NVIRONMENTN I C H O L A S S C H O O L O F T H E E N V I R O N M E N T F A L L 2 0 1 7
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DUKENVIRONMENT 2
ADMINISTRATION JEFFREY VINCENT, Stanback DeanEMILY KLEIN, Chair, Division of Earth and Ocean SciencesRICHARD T. DI GIULIO, Interim Chair, Division of Environmental Sciences and PolicyANDREW J. READ, Chair, Division of Marine Science and Conser vation, and Director,Duke University Marine Laborator yCHARLOTTE NUÑEZ-WOLFF, Senior Associate Dean, Finance and AdministrationDEAN L. URBAN, Senior Associate Dean, Academic InitiativesSCOTTEE CANTRELL, Associate Dean, Marketing, Communications and Strategic EngagementKEVIN MCCARTHY, Associate Dean, Development and Alumni RelationsSHERRI NEVIUS, Associate Dean, Student Ser vicesROBERT PITTS, Assistant Dean, Strategic Reporting and AnalyticsJOHN ROBINSON, Assistant Dean, Facilities and Information Technolog y
BOARD OF VISITORSVIRGINIA REYNOLDS PARKER T’80, Parker Global Strategies LLC, Stamford, CT (Chair)J. CURTIS MOFFATT T’73, Kinder Morgan Inc., Houston, TX (Vice Chair)BENJAMIN S. ABRAM E’07, Wylan Energ y, Durham, NCMARCIA ANGLE M’81, Durham, NCELIZABETH (FIELDING) ARNOLD T’01, B’10, Durham, NCH. ROSS ARNOLD III T’67, Quest Capital Corp., Atlanta, GAR. JEFFREY CHANDLER T’84, Rose Grove Capital, New York, NYFREDERICK H. A. BEAUJEU-DUFOUR , Faircloth Farms, Clinton, NCMITZI ELKES , Briarclif f Manor, NYSTEVEN ELKES , Makeover Solutions Inc., New York, NYANNIE FALK , Michael and Annie Falk Foundation, Palm Beach, FLMICHAEL FALK , Comvest Partners, West Palm Beach, FLPHILIP N. FROELICH JR. T’68, Froelich Education Ser vices, Tallahassee, FLKATHY FROELICH , Froelich Education Ser vices, Tallahassee, FLABIGAIL FIELD GERRY T’02, Pound Ridge, NYPATRICIA HATLER T’76, Hatler Arbitration and Mediation, Columbus, OHKATHRYN HOENIG T’83, Energize NY, Yorktown Heights, NYKENNETH W. HUBBARD T’65, Hines Interests LP, New York, NYSCOTT JONES MF’81, Forest Capital Partners LLC, Boston, MA
CONTENTS
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COVER STORY
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EDITOR SCOTTEE CANTRELL
ART DIRECTOR AMY CHAPMAN BRAUN
SENIOR WRITER TIM LUCAS
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS SANDRA ACKERMAN, LISA M. DELLWO, LAURA ERTEL AND SERGIO TOVAR
COVER IMAGE CONTAMINANTS SWIRL AROUND NICHOLAS SCHOOL FISH TRAPS AT REPUBLIC CRESOTING SITE IN CHESAPEAKE, VA.(Photo by Casey Lindberg PhD student) see pg.4
P12-17SCHOOL NEWS
PETER LAYTON , Blackthor ne Capital Management LLC, Whitewater, WIJOHN KIRBY NICHOLAS T’89, B’96, Chelsea Clock Co., Chelsea, MAMICHAEL R. PARKER , Parker Global Strategies LLC, Stamford, CTEDWARD M. PRINCE JR . L’93, G’93, Neustar Inc., Sterling, VADONALD SANTA JR . T’80, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, Washington, DCBRADLEY SCHWARTZ E’79, Blue Canopy Group LLC, Reston, VATRUMAN SEMANS JR. T’90, B’01, Element Capital Advisors, RTP, NCBARBARA C. SMIT T’79, Gladwyne, PANEIL SMIT JR. T’80, Comcast Cable Communications, Philadelphia, PABRADFORD STANBACK T’81, Canton, NCSHELLI STANBACK , BodyMindEnergetics, Inc., Canton, NCALISON LEIGH TAYLOR T’84, Archer Daniels Midland, Chicago, ILPHILIP TURBIN T’92, Bank of America Mer rill Lynch, New York, NYCOURTNEY LORENZ MEM’06, XL Construction, Milpitas, CA (Ex-Officio)TIM PROFETA MEM’97, L’97, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Durham, NC (Ex-Officio)WILLIAM K. REILLY , Aqua Inter national Partners L.P., San Francisco, CA (Ex-Officio)
ALUMNI COUNCIL SHANNON LYONS MEM’04, SouthWings Inc., Annapolis, MD (President-Elect)NICK DILUZIO MF’10, NewFields, Atlanta, GA (Vice President)COURTNEY LORENZ MEM’06, XL Construction, Milpitas, CA (Past President)KRISTEN BREMER DEL-MEM’13, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Durham, NCKIMBERLY CESAFSKY MEM’14, MF’14, Enviva LP, Bethesda, MDELIZA DAVIS MEM’12, National Grid, Waltham, MABELTON COPP VI MEM’16, Greenwood Resources, Portland, ORDANA MOONEY DAVIS MEM’04, Hitachi Consulting, Rockville, MDELIZA DAVIS MEM’12, National Grid, Waltham, MAALEKSANDRA DOBKOWSKI-JOY MEM’98, Framework LLC, Stamford, CTJOHN GUST MEM’04, Fannie Mae, Washington, DCESI LANGSTON T’09, MEM’13, Norfolk, VAGA-YOUNG CHOI PARK MEM’05, Cyclone Energ y Group, Chicago, ILMAGGIE PELOSO T’05, MEM’06, PhD’10, Vinson & Elkins LLP, Washington, DCBEN PRATER MEM’04, Defenders of Wildlife, Asheville, NCPAUL QUINLAN MEM/MPP’06, ScottMadden Inc., Raleigh, NCERIC THU MEM’06, 4-D Properties, LLP, Tucson, AZMARY TURNIPSEED G’11, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Palo Alto, CALESLIE WORTHINGTON MEM16, MF’16, Bluesource, LLC, San Francisco, CADUKE AFFILIATIONS
