Search

The border is everyone's, can be seen by everyone, and is travelled and crossed in multiple and dynamic ways. Northern Mexico's border cities have particular characteristics that distinguish them from others. Ciudad Juárez is one of the 100 most resilient cities, and along with its sister city of El Paso, Texas, is a space that claims the right to the city through "artivism", a series of actions and manifestations of art and resistance. This paper maps and analyses these spatial appropriations in Ciudad Juárez as an essential dimension of the right to urban life and a symbolic territory for dialogue between urban residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, ground-level ozone exposure has led to a significant increase in environmental and health risks. Thus, it is essential to measure and monitor atmospheric ozone concentration levels. Specifically, recent improvements in machine learning (ML) processes, based on statistical modeling, have provided a better approach to solving these risks. In this study, we compare Naive Bayes, K-Nearest Neighbors, Decision Tree, Stochastic Gradient Descent, and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) algorithms and their ensemble technique to classify ground-level ozone concentration in the El Paso-Juarez area. As El Paso-Juarez is a non-attainment city, the concentrations of several air pollutants and meteorological parameters were analyzed. We found that the ensemble (soft voting classifier) of algorithms used in this paper provide high classification accuracy (94.55%) for the ozone dataset. Furthermore, variables that are highly responsible for the high ozone concentration such as Nitrogen Oxide (NOx), Wind Speed and Gust, and Solar radiation have been discovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hueco Bolson aquifer is a binational aquifer shared by the United States of America (USA) and Mexico that is strongly interconnected with the transboundary river, Rio Grande/Rio Bravo. Limited recharge, increasing urbanization, and intensified agriculture have resulted in the over-drafting of groundwater resources and stressed the aquifer, threatening its sustainability if mitigation actions are not taken soon. Research indicates that the aquifer's hydraulic gradients and flow directions have changed due to the high groundwater withdrawal rates from the two major cities—El Paso (USA) and Ciudad Juarez (Mexico). This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the Hueco Bolson aquifer modeling history and makes a case for future modeling and binational engagement efforts. First, we discuss the evolution of groundwater modeling for Hueco Bolson from the past to recent times. Second, we discuss the main water management issues in the area, including water quality and quantity, stakeholders' participation, and climate change. To address the challenges of holistic water management, we propose developing a graphical quantitative modeling framework (e.g., system model and Bayesian belief network) to include experts' opinions and enhance stakeholders' participation in the model. Though the insights are based on a case study of Hueco Bolson, the approaches discussed in this study can provide new strategies to overcome the challenges of managing a transboundary aquifer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black (EBC) and Brown (BrC) Carbon are ubiquitous constituents of atmospheric particulate matter that affect people's health, disrupt ecosystems, and modulate local and global climate. Tracking the local deposition and sources of these aerosol particles is essential to better understanding their multidimensional environmental impact. The main goal of the current study is to measure the absorption coefficient (Babs) of particles within the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) of the El Paso (US)–Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) airshed and assess the contribution of black and brown carbon particles to the optical absorption. Measurements were taken during a summer, wildfire, and winter season to evaluate the optical properties of BC and non-volatile BrC. The winter season presented a variation from the background Babs in the late evening hours (3:00 PM to midnight) due to an increase in biomass burning driven by lower temperatures. The wildfire season presents the greatest variation in the Babs from the background absorption due to EBC- and BrC-rich smoke plumes arriving at this region from the US West seasonal wildfires. It was found that the international bridges' vehicular traffic, waiting time to cross back and forth between both cities, added to other local anthropogenic activities, such as brick kiln emissions in Ciudad Juarez, have created a background of air pollution in this region. These pollutants include carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen and nitric oxides, coarse and fine particulate matter dominated by BC and BrC. The absorption coefficients due to EBC and BrC of this background constitute what we have called a baseline EBC and BrC. Aided by two photoacoustic Extinctiometers (PAX), operating at 405 nm and 870 nm wavelengths, connected to a 340 °C thermal denuder to remove volatile organics, the optical properties were documented and evaluated to identify the impact of long-range transported emissions from western wildfires. The Single Scattering Albedo and the Absorption Ångstrom exponent were calculated for the winter and summer season. The Angstrom exponent showed a decrease during the wildfire events due to the aging process. The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Smoke model, HRRR, and the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model, HYSPLIT, were used to estimate the sources of the particles. In addition, a Vaisala Ceilometer was employed to study the vertical profile of particulate matter within the planetary boundary layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the years 2008-2012, the El Paso, Texas-Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua border region between the United States and Mexico saw a wave of violence that occurred as a result of the so-called “drug war" between the Juárez and Sinaloa drug cartels. As the criminal organizations began recruiting local gangs for their enforcement strategies, the violence soon spiraled beyond the context of the drug trafficking industry, generating mayhem and social decay throughout Ciudad Juárez. In four years, the death toll in the city amounted to 10,882, with 3,622 bodies in 2010. This article discusses the impact of the violence in the region as experienced by border residents and in relation to policy responses by the U.S. and Mexican governments. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews conducted in January-May 2010 with members of the border community, it focuses on the interviewees' experiences in 2010. The discussion of violence is contextualized as a global crisis, with ramifications upon urgent issues of citizenship and political and human rights across national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waterborne diseases are a serious concern in the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where many residents still lack access to plumbing. After using a relative risk method to illustrate the characteristics of neighborhoods at risk for waterborne diseases based on lack of plumbing, we ran spatial regression models predicting lack of plumbing to uncover similarities and differences between the two cities. In terms of similarities, lower mean education and higher proportions of young children were associated with lacking plumbing in both cities. Lower population density and higher proportions of female-headed households were significant only in Juárez, and proportion renting was negatively associated with lacking plumbing in Juárez, but positively associated in El Paso, pointing to differences in socio-spatial structure between the cities. In framing this issue as an environmental injustice, this study draws attention of the existence of households lacking plumbing in the United States and Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]