View Publications by PlanetLab members:
2025 – Beyond Despair: Leveraging ecosystem restoration for psychosocial resilience.
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Dr. Brian McAdoo.
The 2025 PNAS paper argues that ecosystem restoration should be leveraged not just for ecological benefits, but also for enhancing psychosocial resilience by fostering a sense of place, optimism, and stronger social networks within communities.
2023 – Using virtual simulations of future extreme weather events to communicate climate change risk
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Professor Brian macro.
The 2023 PLOS Climate paper finds that a 3D virtual simulation of a future typhoon amplified by climate change paradoxically led to a slight decrease in climate change risk perception and mitigation behavior among a Hong Kong sample, likely due to factors like climate skepticism, temporal/geographical distance, feelings of hopelessness, and issues with the simulation’s immersiveness.
2021 – A call for reducing tourism risk to environmental hazards in the Himalaya
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Dr. Brian McAdoo
The 2021 paper in Environmental Hazards argues that increased tourism in the Himalaya, driven by commercialization and improved access, has outpaced disaster risk management, leading to increased vulnerability to environmental hazards, and calls for stronger leadership, regulations, and professionalism within the tourism sector to ensure safety and sustainability.
2021 – Scientific Evidence for ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Dr. Brian McAdoo.
The 2021 Nature Sustainability paper reviews 529 articles and demonstrates strong evidence that ecosystems play a cost-effective role in reducing disaster risk, particularly for vegetation in stabilizing steep slopes, while highlighting research gaps in coastal, dryland, and watershed areas, especially in the Global South.
2019 – Invited Perspectives: Mountain Roads in Nepal at a new crossroads
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Dr. Brian McAdoo.
The 2019 paper argues that while roads in Nepal are seen as vital for development, poorly constructed mountain roads, exacerbated by decentralization and China’s Belt and Road Initiative, increase erosion and landslide risk, requiring improved governance and enforcement of existing regulations to ensure sustainable and safer road development.
2018 – Brief Communication: Vehicles for development for disaster? The new Silk Road, landslides and geopolitics in Nepal.
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Dr. Brian McAdoo.
The 2018 paper argues that China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative in Nepal, while promising development, risks increased landslide fatalities due to poorly constructed feeder roads connecting to the main routes, necessitating improved road governance and enforcement of eco-engineering designs to balance economic benefits with environmental sustainability.
2018 – Development of Monsoonal Rainfall Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) Relationship and Empirical Model for Data-Scarce Situations: The Case of the Central-Western Hills (Panchase Region) of Nepal
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Dr. Brian McAdoo.
The 2018 paper develops intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) relationships for monsoonal rainfall in the data-scarce Central-Western hills of Nepal, using stochastic disaggregation of daily rainfall data and regional frequency analysis to create station-specific and regional empirical IDF models useful for disaster management, infrastructure planning, and water resource management.
2018 – Roads and landslides in Nepal: how development affects environmental risk
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Professor Brian McAdoo.
The 2018 paper demonstrates that informal road construction in Nepal significantly increases landslide risk, particularly during monsoon season, by comparing the spatial distribution of rainfall-triggered landslides to earthquake-triggered landslides and finding a much stronger correlation between roads and rainfall-induced slope failures.
2016 – Eco safe roads
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Dr. Brian McAdoo.
Laban, McAdoo, and Sudmeier-Rieux argue that poorly constructed roads in Nepal, exacerbated by climate change, have led to a significant increase in landslide fatalities, urging the implementation of “Eco-Safe Roads” through improved construction practices, bio-engineered solutions, and collaborative knowledge sharing to reduce disaster risk and promote sustainable development.
2010 – Coral reefs as buffers during the 2009 South Pacific tsunami, Upolu Island, Samoa
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Professor Brian McAdoo.
The 2010 paper examines the impact of the 2009 South Pacific tsunami on Samoan coral reefs, finding varied damage from severe destruction due to tsunami-entrained debris to minimal impact in protected areas, with rapid recovery in fish populations, emphasizing the reefs’ role in providing ecosystem services and physical buffering.
2008 – A 1000 year sediment record of tsunami recurrence in Northern Sumatra
Featured PlanetLab Member(s): Professor Brian McAdoo.