B FUQUA SCHOOL OF BUSINESS // G GRADUATE SCHOOL // L LAW SCHOOL E PRATT SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING // T TRINITY COLLEGE // M MEDICAL SCHOOL P DUKE PARENT
P25REAL WORLD EXPERIENCEMASTER’S PROJECT PAIRS STUDENT TEAM WITH IRRIGATION DISTRICT
P34DUKE MARINE LAB TO GET ITS “DREAM” OCEAN RESEARCH AND TEACHING VESSEL
P20SUMMER INTERNSHIPS
P18DEAN’S UPDATE
ON THE WINGS U S T A I N A B I L I T YP28
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WEB EDITORS STEPHANIE MARTINEK AND SEAN ROWE
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DUKENVIRONMENT 4
COVER
SALTVILLE, VA - JULY, 1968: The Olin Mathieson Alkali Works plant in the Appalachian town of Saltville, Va., for decades dumped its calcium chloride effluent into the North Fork of the Holston River which flowed past the plant. In 1970 the company announced it could not meet the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) water pollution standards and would close the plant. In 1982 the property was delared a Superfund toxic cleanup site. (Photo by Robert Alexander/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
WRITTEN BY SANDRA J. ACKERMAN
PHOTOS BY MEGAN MENDENHALL
from
TO CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCHC L E A N U P
AT THE SUPERFUND RESEARCH CENTER, MANY LINES OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY CONVERGE ON QUESTIONS OF
HOW EARLY-LIFE EXPOSURES CAN LEAD TO ILLNESS LATER IN LIFE.
is not renowned for its size, cleverness, or appeal to the palate. Seafood restaurants don’t put it on the menu, and in sport fishing it’s considered bait, if anything. But in certain scientific circles, the killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) is a celebrity, because it offers new insights into evolution at work.
Large numbers of killifish live in the Elizabeth River, an estuary that runs through southeastern Virginia and empties into the James River. This has always been a busy waterway: the clearing of timber for shipbuilding, the transport of goods for trade, and naval battles from the Revolutionary and Civil wars have all left their marks on the area. But the biggest impact has come from the wood-treatment plants on the riverbanks that used creosote—an oily compound derived from coal tar—to protect valuable lumber from decay.
Over many decades, creosote passed into the water and settled in the riverbed, releasing large quantities of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs; these are compounds that have long raised concerns about public health because of their well-documented association with cancer. The Elizabeth River’s history of chronic contamination led the Environmental Protection Agency to designate it a Superfund cleanup site in 1990. To Richard Di Giulio, Sally Kleberg Professor of Environmental Toxicology, it also made the river a natural laboratory for his research.
When Di Giulio set out to find an animal model through which to focus his study of Elizabeth River contaminants, he didn’t have far to look. The Atlantic killifish was already a favorite of many researchers because of its hardiness and ability to adapt to a great variety of habitats. Best of all, individual killifish have relatively small home ranges and so are well-suited for studying the effects of contamination and other stressors at particular defined locations.
Di Giulio directs the Superfund Research Center (SRC) at Duke, so it might seem logical that he should do the fieldwork for his research at a Superfund cleanup site. However, this is only a coincidence; the two Superfund entities operate independently of each other.
