The impacts of accessibility on vulnerability of place in Comfort Castle, Jamaica

Jamaica experiences meteorological, hydrological, and geological natural hazards that can produce island-wide impacts. The island’s exposure to multiple hazard types requires effective and sustainable mitigation and disaster risk management to lessen potential impacts, especially for vulnerable populations and communities. Comfort Castle, a small rural farming community, sits in the upper Rio Grande Valley of Portland parish and experiences earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, heavy rainfall, and floods. Steep terrain and remoteness due to geographic location affect the community’s geophysical vulnerability. Their social vulnerability results from a lack of employment, health, educational, and livelihood resources within the community. Together, geophysical, and social factors combine to create overall vulnerability of place and understanding these root causes leads to effective mitigation. In the case of Comfort Castle, limited accessibility is a common denominator among its root causes and exacerbates both geophysical and social vulnerability. Ethnographic and GIS analyses reveal the linking and influential connection between the community’s accessibility and vulnerability of place. This study calls for existing vulnerability models like the Pressure and Release and Access models to place a significant emphasis on the role of accessibility as it relates to vulnerability. In doing so, mitigation measures can start at the deepest level and effectively lead to a reduction in vulnerability to natural hazards

A role for the RabA4b effector protein PI-4Kβ1 in polarized expansion of root hair cells in Arabidopsis thaliana

The RabA4b GTPase labels a novel, trans-Golgi network compartment displaying a developmentally regulated polar distribution in growing Arabidopsis thaliana root hair cells. GTP bound RabA4b selectively recruits the plant phosphatidylinositol 4-OH kinase, PI-4Kβ1, but not members of other PI-4K families. PI-4Kβ1 colocalizes with RabA4b on tip-localized membranes in growing root hairs, and mutant plants in which both the PI-4Kβ1 and -4Kβ2 genes are disrupted display aberrant root hair morphologies. PI-4Kβ1 interacts with RabA4b through a novel homology domain, specific to eukaryotic type IIIβ PI-4Ks, and PI-4Kβ1 also interacts with a Ca2+ sensor, AtCBL1, through its NH2 terminus. We propose that RabA4b recruitment of PI-4Kβ1 results in Ca2+-dependent generation of PI-4P on this compartment, providing a link between Ca2+ and PI-4,5P2–dependent signals during the polarized secretion of cell wall components in tip-growing root hair cells

The Impacts of Accessibility on Vulnerability of Place in Comfort Castle, Jamaica

Jamaica experiences meteorological, hydrological, and geological natural hazards that can produce island-wide impacts. The island’s exposure to multiple hazard types requires effective and sustainable mitigation and disaster risk management to lessen potential impacts, especially for vulnerable populations and communities. Comfort Castle, a small rural farming community, sits in the upper Rio Grande Valley of Portland parish and experiences earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, heavy rainfall, and floods. Steep terrain and remoteness due to geographic location affect the community’s geophysical vulnerability. Their social vulnerability results from a lack of employment, health, educational, and livelihood resources within the community. Together, geophysical, and social factors combine to create overall vulnerability of place and understanding these root causes leads to effective mitigation. In the case of Comfort Castle, limited accessibility is a common denominator among its root causes and exacerbates both geophysical and social vulnerability. Ethnographic and GIS analyses reveal the linking and influential connection between the community’s accessibility and vulnerability of place. This study calls for existing vulnerability models like the Pressure and Release and Access models to place a significant emphasis on the role of accessibility as it relates to vulnerability. In doing so, mitigation measures can start at the deepest level and effectively lead to a reduction in vulnerability to natural hazards

Community-based natural hazard vulnerability assessment in rural Jamaica

Disasters occur when natural hazards disrupt the livelihoods of a large enough number of vulnerable people such that they require outside assistance. Global, regional, and local influences accumulate into a building pressure of vulnerability that creates disasters when met by a natural hazard. Vulnerability to natural hazards, which incorporates numerous geophysical and social factors, varies by location and community. For Comfort Castle, a rural farming community in the mountains of eastern Jamaica, local vulnerability is connected to place, a history of colonialism and enslavement, and accessibility. To alleviate the building pressure of vulnerability in Comfort Castle, potential mitigation interventions are identified by using the Pressure and Release model to analyse the influence of geographic place. Using ethnography to identify key areas of vulnerability from the community perspective, this study finds that the Rio Grande Valley Road is a critical vulnerability factor and target for mitigation strategies. The road is the only access point to the community and is in poor condition. Geographic information systems (GIS) analyses of the road further estimate the impact of landslide hazards on Comfort Castle. Addressing access limitations would reduce multiple dimensions of vulnerability while also increasing local disaster recovery capacity and improving livelihoods