Shaozeng Zhang

This action-oriented project responds to urgent, lethal challenges faced by riverine communities in Brazil’s Juma Forest Reserve due to the intensifying local impacts of climate change. Increasingly unpredictable flooding and droughts have been transforming river topography, disrupting navigable waterways and creating underwater hazards such as shifting riverbeds and submerged debris. These ongoing changes make the traditional environmental knowledge outdated, endangering local residents, especially youth returning from urban schooling who lack elders’ traditional navigation knowledge yet must traverse increasingly unpredictable waterways. Partnering with Juma residents, we will document developing waterway changes, assess emerging navigation risks, and analyze intergenerational knowledge gaps. Using low-cost technologies (free geospatial Apps, personal phones and the OpenStreetMap), we will map waterways and update changes collaboratively, creating a community-driven open platform as a real-time, life-saving tool. This project delivers practical outcomes locally and a replicable model for other Amazonian communities facing similar threats. Centering local knowledge and participation, this project embodies engaged anthropology and fosters long-term community resilience amid accelerating environmental changes. This project builds on our long-term collaboration in Juma, especially the pilot study of designing “Smart Forest” which explored using low-cost digital technologies for forest carbon monitoring and sustainable economies (Zhang and da Silva 2023).