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1. Mapping potable reuse survey data using spatial statistics to inform tailored education and outreach

   https://doi.org/10.1002/aws2.1197  

   Cruz, Maurice_P; Scruggs, Caroline_E; Distler, Lauren_N (October 2020, AWWA Water Science)

   Abstract This research describes geospatial analyses of water‐related knowledge and opinion data on potable water reuse collected through a large‐scale public survey of water utility customers in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We identify key geographic areas, or statistically significant “hotspots,” of public distrust in the local water utility provider, public willingness (or lack thereof) to accept potable water reuse, and lack of knowledge or misconceptions about water‐related issues and climate change. By combining public survey data, geographic information system software, and spatial statistics for hotspot analyses, we introduce a tailored outreach method to identify geographic locations for targeted outreach and education on water‐related issues. This new approach to analyzing survey data is a promising dimension of water management, and the method could be important for tackling other resource management issues in additional cities or regions as well. 

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2. Design‐driven resilience and the limits of geographic critique

   https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12437  

   Cox, Savannah; Grove, Kevin; Barnett, Allain (January 2022, The Geographical Journal)

   In April of 2019, the Rockefeller Foundation's ‘100 Resilient Cities’ (100RC) programme abruptly shuttered, surprising programme proponents and critics alike. In this paper, we explore why this happened, why some styles of geographic critique could not anticipate 100RC’s closure, and what this inability means for dominant strands of critical geographic analysis. To answer these questions, we bring literature on the biopolitics of resilience, technopolitics and Black geographies to bear on the case of Greater Miami resilience planning. We argue that answers to these questions revolve around the designerly roots of resilience thinking, whose distinct intellectual lineage conventional critical approaches have struggled to pick up on. We show how, on the one hand, design practices of synthesis in Greater Miami attempted to frame and instrumentalise Black histories of and experiences with racial and environmental violence as bounded knowledge that could improve the functioning of complex systems. On the other hand, synthesis created overflowings: opaque knowledges and experiences that resist the framing process and continue to mediate political battles over what resilience in Greater Miami practically becomes. Based on the case, we propose that an inductive style of critique that traces processes of framing and overflowing can help advance critical geographic analysis. As we illustrate in the paper, this mode of critique pays specific attention to the opaque, historically and contextually specific knowledges and experiences that refuse to be framed or synthesised, and work to counter-frame dominant conceptions of resilience—critical and conventional alike. 

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3. Digital governance in rural Chengdu, China: Its potential for social-ecological resilience

   https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2022.736965  

   Wu, Shuang; Abramson, Daniel Benjamin; Zhong, Bo (September 2022, Frontiers in Sustainable Cities)

   In this study, we echo the call from the UN to interpret Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their regional context—in this case, thelinpan(wooded lot) landscape of the Chengdu Plain, in Sichuan, China, where the shocks and stresses of recent, rapid administrative-economic urbanization are testing the resilience of some of the world's most sustainably productive and long- and densely-settled agrarian environments. In recent years, fine-grained information and communications technology (ICT) governance tools in Chengdu, such as “grid management”, present opportunities to sustain and scale up the collection of data necessary to validate and refine indicators of landscape resilience, and use them to regulate development, in accordance with SDG goal 11 to enhance legislation, governance, and capacityviainformation gathering and sharing. ICT-based governance in combination with traditional place-based knowledge can play a critical role in ensuring the resilience of urban-rural co-development. To realize this potential, however, ICT-enabled governance needs to incorporate greater transparency and more local feedback loops and enable greater participation from older farmers and women, to inform household and community-level land-use choices and initiatives. It also needs to link regulatory functions with marketing and pricing functions so that farmers may benefit from the sustainable practices they are encouraged to adopt. 

