Next I’m going to introduce Pablo Llerandi-Román.
He’s a geologist, educator, and science communicator currently
working with the U.S. Forest Service – the U.S. Forest Service – a natural
resource education specialist at Bosque Nacional El Yunque in Puerto Rico.
I’m sorry if I butchered that, Pablo. Please correct me when you –
when you start your talk. And adjunct professor in physical sciences.
He has a bachelor’s in science and an M.S. in geology from
University of Puerto Rico-Mayagūez and a Ph.D. in science education
research from Purdue University. He is a co-author of a blog,
and he’s also written several essays and books around geoscience issues
in Puerto Rico. Thank you so much for being here today, Pablo.
I’m very much looking forward to your talk.
- Thank you, Sara. And no problem with the Spanish.
It is El Yunque National Forest, or Bosque Nacional El Yunque.
So, good afternoon, everybody. I’ll be talking about a topic that is
related to what Lorna and Elizabeth mentioned, or presented, earlier.
But I’ll be focusing on aspects related to science communication, empathy,
and bridging that gap that occasionally exists out there within the natural
sciences and the social sciences and also bringing the science to the people.
So essentially, I’ll be working – I’ll be presenting information regarding to our
activities during the seismic sequence locally on the southwest part of the
island and also how people reacted to our blogs and to our face-to-face
meetings and presentations that we did in Guánica, Yauco,
and other towns in the southwestern part of Puerto Rico.
I’m trying to go to the next slide – yeah.
This is simply for context. This is an image by Tania López
Marrero from UPR-Mayagūez. And the image is a bit dated now.
July 2020 wasn’t the end of the seismic sequence.
But I hope that you have a better perspective – a geographical perspective
on the location of those epicenters and the amount of those earthquakes
measured by the PRSN and USGS and presented to
the public through numerous media.
This is also, like, a direct comparison to the effects – the psychological effects
and the economical and physical effects of these earthquakes
to the people in that part of Puerto Rico.
A picture that depicts some of the damage that occurred in that area.
And I have to say, very honestly, that this is something very personal –
deeply personal because a family member needed to abandon her apartment due to the
damages suffered due to the earthquake, and she wasn’t near the main earthquake
area. She was in Mayagūez. And this is an example of
how many people in Puerto Rico were impacted.
Physically and psychologically, emotionally.
[silence]
Again, I’m trying to change my slides.
Okay, there you go. What we were able to witness in the –
in southwestern Puerto Rico is that, even though this earthquake sequence
impacted many of us – different socioeconomic strata, including the
diaspora, for many reasons that also includes the assistance that –
assistance that people brought to the southwest, it’s that those in the
lower socioeconomic strata were the most impacted.
At least in my experience and based on what I observed.
You can see here that people – even though they have the abilities
to build and construct, they didn’t have the means, so they were trying to
save their possessions with anything that they were able to
find during those events. As you can see in that image.
Residents of certain communities approached us, and they were
very interested in our opinion on the safety of their properties.
You can see that house on the top of the hill.
This is a weathered serpentinite outcrop that clearly has some
evidence of previous landslides in the area.
And people build on those houses without a solid understanding
of the geohazards implied on building those houses.
This image was taken near the Punta Montalva Fault.
I would say that this is part of the fault zone.
You can see the strata underneath that house.
And the residents of that house were so emotionally affected that they
started painting their fractures that they observed in their property
just to make sure that they had a comparison before and after
if there was some damage appearing in the properties.
This seismic sequence triggered many interesting aspects
in Puerto Rican society, from my perspective.
People from all over the island – from all over the archipelago,
actually, were trying to help. And they were organizing activities to
raise funds and to collect foods and other items for those that were in refuge.
As you can see on the image to your right, this is a screenshot of
a TV news show that clearly talks about almost 7,500 refugees in
Puerto Rico in the southwest part of the island in January of 2020.
But the result of this is that many residents were spending their days
in refuge and – I’m sorry – were spending their nights in refuge.
And, during the day, only those that didn’t have the means to go back to their
houses were actually staying there. But these refuge were established
in schools, where they had medical assistance and food assistance.
And they became, like, the center of the communities.
And, when we visited those refuge and talked to the people there, really,
there was a major concern among the population, and the major concern
was that Puerto Ricans were leaving the island.
They were leaving the sectors. And they were really concerned
about the potential economic impacts and social impacts
of that situation in the future.
