Building Community Resilience: Environmental Justice & Community GIS Approach to Extreme Weather Preparedness in West Texas

Examining Social Equity, Environmental Justice, and Drought Risk in West Texas: GWR-Forest Approach

Climate Change Effects on Crop Yield and Food Security in the World, and Strategies to Increase Crop Yield.

A SWOT Analysis of Nepalese Hydropower Policy

West Texas is prone to extreme weather events, including tornadoes, which can cause large-scale disruptions with immediate impacts on human health and healthcare delivery systems. These events often disproportionately affect marginalized communities, exacerbating existing socio-economic disparities and environmental injustices. Environmental Justice (EJ) principles emphasize the equitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, as well as meaningful participation in decision-making processes. Community Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approaches involve the use of spatial data and mapping techniques to engage communities in environmental planning and decision-making.

This research proposal seeks to integrate EJ principles and community GIS approaches to enhance preparedness for extreme weather events, such as tornadoes, and other crises that impact human health and healthcare delivery in West Texas. By centering the voices and experiences of affected communities, this study aims to develop context-specific strategies to build resilience and reduce disparities in disaster response and recovery. This research is part of the research proposal for the Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants 2023.

West Texas holds significant economic and strategic importance both statewide and nationally. However, it faces escalating threats from climate change, including the intensification of drought events and water scarcity. Marginalized communities, including rural populations and minority groups, are disproportionately impacted by these environmental stressors, underscoring the intersection of social inequities and environmental injustices. By focusing on water scarcity and drought as primary climate stressors in this region, this study conducts analyses aimed at helping policymakers better integrate social vulnerability considerations into adaptation planning. The Geographically Weighted Regression Forest (GWR-Forest) approach is applied to capture the spatial heterogeneity of relationships between socio-demographic factors, environmental variables, and climate risk indicators across the region.

Climate prediction models suggest that agricultural productivity will be significantly affected in the future. The expected rise in average global temperature due to the higher release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere and increased depletion of water resources with enhanced climate variability will be a serious threat to world food security. Moreover, there is an increase in the frequency and severity of long-lasting drought events over 1/3rd of the global landmass and five times increase in water demand deficits during the 21st century. The top three cereals, wheat (Triticum aestivum), maize (Zea mays), and rice (Oryza sativa), are the major and staple food crops of most people across the world. To meet the food demand of the ever-increasing population, which is expected to increase by over 9 billion by 2050, there is a dire need to increase cereal production by approximately 70%.

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4834/3/1/4/htm

Hydropower, in which Nepal has comparative advantage, has a potential to contribute to Nepal’s energy security and sustainable development. The government of Nepal enacted the Hydropower Development Policy in 2001 (HDP-2001) as an overarching policy to coordinate all policies forthcoming in this sector. This paper has critically analysed HDP-2001 by applying the Ecosystem services-based Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat (SWOT) technique. The paper has evaluated peer-reviewed scholarly articles, secondary data, and government publications available in public domain. The strengths and weaknesses of the policy were analysed by applying seven specific indicators. The research indicates that HDP-2001 has been successful in overcoming some of the pertinent challenges in Nepalese hydroelectric industry, however, it also faces several limitations on account of climate change, economic dislocations, effective monitoring, ensuring competitiveness, delivering fair price to the consumers, and institutional governance issues. Designing a practical mitigation plan, while being aware of its limitations, could be helpful in minimizing the impact of these exogenous factors.

https://doi.org/10.21467/ajss.7.1.71-80

Impact of Electricity Consumption on Economic Growth in Nepal: An ARDL Bounds

This paper examines the impact of electricity consumption and trade openness on Nepal’s economic growth by using the time series data from past 30 years (1990 to 2019). The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach of cointegration. All tests including the stationarity, cointegration, and stability of the model were carried out using Stata. The results of bounds test show that there exists a stable long-run cointegration relationship between each of the proxies when economic growth is the dependent variable. The empirical findings also indicate that while electricity consumption per capita and trade openness have both positive impact on economic growth of Nepal in the long run, the electricity consumption is not significant in the short run. The findings can be used to formulate policies that support long-term structural development, mitigate future power constraints, and eventually attain higher levels of sustainable development.

http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.economics.20201006.06.html

Do Electricity Consumption and Trade Openness Boost Economic Growth in Nepal: An Empirical Analysis from Bounds Test to Cointegration Approach

Forecasting population of Texas counties using Forest-based Forecast: Space-Time Cube Approach

Examining COVID Infection with Income and Food Deserts

Examining Racial Equity for Breast Cancer using ArcGIS Pro

Electric power is considered an important input that affects economic growth especially in developing countries. This study examines the autoregressive distributed lag model to examine the relationship between electricity consumption, international trade openness, and economic growth in Nepal using the time series data from 1971 to 2014. The cointegration test results suggest the presence of a long run cointegration relationship among electric power consumption, trade openness, and economic growth in Nepal. The estimated results of the long run suggest that both the electric power consumption and trade openness have a significant positive relationship relating to economic growth. The estimated error correction term coefficient is significant at a 1% significance level with an expected sign. The empirical findings of this study indicate that increased electricity consumption and trade openness are favorable for Nepal’s economic growth. Therefore, it is recommended to have policies in place that support sustainable energy production and more international trade openness by tapping on sectors where Nepal has comparative advantage.

American Journal of Economics 2020, 10(6): 360-366 DOI: 10.5923/j.economics.20201006.06

http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.economics.20201006.06.html

Planning is about the future and having reliable estimates of the future population is critical for assessing demand for housing, energy, food, and infrastructure. While there are many different methods for predicting the future population, most methods follow a similar pattern. This study uses past 70 years of Historical County population (1969-2019) data to produce forecast future population across different counties in Texas using ArcGIS Pro. It runs three different forecasting models viz. Curve Fit Forecast, Exponential Smoothing Forecast, and Forest-based Forecast.

Data source: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=8786714600724851827992b3081c8a38

While many studies have looked into how the pandemic spread of COVID-19 has increased food insecurity and impacted the public health and nutritional capabilities of these food deserts, this study has examined how COVID infection varies with Income equality and food deserts. The study uses spatial autocorrelation of COVID infection across different counties in Oklahoma state and geographic weighted regression between COVID infection & Income distribution using ArcGIS Pro.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) 2019 report provided data on new cases of breast cancer and mortality rates. The report estimated that in 2019, in the United States, there would be 268,600 new cases of breast cancer among women and that approximately 41,760 women were expected to die from breast cancer. The reported ACS statistics also reveal significant disparities between the rate of mortality from breast cancer between Black and White women. Although the survival rate between those two population groups is narrowing, significant disparities remain. This study investigates the degree of the disparity by mapping mortality rates for each of the racial groups using ArcGIS Pro 3.0.

If you're using an earlier version of ArcGIS Pro, you may encounter different functionality and results.