Work done at different SRCs does not necessarily have to focus solely on contaminants at Superfund sites. Whereas the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) oversees the cleanup of hazardous waste and reclamation of land at more than a thousand Superfund sites throughout the 50 states, there are relatively few Superfund Research Centers, and these are managed by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
The Atlantic KILLIFISH
(COVER IMAGE) CONTAMINANTS SWIRL AROUND NICHOLAS SCHOOL FISH TRAPS AT REPUBLIC CRESOTING SITE IN CHESAPEAKE, VA.
(Photo by Casey Lindberg PhD student)
DUKENVIRONMENT 6
COVER
ONE “CHOLINERGIC AND
MONOAMINERGIC MECHANISMS OF PERSISTENT
NEUROBEHAVORIAL TOXICITY” which is aimed at identifying how exposure
to diazinon, triphenyl phosphate and other neurotoxins affects an organism’s neurotransmitter system and can result in persisting cognitive and emotional
dysfunction.
The Duke University Superfund
Research Center was awarded
a five-year grant for nearly $10.2
million from the National Institute
of Environmental Health Sciences
(NIEHS).
The grant will support five Super-
fund Center research projects inves-
tigating the later-life consequences
of early-life exposures to hazard-
ous chemicals. It will also fund six
outreach and training programs
designed to augment and support
the center’s research.
NIEHS is part of the National
Institutes of Health.
“This renewed funding will sup-
port our center’s work to shed light
on the long-term effects exposure
to chemical pollutants can have on
human and ecological health, and
to develop approaches for reduc-
ing these exposures,” says center
director Richard T. Di Giulio, Sally
Kleberg Professor of Environmental
Toxicology at the Nicholas School.
“It will also support efforts to
share our research results with
governmental, industrial and public
stakeholders, engage communities
in Superfund Center activities, and
provide superior training for gradu-
ate students and postgraduate
researchers,” Di Giulio says.
Highly interdisciplinary in nature,
the Superfund Center brings to-
gether teams of biomedical, social
and environmental scientists as well
as engineers from across Duke’s
campus—and from other institutions
such as North Carolina State Univer-
sity—to investigate some of the most
pressing issues in environmental
health today.
NIEHS AWARDS $10.2 MILLION GRANT TO DUKE SUPERFUND RESEARCH CENTER
Five research projects will be supported by the new NIEHS grant.Each of these five projects will be augmented by the Superfund Center’s
research support cores, research translation core, community engagement
core and training core.
TWO“ALTERING THE BALANCE OF
ADIPOGENIC AND OSTEOGENIC REGULATORY PATHWAYS
FROM EARLY-LIFE EXPOSURE TO HPCs AND AOPEs”
which is aimed at understanding how the regulation of key receptor pathways in the body may help mediate later-life skeletal malformations, obesity and other harmful
effects of early exposure to halogenated phenolic compounds (HPCs), chemicals
which mimic hormones on the body.
rich DI GIULIO
PHOTO BY MEGAN MENDENHALL/ DUKE PHOTOGRAPHY
Five-year funding for the SRC at Duke was renewed earlier this year (see story, page 6). It is one of only 18 SRCs currently in operation; each one has its own focus, says Heather Henry, administrator of the Superfund Research Program at the NIEHS. “A Superfund Research Center might be organized around a contaminant, such as arsenic or PCBs or PAHs, or around a mode of exposure, such as mining in arid regions,” she explains. “The Duke Center focuses on developmental exposure—an area that’s very much in need of additional research, because while an organism is still forming it can be very vulnerable to hazardous substances. In humans, it can take a long time to see the effects of early-life exposures, and the Duke Center has developed several innovative methods to help understand this phenomenon.”
DEVELOPING A DNA-BASED INVESTIGATIVE TOOL In the late 1980s the Elizabeth River had the dubious honor of being named the most polluted estuary in Virginia. Of all the industrial sites responsible, the Atlantic Wood treatment plant in Portsmouth, Va., was found to have contributed the most to the problem. Yet despite epic levels of contamination in their home waters, killifish that spend their whole lives at the Atlantic Wood site seem to maintain their abudance and ability to reproduce, although they do show high rates of liver cancer. When fish embryos from a relatively clean site nearby are exposed to polluted sediment, they develop deformed hearts, reduced circulation, and pericardial swelling, whereas embryos from Atlantic Wood parents show a near-complete resistance to these effects.
Di Giulio hypothesized the pollution itself was putting pressure on the killifish to change at a genetic level to adapt to their polluted environment—in other words, to evolve. In collaboration with a lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, he developed a DNA-based probe for investigating the role of specific genes in responses to toxicants and demonstrated that when the expression of particular genes is blocked, PAHs exert a greater or lesser toxic effect, depending on the gene.