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4. Understanding ecological systems using knowledge graphs: an application to highly pathogenic avian influenza

   https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbaf016  

   Robertson, Hailey; Han, Barbara_A; Castellanos, Adrian_A; Rosado, David; Stott, Guppy; Zimmerman, Ryan; Drake, John_M; Graeden, Ellie; Mulder, ed., Nicola (February 2025, Bioinformatics Advances)

   Abstract MotivationEcological systems are complex. Representing heterogeneous knowledge about ecological systems is a pervasive challenge because data are generated from many subdisciplines, exist in disparate sources, and only capture a subset of interactions underpinning system dynamics. Knowledge graphs (KGs) have been successfully applied to organize heterogeneous data and to predict new linkages in complex systems. Though not previously applied broadly in ecology, KGs have much to offer in an era when system dynamics are responding to rapid changes across multiple scales. ResultsWe developed a KG to demonstrate the method’s utility for ecological problems focused on highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), a highly transmissible virus with a broad host range, wide geographic distribution, and rapid evolution with pandemic potential. We describe the development of a graph to include data related to HPAI including pathogen–host associations, species distributions, and population demographics, using a semantic ontology that defines relationships within and between datasets. We use the graph to perform a set of proof-of-concept analyses validating the method and identifying patterns of HPAI ecology. We underscore the generalizable value of KGs to ecology including ability to reveal previously known relationships and testable hypotheses in support of a deeper mechanistic understanding of ecological systems. Availability and implementationThe data and code are available under the MIT License on GitHub at https://github.com/cghss-data-lab/uga-pipp. 

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5. Evolutionary history influences the microbiomes of a female symbiotic reproductive organ in cephalopods

   https://doi.org/10.1128/aem.00990-23  

   Vijayan, Nidhi; McAnulty, Sarah J; Sanchez, Gustavo; Jolly, Jeffrey; Ikeda, Yuzuru; Nishiguchi, Michele K; Réveillac, Elodie; Gestal, Camino; Spady, Blake L; Li, Diana H; et al (February 2024, Applied and Environmental Microbiology)

   Rudi, Knut (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT Many female squids and cuttlefishes have a symbiotic reproductive organ called the accessory nidamental gland (ANG) that hosts a bacterial consortium involved with egg defense against pathogens and fouling organisms. While the ANG is found in multiple cephalopod families, little is known about the global microbial diversity of these ANG bacterial symbionts. We used 16S rRNA gene community analysis to characterize the ANG microbiome from different cephalopod species and assess the relationship between host and symbiont phylogenies. The ANG microbiome of 11 species of cephalopods from four families (superorder: Decapodiformes) that span seven geographic locations was characterized. Bacteria of classAlphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, andFlavobacteriiawere found in all species, yet analysis of amplicon sequence variants by multiple distance metrics revealed a significant difference between ANG microbiomes of cephalopod families (weighted/unweighted UniFrac, Bray–Curtis,P= 0.001). Despite being collected from widely disparate geographic locations, members of the family Sepiolidae (bobtail squid) shared many bacterial taxa including (~50%)Opitutae(Verrucomicrobia) andRuegeria(Alphaproteobacteria) species. Furthermore, we tested for phylosymbiosis and found a positive correlation between host phylogenetic distance and bacterial community dissimilarity (Mantel testr= 0.7). These data suggest that closely related sepiolids select for distinct symbionts from similar bacterial taxa. Overall, the ANGs of different cephalopod species harbor distinct microbiomes and thus offer a diverse symbiont community to explore antimicrobial activity and other functional roles in host fitness. IMPORTANCEMany aquatic organisms recruit microbial symbionts from the environment that provide a variety of functions, including defense from pathogens. Some female cephalopods (squids, bobtail squids, and cuttlefish) have a reproductive organ called the accessory nidamental gland (ANG) that contains a bacterial consortium that protects eggs from pathogens. Despite the wide distribution of these cephalopods, whether they share similar microbiomes is unknown. Here, we studied the microbial diversity of the ANG in 11 species of cephalopods distributed over a broad geographic range and representing 15–120 million years of host divergence. The ANG microbiomes shared some bacterial taxa, but each cephalopod species had unique symbiotic members. Additionally, analysis of host–symbiont phylogenies suggests that the evolutionary histories of the partners have been important in shaping the ANG microbiome. This study advances our knowledge of cephalopod–bacteria relationships and provides a foundation to explore defensive symbionts in other systems. 

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