Sonora Environmental Research Institute

This project seeks to better define social vulnerability to climate and the intersection of acute impacts and chronic conditions that further amplify these vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop climate services, build collaborative research partnerships, and engage regional stakeholder networks. Current activities focus on energy equity and thermal comfort in Tucson neighborhoods and developing improved characterizations of urban heat and air quality maps.

Collaborators from SERI and BARA focus on household experiences of thermal comfort, cooling infrastructure, and resulting behavior. CLIMAS researchers focus on assessing the role of neighborhood and regional patterns on thermal comfort, the role of long-term climate change) and investments in and inequitable distribution of buffering infrastructure. Expanding on previous work that views vulnerability as the accumulation of negative characteristics commonly associated with location (e.g., SOVI) or climate vulnerability, this research seeks to understand how vulnerability relates to lack of access to systems, more than the failure of those systems.

This scoping project explores opportunities for collaboration in the Arizona-Sonora portion of the U.S.-Mexico border region that emphasize environmental risks and air quality, small scale computing and technology, and citizen science monitoring of environmental phenomena. In fall 2018, Ben McMahan helped convene an environmental workshop to identify emergent areas of interest. This workshop led to a focus on solar heaters and their relevance to climate and air quality in the Nogales region. Another workshop is scheduled for the fall of 2019.

There are numerous avenues for collaborative research projects and outreach in the borderlands region, and this project provides a mechanism to develop new research and engagement, as well as to connect CLIMAS expertise to existing project work. Topics emphasize climate and health (environmental risks and air quality), small scale computing, technology, and citizen science monitoring of environmental phenomena, emergent CLIMAS specific outreach and network development, and small-scale solar feasibility.

This project emphasizes network development in the Sonora-Arizona border around environmental risks and air quality issues, small scale computing and technology, and small-scale solar feasibility. A possible outcome is to inform decisions about community solar prospects in Nogales, Sonora, such as a shared solar bank that multiple NGOs could use for power. Ongoing participation and presence are requisite parts of building and sustaining collaborative partnerships. The Covid-19 pause in travel shows how things begin to fade a little, although we are maintaining contact with the network through email, WhatsApp, and texting.

La EcoCasa en Nogales, Sonora website aggregates recent work on solar and sensor technology, as well as more than 10 years of previous work in this network of partners. It summarizes information about the feasibility and capacity for solar power in Nogales and the role of sensor technology in tracking environmental risks https://nogalesecocasa.arizona.edu/.