As in humans, cancer in fish is a disease of old age and generally does not have a large effect on population dynamics. Di Giulio and his colleagues now think that the evolved resistance of Atlantic Wood killifish to PAHs involves genetic adaptations that reduce PAH effects during embryonic development of the cardiovascular system. Meanwhile, though, estimates of human risk from PAHs keep focusing on cancer—so are we overlooking another, equally important threat here?
A surprising discovery from the Elizabeth River killifish studies was the potent synergy between two of the most prevalent PAH types at the Atlantic Wood site. This synergy, the evolutionary driver of cancer resistance in the killifish population, is a crucial factor to take into account when we try to estimate levels of risk at other PAH-Five research projects will be supported by the new NIEHS grant.
THREE“PERSISTENT MITOCHONDRIAL AND EPIGENETIC EFFECTS OF
EARLY-LIFE TOXICANT EXPOSURE” which is aimed at identifying whether the toxic effects of certain chemicals on mito-chondrial function are highly persistent or inheritable; and if these effects are greater
among certain genetic backgrounds.
FOUR“MECHANISMS AND
CONSEQUENCES OF EVOLVED ADAPTATION TO ENVIRONMENTAL
POLLUTION” which is aimed at exploring how low-level exposures to polycyclic aromatic hydrocar-bons (PAHs) affects physical, behavioral and metabolic development, and how
PAHs have driven evolution in free-living populations of fish.
FIVE“ENGINEERING THE PHYSICO-CHEMICAL ENVIRONMENT TO
ENHANCE THE BIOREMEDIATION OF DEVELOPMENTAL TOXICANTS IN SEDIMENT FUNGAL-BACTERIAL
BIOFILMS” which is aimed at devising new biological techniques – using an understudied group of micro-organism known as non-basidio-mycete fungi – to remediate high levels of PAHs and other developmental toxicants
that can accumulate in sediment.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
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DUKENVIRONMENT 8
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contaminated sites. From what we’ve seen with Atlantic Wood sediments, continuing to focus on the cancer-causing potential of PAHs could be dangerously misleading: we may end up with serious underestimates of other risks posed by some PAH mixtures.
Fortunately, federal, state, and town authorities, as well as local industries, have come together to begin limiting the release of pollutants into the Elizabeth River system and restoring the habitats to the extent possible. The Atlantic Wood site is now closed for remediation, while the nonprofit Elizabeth River Project (http://www.elizabethriver.org) is coordinating efforts to make the river swimmable and fishable by the year 2020 and to educate the public about the value of a healthy ecosystem.
Not far away in Chesapeake, research continues on the Republic Creosoting site, also “super contaminated,” according to PhD student Casey Lindberg. “One of the first things I did was assess the killifish at Republic Creosoting for their degree of resistance” to PAHs, she says. The fish here, like those at Atlantic Wood, showed few signs of heart deformities or elevated activity of the CYP1A enzyme; this population had developed a similar resistance to the health toll of creosote PAHs. But also like the Atlantic Wood killifish, the Republic Creosoting population seems to show that their evolved resistance comes at a cost: these fish could be extra-susceptible to other kinds of stress, such as a decreased amount of dissolved oxygen in the water.
These findings hold major implications—especially in the context of climate change, which brings drought to some areas and deluges to others. In estuaries like the Elizabeth River, abnormally high rainfall can rapidly lower the salinity of the water, which can be stressful for aquatic species. Rainfall also causes increased inputs of nutrients from land and agricultural runoff into the water, which, combined with increased temperatures, allows algae to bloom on the surface of the water. As the blooms start to die, the result is lower levels of dissolved oxygen for the fish that live underneath.
EXPLORING ‘FITNESS COSTS” OF ADAPTATIONIf some animals—say, those with short generation times—can sometimes evolve to thrive in the face of chronic pollution, does this mean the pollution is benign? Probably not. In several subpopulations of Elizabeth River killifish, the genetic structure has been permanently altered, and there’s evidence that the evolutionary adaptations that let them live with the pollution have come at a cost to their overall fitness. Di Giulio explains, “We are currently performing studies exploring fitness costs—i.e., showing that the adapted populations are more sensitive to elevated temperature and hypoxia. These studies involve detailed analyses on mitochondrial function, aerobic performance and behavior.”
Joel Meyer, who directs the SRC’s training core, carries out studies like this at the level of genes or molecules. “I’m looking at how environmental agents can cause damage to DNA and at the molecular processes that organisms employ to prevent and/or repair DNA damage,” says Meyer, Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professor of Molecular Environmental Toxicology. He also looks for the subtle genetic differences within a species—or human population—that may make certain individuals more susceptible, or else more resistant, to DNA damage.
