Sasha Gilmore

Sasha Gilmore is a Summer in the Field Fellow, 2023 and a Ph.D. candidate in the Earth and Environment program at Boston University. She also works as a Teaching Fellow for her department. Sasha’s main research interests are environmental sustainability and innovation policy.

For her Summer in the Field Fellowship, Sasha will partner with Diponegoro University (UNDIP) professors and Indonesian organizations to study the potential for mangrove to mitigate heatwaves through survey data collection, remote sensing, and agent-based modeling. Mangroves are primarily and naturally located in (sub)tropical zones and Indonesia hosts 20 percent of the world’s mangrove forests. Sasha plans to study the prevalence of mangroves and consequential population decrease as a result of climate change. Ecosystem services and biodiversity has been negatively impacted by mangrove loss, subsequently affecting the coastal populations that rely on these sources for subsistence and their overall livelihoods. Sasha plans to produce eventual coping strategies in a region with poor heat-reducing infrastructure, in turn causing heat-related illnesses and health problems. She hopes to lead to policy initiatives and climate change solutions for the populations most affected by heatwaves and whose subsistence has been threatened as a result of biodiversity loss and decreased ecosystem services.