital tools and community buy-in are successfully backing restoration projects.

The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture

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A farmer waters seedlings along the Nzoia River in Siaya, Kenya.

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Credit: Rachel Kibui/NATURE+, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

African nations have grand ambitions to green up landscapes with trees; the Kenyan government, for example, launched an initiative to plant 15 billion trees by 2032. The hope is that new trees could help fight desertification, create opportunities for livelihood diversification, support nutritional diets, restore biodiversity in highly degraded land and capture planet-heating carbon. Restoring lands using trees could empower millions whose livelihoods depend on working the land while generating multiple environmental and social benefits.

Yet tree planting projects often fall short because of a poor diversity of tree species and inadequate follow-through to nurture seedlings into mature trees.

“While many tree planting projects focus on integrating trees in agricultural landscapes, their outcomes are often constrained because they don’t consider the local context and trade-offs involved for smallholder farmers,” said Ennia Bosshard, a Ph.D. researcher at the University of Exeter. Bosshard and colleagues including Chris Kettle of the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT recently explored the “barriers and enablers” tree-planting smallholders face in research published in People and Nature on January 28. Some may find the results surprising.

A farm in Vihiga County, Kenya, where trees are integrated into the landscape. (Photo: Ennia Bosshard for the Alliance)

Snakes and enablers

The study found that farmers’ positive past experiences with planting trees were key enablers. Farmers were also more likely to become directly involved in increasing tree diversity when they heard the experiences of their peers who said the positive results were worth the wait. Interestingly, other social pressures like those from family, elders, or media had little to no impact on decision-making.

Although farmers were broadly enthused by the benefits of increased tree diversity – better crop yields or climate resilience, for example – the study revealed some concerns about some potential consequences.

“One surprising result we found was that, in particular, the fear of increasing tree diversity attracting harmful wildlife like snakes or insects played an important role in willingness to diversify trees on farms,” Bosshard said. (In the Kenyan study area, venomous snakes are legitimately concerning.) “But overall we found very positive attitudes toward integrating native tree species on or near farms.”

Another concern was that tree planting provides its greatest benefits over time.

“Benefits take many years to appear. Farmers may have more immediate concerns and priorities,” Kettle said. “This should be a call to central planners and development organizations to listen a little more closely to the smallholders, particularly their short-term issues, when deploying massive tree-restoration plans.”

Local trees for local benefits

In addition to increasing the enablers and taming the snakes already mentioned, researchers said specific local challenges need locally designed solutions.

“Our research highlights that diversifying trees on farms is perceived as having benefits as well as costs,” Bosshard said. “More work is needed to understand how to maximize the benefits—like food security and soil fertility—while addressing farmers’ concerns, such as dealing with wildlife.”

Next steps include increased peer-to-peer learning, stronger policy designed for restoration practitioners, and targeted interventions, like increasing the quantity and quality of tree-planting material.

Alliance researchers point to two key targeted interventions that have grown considerably under the CGIAR Nature-Positive Solutions Initiative: Diversity for Restoration (D4R) and My Farm Trees (MFT). Both tools were deployed extensively by the CGIAR Nature-Positive Solutions Initiative through its RESTORE work area.

D4R increases the scientific knowledge base for the adaptive and resilient use of local tree species in forest landscape restoration, whose life histories and cultural uses have been long understudied by science. MFT helps increase the capacities of local communities to manage, monitor and verify their tree-planting activities from seed collection to nursery work and tree growth, and provides digital payments to incentivize communities who want to increase tree diversity in production areas.

“D4R and MFT draw strongly on local restoration knowledge and needs, which is critical to building tools that can help improve the track record of tree-based restoration,” Kettle said.

Learn more about tree restoration research and implementation by CGIAR scientists.

NATURE+ RESTORE 2022-2024

My Farm Trees website

Diversity for Restoration website

Empowering communities to restore land and biodiversity through incentives and digital innovation (Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) panel discussion)

Tree tech: Growing a More Resilient Future

MFT Webinar, 2-pager , and concept note

MFT on  LinkedIn

Crops in a family plot Vighia County, Kenya, where trees are integrated into the farming landscape.