In many cases he finds such differences among genes that affect an animal’s mitochondria, self-enclosed bodies within each cell that produce and store energy. Mitochondria are unique in having their own genome, which is far smaller than the animal’s overall genome and lacks some of its pathways for repairing DNA damage. For this reason, toxicity and diseases that arise from mitochondrial damage can be very serious.
Says Meyer, “Along with a lot of other labs, we have observed that if you have a stressor that affects mitochondrial function, the damage may become apparent only over the long term, and sometimes even across successive generations. We’re now setting out to test the possibility that certain toxins in the environment can cause these types of long-term damage, and to find out whether genetic differences may make some individuals more susceptible than others.”
Jamie Harris, a Duke undergraduate in the class of 2020, is enjoying her summer
WE HAVE OBSERVED
THAT IF YOU HAVE
A STRESSOR
THAT AFFECTS
MITOCHONDRIAL
FUNCTION, THE
DAMAGE MAY BECOME
APPARENT ONLY OVER
THE LONG TERM
PHOTO BY MEGAN MENDENHALL/ DUKE PHOTOGRAPHY
joel MEYER
job in Meyer’s toxicology lab. “This is really different from the work I did in an aging lab while I was in high school,” she says. One of her experiments calls for observing microscopic worms (C. elegans) under a plate reader after they have been exposed to extracts of sediment from the Elizabeth River, to look for possible mitochondrial damage. Harris enjoys the ingenious design of this assay: “We use a certain strain of C. elegans that contains a fluorescent protein in its genome, so the worms glow when you put them under the microscope and in the plate reader,” she explains. “It’s really cool: these worms are too small to see with the naked eye, but they can still tell us a lot about how toxins affect mitochondrial function.”
ANALYZING HOUSEHOLD ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTHThe deputy director of Duke’s SRC, Heather Stapleton, studies the environmental health profile of quite a different habitat—the typical American home, with its vast assortment of furnishings, appliances, clothing, tools, and devices, along with varying amounts of grime and dust. Earlier this year Stapleton and her coauthors briefly became world-famous for their chemical analysis of household dust, in which they found surprisingly high levels of endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs). Stapleton is Dan and Bunny Gabel Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics and Sustainable Environmental Management.
Many of the newspaper headlines oversimplified the research to the point of silliness (“Is household dust making you fat?”), but the health effects of EDCs should be taken seriously, Stapleton says. The compounds she and her colleagues identified are known
AARON BARCHOWSKY PHD’85 University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health
DANA DOLINOY PHD’07 University of Michigan, School of Public Health
EVAN GALLAGHER MEM’86, PHD’91 University of Washington, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
CHRISTOPHER LAU BS’75, PHD’82 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Health and Environmental Effect Laboratory
MAXWELL LEUNG PHD’12 California Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Pesticide Regulation
JENNIFER LYNCH PHD’04 National Institute of Standards and Technology, Chemical Sciences Division
JOEL MEYER PHD’03 Duke University, Nicholas School of the Environment
ALICIA TIMME-LARAGY PHD’07 University of Massachusetts Amherst, School of Public Health and Health Sciences
DAVID VOLZ PHD’06 University of California, Riverside, Department of Environmental Science
The Duke Superfund Research Center is a highly productive training ground for young researchers from a wide variety of academic fields.
Twenty-four former students or post-doctoral associates who received early-career training at Duke are now principal investigators at research labs and govern-ment agencies across the United States. This distinguished cohort includes 15 who are Duke alumni, including nine who received their degrees through the highly touted University Program in Environ-mental Health (UPEH), which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year.
SUPERFUND CENTER SERVES AS TRAINING GROUND FOR YOUNG RESEARCHERS
PHOTO BY MEGAN MENDENHALL/ DUKE PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTO OF MITOCHONDRIAFROM JOEL MEYER’S LAB
DUKENVIRONMENT 10
to interfere with the human hormonal system that prompts the formation of both bone cells and fat cells; thus, as with many other substances being studied at the SRC, exposure to them early in life poses the greatest risk.
Stapleton’s main line of investigation focuses on the flame-retardant substances commonly used today to treat clothing, rugs, mattresses, and many other household objects. All too often these substances include polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)—compounds that can interfere with the thyroid system, which normally regulates human metabolism, growth, temperature control, and a host of other important functions. Exposure to PBDEs also appears to raise women’s risk of developing papillary thyroid cancer.
Of course it’s a good idea to minimize the risk that a child’s pajamas will burst into flames if he gets too close to the toaster, but Stapleton thinks this goal can be met without the addition of other health hazards. Some new and improved flame-retardant substances are in the works, but she would like to see a more basic response to this public-health threat. “The first thing we ought to do is determine exactly where we need flame retardants and where we don’t,” she says.
