Resilient Futures Podcast

• The Nation's Heartbeat: Engineering, History, and the Mississippi River

  The Mississippi River Basin covers over a million square miles across the southeast and midwest US. Despite growing up far away in the northeast US, Boyce Upholt thinks about the nation's largest waterway more than most: he's the author of "The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi." The book began nearly eight years earlier with a paddling trip, a sunken steamboat, and love-at-first-sight for the iconic southern river.Upholt speaks to our hosts Alysha and Todd about his intertwining passions for history and nature, and why this work centers on "the Great River." The book covers how humans have thought about, related to, and altered the region over centuries, and how the river changes to meet us in new ways."We know it's out there, this sort of heart beating in the middle of America, but most Americans don't know what it looks like."Boyce's Haiku (The Edgelands Wander Haiku):Shopping cart half-sunkInto the crust-dried batture mudNothing lasts too longLinks:Check out the book: https://www.boyceupholt.com/Southlands Magazine, a new project by Boyce Upholt, is launching later this year: https://www.boyceupholt.com/southlands

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• Sustainable Neighborhoods: How Athens Land Trust Combines Conservation and Community

  Emmanuel Stone was raised to love good food: his mother, a restaurant owner, inspired him to teach culinary arts, learn about agriculture, and emphasize the importance of whole foods. This led him to Athens Land Trust: an organization that simultaneously encourages conservation and community in Athens, GA where UGA is located.Stone serves as the Strategic Partnerships Director for ALT. From his office at Williams Farm, a space where ALT houses their offices as well as a community garden, sustainable farming classes for both youth and adults, and counseling for homebuyers, he explained the model ALT uses to simultaneously provide affordable housing, educational resources, and whole foods to the Athens community."We see these things all as connected," he said. "The Trust tries to do many things, but the main thread connecting all these areas of work is that we see how community development takes many shapes."Whether you're interested in sustainable communities, agriculture, buying a house, or just hearing us chat about food- this episode is for you!Links:Learn more about Athens Land Trust here: https://athenslandtrust.org/ Emmanuel Stone Bio: https://athenslandtrust.org/staff_member/emmanuel-stone/ ALT Workshops and Classes: https://athenslandtrust.org/classes-events/ Upcountry Oyster Roast: https://athenslandtrust.org/classes-events/oyster-roast/ 

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• It's All Connected: A Framework for Intertwined Infrastructure Systems

  This month's guest is someone close to home for our team- meet Alysha's PhD student, Negin Shamsi! Negin gives an overview of her first first-author publication, titled, "Interdependency classification: a framework for infrastructure resilience."Shamsi's research focus is infrastructure and urban resilience. Infrastructure managers collaborate across engineering, urban planning, emergency response, policy making and more. The goal of Shamsi's research, including the new paper, is to better prepare all of these fields for disturbances from hurricanes to cyber attacks."These systems do not function in isolation, they are interdependent and if one system fails, it will have effects on other systems as well," she said. "When we talk about interdependencies, especially in the past, people think about vulnerabilities, cascading failures- something negative. But recently, there has been a changing perspective: we can look at them as an opportunity for collaboration and innovation."Check out the new paper here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2634-4505/adac89/pdfNegin's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/negin-shamsi-b6736b160/

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• Building Biodiverse Urban Gardens

  How big does an urban garden need to be to support pollinators and other important insects? What kinds of plants lead to the most biodiverse space? How should homeowners manage their gardens to support the natural world?Get the full garden scoop with PhD researcher Joeri Morpurgo, from University Leiden in the Netherlands! Morpurgo and his colleagues visited urban gardens throughout Amsterdam and counted all the different plant and insect species they could find. Some key findings? Gardens can be small but mighty--as long as there's dense foliage and a plethora of plant species, they supported a variety of insect species. And one controversial finding: native vs. non-native plant species didn't seem to make a difference to insect diversity. Hear Morpurgo's take on his findings, and his urban garden management recommendations on the podcast!Related links: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1618866724003297https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2024/07/pavement-gardens-are-crucial-to-urban-biodiversity

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• Greening the cul-de-sac: How can we encourage nature-positive residential developments?

  Big, leafy shade trees, burbling creeks, and access to recreation in beautiful natural areas: most people intuitively know that these kinds of natural amenities create pleasant communities, and houses located close to these kinds of resources tend to sell for more than those without. What folks often aren't thinking about is the fact that these resources have other benefits too--including filtering stormwater, sequestering carbon, and cooling neighborhoods. But how can we use policy to help encourage developers to adopt these policies from the start? And how can policy backfire in helping create equitably distributed natural resources for communities? Michael Drescher, Associate Professor in the School of Planning and Adam Skoyles, PhD student at the University of Waterloo, joined host Alysha Helmrich to discuss these questions and more. Drescher is the Director of the Residential Development Impact Scorecard for the Environment (RISE) project, which "Aims to better understand the longer-term impacts of urban residential developments on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and seeks to measure the effectiveness of GHG mitigation efforts of green infrastructure." Learn more about how RISE is working to help institute permanent changes in the development sector through their scorecard on the podcast!

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