Congratulations to Department of Public Policy (DPP) professor Nina Brooks who was recently awarded a NASA Land-Cover/Land-Use Change (LCLUC) grant alongside co-PI Dr. Tuholske from Columbia Climate School Earth Institute.
Their project will provide information to support adaptation responses to extreme heat and LCLUC. Specifically the team will look at women in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) who are disproportionately impacted by complex biological, social, economic, and cultural pathways. Their project is entitled “A Remote Sensing Analysis of Heat Stress, LCLUC, and Women’s Health in Sub Saharan Africa.”
According to Directorate they will be utilizing NASA remote sensing (RS) derived datasets to
…produce the first fine-grained (0.05°) and longitudinal (1986 – 2016) synthesis of how dynamic interactions between the changing characteristics of extreme heat events, extreme heat exposure, and LCLUC directly and indirectly impact maternal health outcomes across the diverse geography of SSA. Their interdisciplinary team of early career researchers brings complementary skills of RS, Earth system science, social science, and data science to address human-environmental challenges in the age of climate change.
The team will be collaborating with the Climate Hazards Center and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Nigeria. Their research objectives look to:
- measure and map changes in extreme heat event characteristics of exposure
- identify interaction hotspots between the characteristics
- quantify the impacts of heat-stress and LCUC on maternal reproductive and child health
- conduct a High-Resolution Case Study for Nigeria.
We look forward to reporting more on their research as it progresses. Congratulations again to Dr. Brooks and Dr. Tuholske!