UNDERSTANDING HOW TOXIC EXPOSURE AFFECTS THE BRAINProfessor Ed Levin holds appointments at Duke’s medical school and undergraduate college as well as at the Nicholas School. Within the Superfund Research Center, at his neurotoxicology lab, he’s trying to understand how exposure to harmful substances
heather STAPLETON
EXPOSURE TO
PBDEs ALSO
APPEARS TO RAISE
WOMEN’S RISK
OF DEVELOPING
PAPILLARY THYROID
CANCER.
PHOTO BY MEGAN MENDENHALL/ DUKE PHOTOGRAPHY
ISTOCK PHOTO
COVER
may affect the brain, not just in terms of one chemical signal but among several of them: dopamine, serotonin, and acetylcholine. Sorting out these interactions is a challenge, he admits, but says, “Even at that, it’s just three neurotransmitters among many others.”
Levin’s lab works with a range of model systems, from in-vitro cultures to invertebrates to aquatic organisms (zebrafish) to mammals (rodents). The different models complement one another, he says.” In zebrafish, for example, his research team is studying how exposure to certain toxins early in life can lead to adverse effects later on, whereas in rodents they are looking for possible new treatments to alleviate such effects.
Andrew Hawkey, a postdoctoral associate in Levin’s lab, studies the neurotoxic effects of the pesticide diazinon, which was once widely used in the United States but is now applied only in agriculture. “Our interest is in off-target effects, because the insects targeted by diazinon are just the first organisms exposed to it,” he explains. Farmers and agricultural workers, people who live near areas where diazinon is used, and consumers of the food that’s grown with it all run some risk of being affected by this compound.
Diazinon is designed to work in insect nervous systems, but Hawkey wants to find out how it affects it the brains of mammals at their most vulnerable stage: before birth, while they are still developing. He implants an osmotic mini-pump under the skin of pregnant female rats to administer a consistent, low level of exposure throughout pregnancy. (A “control” group of pregnant rats is fitted with pumps containing an inert substance.)
“In the offspring of these rats, we’ll be looking for evidence of anxiety, changes in behavior or cognition, and changes in activity,” Hawkey says. Meanwhile, two partner labs at the SRC are studying the neurochemistry, looking closely for changes in various signal receptors in the brain that may correlate with changes in behavior or cognition.
Hawkey’s previous research had focused on addiction: how alcoholism or substance abuse affects the user and, if she’s pregnant at the time, how it ultimately affects the child. Coming to Duke, he says, gave him a different perspective. “Now I’m looking at how chemicals that people are exposed to inadvertently can affect them and their offspring,” he says, adding, “It’s been really fascinating to me, looking at questions that wouldn’t have been posed in this fashion in my old field. It has definitely expanded my perspective on the brain.”
SRC OFFERS MULTIDISCIPLINARY TRAINING FOR FUTURE SCIENTISTSAnother major research project at the Duke SRC, led by Claudia Gunsch in the Pratt School of Engineering, focuses on developing innovative ways to clean up, or remediate, polluted environments. Each instance of pollution has its own ecology and industrial history, as well as current and future challenges, so each solution must likewise be customized for the problem at hand. This approach calls for scientific creative scientific thinking. One striking example combines tools from physical and chemical engineering, microbiology, and chemistry, using a little-known group of micro-organisms to lower the harmful levels of PAHs and other developmental toxicants that can accumulate in the sediment of polluted waterways.
The intensive training for future scientists and the multidisciplinary approach of most research projects are two of the elements that makes the Duke Superfund Research Center a hub of enriching experiences. A third element is the SRC’s strong program of community outreach, which includes public talks, meetings with residents in pollution-affected areas, and social media campaigns.
Lindsay Holsen, an undergraduate from Lawrence University, recently finished a summer internship at the Duke SRC, dividing her time between research in Joel Meyer’s lab and community-outreach projects. In the latter area, her Spanish-language skills were an asset. “I helped translate some of the Center’s material on contaminants in fish and in garden soils with the help of two native Spanish-speakers,” she says.
Holsen feels she learned a lot about the challenges of communicating complex research and about the need for balancing costs with solutions. “There are a lot of temporary solutions to environmental problems, but you have to think about solutions for the long term and ensure that the affected community is involved in the process,” she says.
Encouraging this kind of thoughtful approach to environmental-health challenges is an investment in the future that NIEHS administrator Henry particularly appreciates. As she sees it, “The fact that the Duke SRC is an integrated program, with health, technology, and community engagement, makes it a unique experience for trainees, allowing them to get a real depth of knowledge. While their program is grounded in specific [fields of] expertise, it also helps them understand how their work fits into the bigger picture.”
Sandra J. Ackerman is a science writer based in Durham, N.C., and is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
WE’RE TRYING TO
UNDERSTAND HOW EXPOSURE
TO HARMFUL SUBSTANCES MAY
AFFECT THE BRAIN
ISTOCK PHOTO
DUKENVIRONMENT 12
SCHOOL NEWS
Large patches of tropical forest are
being lost worldwide as governments
and corporations clear more land to
make way for industrial-scale agriculture,
a Duke University study shows.