Credit

Ennia Bosshard for the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.

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Journal

People and Nature

DOI

10.1002/pan3.10774 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Understanding smallholder decision-making to increase farm tree diversity: Enablers and barriers for forest landscape restoration in Western Kenya

Article Publication Date

28-Jan-2025

 

Sharp look into Ockham’s razor

Santa Fe Institute

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Parsimonious models may be the norm in science, but complex models can be more flexible and accurate. (image: Cressandra Thibodeaux/SFI)

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Credit: Cressandra Thibodeaux/ Santa Fe Institute

Medieval friar William of Ockham posited a famous idea: always pick the simplest explanation. Often referred to as the parsimony principle, “Ockham’s razor” has shaped scientific decisions for centuries.

But lately, incredibly complex AI models have begun outperforming their simpler counterparts. Consider AlphaFold for predicting protein structures, or ChatGPT and its competitors for generating humanlike text.

A new paper in PNAS argues that by relying too much on parsimony in modeling, scientists make mistakes and miss opportunities.

First author and SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Marina Dubova says overreliance on parsimony is historical.

“Scientists need a tool to guide how they build models of the world. Parsimony was historically adopted as an easy tool to use. Since then, it’s not been questioned enough. Educational programs teach parsimony as a key principle in scientific theory and model building. Most research tries to justify why parsimony is good, but those justifications haven’t stood the test of time,” she says.

Dubova recently ran a computational simulation showing that random experiments generated better models than did scientific experiments chosen based on previous assumptions.

Now Dubova, a cognitive scientist, is probing one of the biggest scientific assumptions of all: avoiding complex models.

“Relying on parsimony alone as our guiding principle limits what we can learn about the world and potentially drives us in wrong directions,” says Dubova. “Parsimony and complexity are complementary tools. Scientists need to use evidence, judgment, and context-specific demands to determine whether a more parsimonious or complex model suits their research goals.”

Dubova and co-authors discuss findings that suggest misapplied parsimony can make models biased and lead to bad predictions. For example, simple models for interpreting live brain scans often read periodic back-and-forth patterns when, in fact, brain activity is changing slowly over time. Leaving out key characteristics (like patient age) from a model evaluating untested new drugs could lead to poor predictions of who will and won’t respond well.

By contrast, complex models can be more flexible and accurate, as new approaches in climate change research have shown. Often in science, each lab develops its own model for making predictions about the phenomenon of interest, and the field eventually converges on the most parsimonious model that best fits the data. However, climate scientists have found that when they combine dozens of sometimes contradictory models from different labs into one ensemble, climate forecasts get better at predicting actual real-world phenomena.

“Even when these climate models are incompatible, scientists decide to employ them all because they know each one is capturing some aspect of the world. The literature suggests that using them together helps us better predict the reality around us,” she says. “Could this approach inspire completely new understandings of what climate is, without us as scientists trying to impose our preference for just one simple explanation?”

Dubova hopes that the paper will kickstart new research into when scientific modelers should choose parsimony or complexity.

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2401230121 

Article Title

Is Ockham’s razor losing its edge? New perspectives on the principle of model parsimony

Article Publication Date

27-Jan-2025

 

UQ team finds relative of deadly Hendra virus in the US

Researchers at the University of Queensland have identified the first henipavirus in North America.

University of Queensland

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Researchers at the University of Queensland have identified the first henipavirus in North America. 

Dr Rhys Parry from the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences said Camp Hill virus was confirmed in shrews in the US state of Alabama.

“Henipaviruses have caused serious disease and death in people and animals in other regions,” Dr Parry said

“One of the most dangerous is the Hendra virus, which was first detected in Brisbane, Australia and has a fatality rate of 70 per cent.

“Another example is Nipah virus which has recorded fatality rates between 40 and 75 per cent in outbreaks in Southeast Asia, including in Malaysia and Bangladesh.

“The discovery of a henipavirus in North America is highly significant, as it suggests these viruses may be more globally distributed than previously thought.”

