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As a participant in the NOLA Anthropocene Campus, I have gained insights on how communities, stewards, and managers of ecosystems in New Orleans have rolled out forms of interspecies care vis-à-vis ongoing environmental changes, coastal erosion, climate catastrophes and their deeply present and current effects (i.e., the 2010 BP oil disaster). Whilst much analytical lens has been given to geospatial changes in the study of the Anthropocene, here, I focus on how relations to non-human beings, also threatened by the changing tides of NOLA’s waterscapes, can enrich our understanding of such global transformations.

After disasters like Katrina, urban floodwaters harbored many hidden perils in the form of microbes that cause disease. Pathogenic bacterial exposure occurred when wastewater treatment plants and underground sewage got flooded, thus affecting the microbial landscape of New Orleans and increasing the potential of public health risks throughout Southern Louisiana. But one need not wait for a disaster event like Katrina to face these perils. Quotidian activities like decades of human waste and sewage pollution have contaminated public beaches now filled with lurking microbes. Even street puddle waters, such as those found on Bourbon Street, contain unsanitary bacteria level from years of close human exploitation of horses and inadequate drainage in 100-year old thoroughfares. More recently, microbial ecologies have also changed in the Gulf of Mexico due to the harnessing of energy resources like petroleum. Lush habitats for countless species are more and more in danger sounding the bells of extinction for the imperiled southern wild.

Human-alteration has severely damaged the wetland marshes and swamps that would have protected New Orleans from drowning in the water surge that Hurricane Katrina brought from the Gulf of Mexico. The latter is something that lifelong residents (i.e., indigenous coastal groups) of the Mississippi River Mouth have been pointing to for a  long time. Over the past century, the river delta’s “natural” infrastructure has been altered by the leveeing of the Mississippi River. Consequently, much of the silt and sediments that would generally run south and deposit in the river mouth to refeed the delta get siphoned off earlier upstream by various irrigation systems.

While some actors see it as a futile effort, there have been many proposals to restore the Mississippi River Delta. For instance, the aerial planting of mangrove seeds has even been recommended to help protect the struggling marshes and Louisiana’s coastal region. Tierra Resources, a wetland’s restoration company, proposed that bombing Lousiana’s coast with mangrove seeds could save it. Mangrove root systems are especially useful in providing structures to trap sediments and provide habitats for countless species. Additionally, mangroves have been touted as highly efficient species in carbon sequestration, thus taking carbon dioxide out of the biosphere.

Species diffusion into new environments has been of great concern for the different lifeways these soggy localities sustain, whether human or non-human. Many so-called “invasive species” have been identified throughout the river delta by researchers at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research hosted by Tulane and Xavier University. Such species have disrupted local ecological relations and practices and have had profound economic effects. Some plants have even entirely blocked waterways in the swamps and estuaries where salt and freshwater mix. 

Louisiana’s humid subtropical climate, and the diverse ecosystems therein, also warrant attention in that they can incubate some of the world’s deadliest parasites and other microbes. Of particular concern would be some of today's Neglected Tropical Diseases (i.e., Chagas, Cysticercosis, Dengue fever, Leishmaniasis, Schistosomiasis, Trachoma, Toxocariasis, and West Nile virus) often perceived as only affecting tropical regions of Latin America and revealing the enduring legacies of colonial health disparities.

How and when are seemingly quotidian events and upsets understood as not isolated but rather as produced in conjunction with other anthropocenics worldwide? What roles will interspecies relations and forms of care play as we cope with further anthropocenic agitation?

NOLA’s oldest tree, McDonogh Oak in City Park, 800 years old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK9YoGpng_c&t=0s

Other trees in New Orleans: https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/new-orleans-louisiana/trees

The author references this article in a number of his other works. 

THe bibilography is made up mostly of other research articles and studies, suggesting this paper is more technical in nature than discussive. There is little to no opinion given, rather hard facts and statistics.

Users for I've-Been-Violated just put in name, phone number, and email. It also documents location, sound, and video when you activate the service. 

The other two apps require registration with the system, though if you register for one, you aren't able to just use the same login for the other. The registration just asks for email and password. Not sure if it asks for more later, as the app was really glitchy when I tried.

The author is making the point that we are too caught up in the numbers and facts of medicine, and we need to go back to the narrative. The details that come with a patient's history and social actions contribute a great deal to outcome and treatment. The author supports this with several examples of cases he has had or heard of and how they changed his view of a treatment. 

The program is divided into three sub-programs: Radiation Disaster Medicine, Radioactivity Environmental Protection, and Radioactivity Social Recovery. The Radiation Disaster Medicine course is a four year PhD program, for those who already have professional degrees (medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, etc.) and master’s degrees (medical physics). The Radioactivity Environmental Protection course is a five year program for students who have completed a bachelors or masters in a related field. The Radioactivity Social Recovery course is a five year program for students with a bachelors or master’s. The curriculum is broken down into common subjects, specialized subjects, fieldwork, and internships. 

“More than 20 years ago, social scientists Harry Otway and Brian Wayne cautioned that accident prevention (safer designs, better operator training, etc. , but even more so emergency planning, faced significant economic and managerial hurdles.”(p199)

“Nuclear accidents have tended to trigger organizational reform with regard to nuclear emergency response, but not on an international level. In considering this problematic ground, where might we start to develop a global approach to nuclear disaster mitigation?”(p200)

“The specific kinds of highly specialized knowledge involved with operation nuclear reactors however may not be accessible to broad public debate to the same degree as, for example, evacuation policies. But in the interest of sustainable, socially legitimate solutions, arguably decisions about even the technical responses to disasters should not be left to scientists and engineers alone, whether they are based within the nuclear industry, a regulatory bod, or a nongovernmental organization.”(p196)

“For all its undeniable flaws, the nuclear industry worked for several decades- in Japan and elsewhere. That is also the truly frightening realization after Fukushima: this disaster was not ‘waiting to happen’, but occurred in a system that had been functioning reasonable well for quite some time.”(p198)

“…The Way Forward is embedded in a technocratic rationality that seeks an effective ‘technical fix’ for reducing the risk of a nuclear disaster to manageable proportions. That misses the less tangible social expertise and improvisational skills inevitable involved in any successful disaster response.” (p206)

The American Red Cross uses the gold-standard products for most of its research and service. For disaster response, the ARC utilizes the good-will of its volunteers to address needs such as shelter, food, and health services. On the local level, chapters of the ARC have disaster action teams that respond to smaller emergencies and provide transition services to the victims of such emergencies. They also have a larger wokforce of volunteers to pull from and use for support services.