The analysis reveals that clearings
for large-scale agricultural expansion
were responsible for an increasing
proportion—in some places, more than
half—of all observed forest loss across
the tropics between 2000 and 2012.
The trend was most pronounced in
Southeast Asia and South America.
“In South America, more than 60
percent of the increase in deforestation
was due to a growing number of medium-
and large-sized forest clearings typical
of what you see with industrial-scale
commercial agricultural activities,”
says Jennifer J. Swenson, associate
professor of the practice of geospatial
analysis at the Nicholas School.
“Brazil, with its stricter policies
limiting agricultural expansion until
2012, was the only country showing a
reverse trend—its average forest clearing
size actually got smaller,” she says.
“This unique trend may be short-lived,
however, given Brazil’s relaxed forest
policies of the last few years.”
The new findings underscore the
growing need for policy interventions
that target industrial-scale agricultural
commodity producers in the tropics, the
researchers say.
Swenson conducted the research with
PhD students Kemen G. Austin, Amanda
Schwantes and Danica Schaffer-Smith,
and former postdoctoral researcher
Mariano González-Roglich, who is
now director of ecosystem analysis at
Conservation International’s Moore
Center for Science.
They published their peer-reviewed
analysis in the journal Environmental Research Letters (May 9).
LARGER SWATHS OF
TO COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE
TROPICAL FOREST BEING LOST
Read more about the work of faculty
member Swenson: nicholas.duke.edu/
people/faculty/swenson
«
>1/2more than half of all
observed forest loss across the tropics between
2000 and 2012.
60%increase in
deforestation
CL
EA
RIN
GS
FOR LARGE-SCALE AGRIC
ULT
UR
E
CL
EA
RIN
GS
FOR LARGE-SCALE AGR
ICU
LTU
RE
At least 1.4 million gulls
feed at landfills across
North America, which
aside from the nuisance
it might pose, is also a
threat to the health of
nearby waters, a Duke
University study finds.
“We estimate these
gulls transport and
deposit an extra 240
tons of nitrogen and
39 tons of phosphorus
into nearby lakes or
reservoirs in North
America each year
through their feces,”
says lead author Scott
Winton, a 2016 doctoral
graduate at the Nicholas
School.
The added nutrients
contained in the
birds’ droppings can
contribute to extensive
algal blooms that rob
surface waters of much
of the oxygen needed
to sustain healthy
aquatic animal life—a
process known as
eutrophication.
Oxygen depletion
and algal toxins that
result from the blooms
can have far-reaching
ecological and economic
impacts, including fish
kills, increased costs for
local governments, and
reduced recreational
or fishing values in
affected waters.
“It costs local U.S.
governments an
estimated $100 million
a year in nutrient offset
credits to address or
prevent the problem
and maintain nutrient
levels at or below the
total maximum daily
load threshold for
water quality,” says
Mark River, a doctoral
student at the Nicholas
School, who conducted
the research with
Winton.
The scale of the
problem and the
cumulative cost of
dealing with it may be
even larger than the
new study suggests,
says Winton, who is now
a visiting postdoctoral
fellow at ETHZurich,
a science and
technology university in
Switzerland.
“We estimated and
mapped a landfill-gull
population of 1.4 million
based on documented
sightings reported in the
eBird Citizen Science
database. But the actual
population is probably
greater than 5 million,”
Winton says. “That
means the amount of
nutrients deposited
in the lakes, and the
costs of preventing
or remediating the
problem, could be
substantially higher.”
Winton and River
published their study,
which is the first to
look at the transport of
nutrients into surface
waters from gulls in the
journal Water Research
(June 15).
They conducted the
research at landfills
near two major drinking
water reservoirs—Jordan
Lake and Falls Lake—
that serve the Raleigh-
Durham region of North
Carolina. Nitrogen
and phosphorus data
from these two lakes
were then scaled up to
estimate total loading
at water bodies near
landfills across North
America using a well-
established model for
measuring the nutrient
transport of carnivorous
birds.
The findings are
applicable to lakes and
reservoirs in other parts
of the world as well.
«
TRASH-PICKING
POOP HUNDREDS OF TONS OF NUTRIENTS
GULLS«
“We estimate these gulls transport and deposit an extra 240 tons of nitrogen and 39 tons of phosphorus into nearby lakes or reservoirs in North America each year through their feces,”
«
«
Read more about the work of PhD graduate Winton: nicholas.duke.edu/
about/news/trash-picking-seagulls-poop-hundreds-
tons-nutrients
DUKENVIRONMENT 14
SCHOOL NEWS
Exposure to ozone, long associated with impaired lung
function, is also connected to health changes that can
cause cardiovascular disease such as heart attack, high
blood pressure and stroke, according to a new study of
Chinese adults.