Camp Hill virus was found in northern short-tailed shrews, a small mammal with wide distribution across Canada and the US.

Dr Parry said more research was needed to understand if it was a threat to people.

“The closest known henipavirus to Camp Hill virus that has caused disease in humans is Langya virus, which crossed from shrews to humans in China,” Dr Parry said. 

“This indicates that shrew-to-human transmission can occur.”

Co-author Dr Ariel Isaacs said developing vaccines for the virus family was a focus for UQ researchers.

“The next step for this work is to characterise key surface proteins on the virus that are involved in cell entry to broaden our understanding of the virus family and identify better ways to protect against it,” Dr Isaacs said. 

The research was completed with help from UQ’s Dr Naphak Modhiran and Professor Daniel Watterson, along with members of the Professor Wendy R. Hood lab at Auburn University and members of the Professor Vera Gorbunova and Professor Andrei Seluanov Laboratory at the University of Rochester.

The research was published in Emerging Infectious Diseases. 

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Journal

Emerging Infectious Diseases

DOI

10.3201/eid3102.241155 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animal tissue samples

Article Title

Henipavirus in Northern Short-Tailed Shrew, Alabama, USA

Article Publication Date

17-Jan-2025

 

PeerJ launches Arctic Frontiers Hub in collaboration with Arctic Frontiers

PeerJ

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Arctic Frontiers Hub

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Credit: PeerJ

PeerJ, the Open Access publisher, is proud to announce the launch of its latest PeerJ Hub: the Arctic Frontiers Hub, available at https://peerj.com/hubs/arcticfrontiers. This groundbreaking collaboration with Arctic Frontiers aims to spotlight cutting-edge research on the Arctic region, fostering a multidisciplinary community of scientists, policymakers, and Arctic stakeholders.

About Arctic Frontiers

Arctic Frontiers is a catalyst for informed decision-making, bringing together science, policy, business, and local Arctic communities to rapidly transform knowledge into action. Since 2007, the organization has hosted the annual Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway, a pivotal event that unites scientists, businesses, policymakers, and indigenous peoples to discuss the future of the Arctic region holistically.

Purpose of the Arctic Frontiers Hub

The Arctic Frontiers Hub will serve as a dedicated platform to showcase the latest interdisciplinary research on the Arctic region. Presubmissions will undergo a community relevance review by a specialized Hub Editorial Team, with full submissions subject to rigorous peer review through the PeerJ Life & Environment journal.

Anu Fredrikson, Executive Director of Arctic Frontiers, commented:

“We are excited to work with PeerJ and offer this publication platform for scientists and researchers. Science and knowledge are the foundation of all that we do at Arctic Frontiers. Evidence-based solutions are needed for the Arctic, so thank you for being a part of that. The Hub will provide a community, support, and benefits for those who wish to publish their work to an interdisciplinary audience with an interest in the Arctic. The broad scope of the PeerJ Life & Environment journal will also allow many early career scientists to publish their work with a discounted publication cost.”

PeerJ’s Commitment to Arctic Research

This Hub marks the third launched by PeerJ as part of its mission to provide sustainable Open Access solutions for societies and research communities. Gavin Morrison, Editorial Community Manager at PeerJ, shared:

“We are thrilled to partner with Arctic Frontiers to launch their Hub and share their vision of fostering an open, collaborative platform for Arctic research. The Arctic is a region of global importance, and research in this area is crucial. We are honored to support Arctic Frontiers and this vital ecosystem with a PeerJ Hub.”

About PeerJ Hubs

PeerJ Hubs offer a free, customized publishing platform tailored to the needs of research communities and societies. Built on PeerJ’s robust technology infrastructure, Hubs provide co-branded research article highlights and tools that nurture thriving research ecosystems. Members and associates also benefit from discounted Open Access publishing, creating a sustainable, cost-effective publishing model.

Invitation to Researchers

All researchers working in Arctic life science are invited to submit their work to the Arctic Frontiers Hub. By publishing through the Hub, contributors can engage with a diverse, interdisciplinary audience passionate about the future of the Arctic.

To learn more about PeerJ Hubs, please contact: communities@peerj.com