Current Research Projects

Climate Resilience Lab

North Carolina Agrivoltaics

The production and burning of fossil fuels negatively impacts global health, for both ecosystems and people. Per Harvard University, more than 8 million people died in 2018 from fossil fuel pollution, which means that air pollution from burning fossil fuels was responsible for about 1 in 5 deaths worldwide. Photovoltaics—solar energy—is a renewable energy able to replace dirty energy. Photovoltaics can be implemented in a variety of ways, one of those being agrivoltaics. Agrivoltaics creates a relationship between agriculture and photovoltaics. Solar panels are built on expansive farmlands, providing benefits to crops and grazers that can utilize the land beneath the panels. Our research is exploring whether agrivoltaics is beneficial to agricultural yields and solar production, and if farmers and solar developers are open to adopting new technologies.

Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Flood Mitigation

The increased frequency of extreme weather events like hurricanes has caused urban flooding to become more prominent. These intense rainfall events have exposed aging and inadequate infrastructure meant to combat flooding, only to strain already stressed drainage systems and create pockets of flooding in vulnerable and ill-equipped neighborhoods. Many communities lack the resources to address urban flooding, largely in low-income areas where mitigation efforts are slow-coming. Per the United States Environmental Protection Agency, urban flooding is becoming more frequent in coastal cities, especially along the United States coastline where cities like Wilmington, North Carolina reside. These communities are the most impacted by recurrent urban flooding, which can result in the deterioration of infrastructure. This poses the question of what green infrastructure practices are most promising for coastal urban communities like Wilmington, North Carolina, given faltering gray infrastructure.

PFAS

Our research aims to strengthen PFAS literacy and improve communication between scientists, community members, and decision-makers in North Carolina. PFAS—per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, often called forever chemicals—are a group of synthetic compounds that persist in the environment and have been detected in drinking water across the state, particularly in the Cape Fear River Basin.

Despite growing awareness of PFAS contamination, many residents still lack clear, trusted information about what PFAS are, how they affect health and ecosystems, and what steps can be taken to reduce exposure. Our team seeks to close this gap by understanding what communities currently know and what they want to know about PFAS, and by co-developing effective educational and communication materials.

Past Research Projects

FloodWise

Heavy precipitation and river flooding are top indicators of global climate change, adversely causing increased soil erosion, flood risk, and pollution from runoff. Nature-based solutions, such as wetlands and forests, can serve as critical habitat for wildlife, function as a sink for harmful greenhouse gas emissions, provide a natural filtration system for toxic pollutants from runoff, and act as a buffer for flooding. Such natural buffers can be used for adaptation by reducing economic losses from floods and other extreme weather events. We have termed our line of research “FloodWise” to describe the water quality, flood mitigation, farm benefits, and community governance connections. We cooperate with government and nongovernment organizations, agricultural producers, and community stakeholders to design and implement the FloodWise program. The long-term is to extend the FloodWise program or a similar model to other parts of the US East with similar flat topography and rural landscapes as Eastern North Carolina. The idea is also to inform localities of current or future conservation programs and hazard mitigation and climate change adaptation plans.

Hofmann Open Water Laboratory (HOWL)

HOWL is a citizen science project that was created by a group of local researchers, students, conservation groups, and community members who are interested in Hofmann Forest's importance in the NC coastal community, as well as the impacts of land-use change on water quality of the White Oak, New, and Trent Rivers in Eastern North Carolina. Our team set out to analyze the quality of the Hofmann Forest’s watershed in order to understand the Hofmann’s place in the coastal ecosystem as a whole and how its quality would affect the surrounding human and ecological community. However, we realized quickly that we would need help collecting hundreds of stream water samples and observations, and so we partnered with the Izaak Walton League to help us contact and get local community members involved in such an overwhelming task. Local volunteers not only help collect samples for this large-scale citizen science project, but will also help us try out some new equipment for water sampling and testing.

Community-Based Forest Management

Forests in the United States offer a mix of market goods, services, and amenities that support livelihoods, enhance environmental quality, and foster social benefits. However, many rural communities, some of which have a large area of forest, suffer from low income levels and lack of economic opportunities. For this research, we traveled to four different case study sites in South Carolina, Puerto Rico, and New Hampshire to interview community forest volunteers and learn more about the community forest’s ecosystem services, land governance, management objectives, and forest uses and benefits. We are also worked with researchers and faculty members at Oregon State University, comparing community forestry efforts in the US East with the US West.