So Elizabeth talked about this a little bit.
There were a lot of misconceptions spread through social media –
conspiracy theories. And I am – I’m calling them pseudoscience concepts.
Because people use whatever idea that they were able to find in social media
and elevated those ideas to hypotheses about what was happening.
And also conspiracy theories about the government against
the Puerto Ricans, etc. And that triggered a major call
for scientists to back up – like, Elizabeth [inaudible] to come down
to the southwest and talk to the people and do our best to help our population
understand the concepts. So, for me, it triggered an inspiration
to go a little bit beyond outreach and thinking about potential studies,
not for the sake of doing the studies, but because we need an empirical
base related to science education in Puerto Rico.
And this is an important aspect to consider in – I would say that
everywhere, we have science education experts – people that
are willing to talk to the public. People that, as I explain it,
are in the interface between the natural and social sciences.
And we can come up with ideas and projects to develop
an important empirical base. And, in our case, we were inspired
by research on the – on contextualized science education, culturally relevant
science education, and also research regarding the misconceptions,
like Lorna mentioned. And interestingly, when you look at
the literature, one of the most important aspects of us delivering
information and making sure that people understand it is to make it contextual.
That contextualization overcomes some of the barriers that we have
naturally to talk about these issues.
So we went up to the southwest. We visited families.
We visited refugees on their sites. We talked about and discussed during
talks the concepts related to the earthquakes, not only in the southwest,
but also in San Juan on the east coast that you can see
on that picture on the bottom right. And it was successful for many reasons.
We essentially went there, and we listened. We studied the context.
We talked to the local people. We talked to the neighbors.
We asked them what the purpose of our presence was in their minds.
And that gave us a really basic scaffold to develop these meaningful talks in
which we didn’t – we didn’t go there with a particular structure or curriculum.
We were actually talking with them. We engaged them in conversations
about their needs. And, at the same time, we were able to discuss
some of the major aspects of the concepts related to seismic events.
Concurrently, my colleague Daniel – and friend Daniel Laó Dávila and I have
a blog – a geoscience blog that has been active since 2011.
And Daniel published an important article for the general public related
to the seismic sequence. And this article has been, so far,
one of the – actually the most read article so far since 2011.
The article contained scientific information explained in a simple way
maintaining the rigor of the science, but we always strive to increase
our level of communication. Daniel used common-day examples
explaining the complexity of
the geology of the southwest. And, at that time, we didn’t understand
it quite well what was happening and why.
And this information was conveyed in such a way at an important moment that,
as you can see in the data – in the metadata, we had about 60,000 visitors
in January, about 80,000 views of our blog, and mainly related to that
article about the seismic sequence. So this essentially – we were joining
forces with a lot of other scientists from the UPR-Mayagūez, UPR-Río Piedras,
meteorologists, Ciencia Puerto Rico, and many other organizations that we
were working really hard to provide accurate information to the public.
The comments of the article were essentially that the article made
the concepts easy to understand. And it was good for the people to
have a visual perspective of what was happening.
And also the use of daily examples were great for the
general public to understand complex concepts.
In regards to the talks, after the talks, people actually expressed more
confidence. They thought that we were delivering information
that could save lives. And, even though they get most of
the information from social media, talking to – talking to a scientist is
actually good for them in terms of developing a better context for
understanding these concepts. So the lessons learned in general –
and I’m going to finish with this slide – is that we need to be aware of the
cultural – of the cultural relevancy of our interventions in communities
and in the society. From my perspective, and from
the perspective of my colleagues that accompanied me, we need to listen.
We need to explore the context first. And be aware of those misconceptions
that are lingering. That’s the reason for developing an empirical baseline.
And please do not underestimate people’s knowledge.
People know a lot. And they are experts in their own fields.
They simply do not understand geoscience as we do because
they are novice learners. So approach them as novice learners.
Understand the traditional ecological knowledge and acknowledge it.
And also, please, maintain the rigor and level of science.
But we need to all increase our level of communication.
We think that this is a great opportunity, actually, to continue studying this
phenomenon and provide an important empirical base for Puerto Rico
and for the rest of the world. Thank you very much.
- Thank you so much, Pablo. That was a wonderful talk.
And, from a social science perspective, I could not agree with you more
on that communication is so cultural and context is critical.
And providing empathetic information and also understanding that people
are experts in their own field of study and life and to be compassionate
with that and approach them as first-time learners, so …