These findings, by a team from Duke University, Tsinghua
University, Duke Kunshan University and Peking University,
were published in JAMA Internal Medicine (July 17).
Ozone is a pollutant formed through a chemical reaction
that occurs when sunlight interacts with nitrogen oxides and
other organic compounds that are generated by coal-burning,
vehicle exhaust and some natural sources.
“We know that ozone can damage the respiratory system,
reduce lung function and cause asthma attacks,” says study
author Junfeng (Jim) Zhang, from the Nicholas School and
Duke Kunshan University. “Here, we wanted to learn whether
ozone affects other aspects of human health, specifically the
cardiovascular system.”
Zhang and colleagues studied 89 healthy adults living in
Changsha City, China, for one year. They monitored indoor
and outdoor ozone levels along with other pollutants. At
four intervals, the study team took participant blood and
urine samples and used a breathing test called spirometry
to examine a set of factors that could contribute to
cardiovascular and respiratory disease.
The team examined inflammation and oxidative stress,
arterial stiffness, blood pressure, clotting factors and lung
function in participants. They noted blood platelet activation
(a risk factor for clotting) and an increase in blood pressure,
suggesting a possible mechanism by which ozone may affect
cardiovascular health. These effects were found with ozone
exposure lower than that which affects respiratory health,
and lower than current Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) air quality standards.
“This study shows that standards for safe ozone exposure
should take into account its effect on cardiovascular disease
risk,” says Zhang.
“In 2015, 108 million Americans—one third of the
population—lived in counties with ozone levels that exceeded
standards set by the EPA,” Zhang says.
The production of ozone globally will be exacerbated by a
warmer climate, “so it will be an increasing trend with climate
change,” says Zhang.
OZONEPOLLUTION CONNECTED TO CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH
TECHNOLOGY-AIDED SURVEYS REVEAL EXTENT OF
GRAY SEAL RECOVERY
«
GRAY SEAL RECOVERY «
“THIS IS A CONSERVATION SUCCESS THAT
SHOULD BE CELEBRATED.”
Using research drones,
thermal cameras and
free images from
Google Earth, two Duke
University-led studies
confirm that gray seals
are making a comeback
off the New England
and eastern Canadian
coasts.
The findings help
confirm that seal
conservation efforts
are working, and that
these remote eye-in-
the sky technologies
make it easier and
safer for scientists to
study migratory wildlife
in remote locations and
estimate their numbers
accurately.
“Past surveys based
on traditional methods
of counting, using occu-
pied aircraft to survey
seals on beaches,
islands and seasonal ice
cover, counted about
15,000 seals off the
southeastern Massa-
chusetts coast,” says
David W. Johnston,
assistant professor of
the practice of marine
conservation ecology at
the Nicholas School.
“Our technology-aid-
ed aerial survey, which
used Google Earth
imagery in conjunction
with telemetry data
from tagged animals,
suggests the number is
much larger—between
30,000 and 50,000,”
Johnston says. “This is
a conservation success
that should be cel-
ebrated.”
The higher estimate
reflects the fact that
seals spend significant
time at sea, where they
are undetectable by
land-based observa-
tion and difficult and
dangerous to track by
boat or aircraft.
Johnston and his col-
leagues published their
peer-reviewed study in
the journal Bioscience (June 14). They calcu-
lated the abundance
of gray seals between
2012 and 2015 by
combining Google Earth
images with more than
8,000 hours of telem-
etry data from a small
number of tagged seals
that showed locations
and behaviors.
“Integrating high-
resolution imagery
and traditional telem-
etry data allowed us
to calculate species
abundance in loca-
tions where it would
have been much more
difficult, time-consum-
ing and costly to do
otherwise,” says Jerry
W. Moxley, a postdoc-
toral researcher at the
Monterey Bay Aquari-
um who led the study
while he was a doctoral
student at Duke.
The Massachusetts
study follows a paper
which appeared in
the journal Scientific Reports (March 24) in
which Duke researchers
used drones equipped
with thermal imaging
technology to conduct
aerial surveys of gray
seal populations at
breeding colonies on
Nova Scotia’s Hay Is-
land and Saddle Island.
“Seal pups are born
with a white coat,
which makes them hard
to see against ice or
snow using traditional
imagery,” says Alex
Seymour, a geographic
information systems
analyst at Duke’s
Marine Robotics and
Remote Sensing Center,
who led the study. “But
they can’t hide from
thermal imagery.”
The images col-
lected by the drones
were analyzed using
two methods. By the
traditional method,
scientists slowly and
painstakingly counted
all seals shown in each
image and classified
each by size and shape
to determine how many
adults and pups were
present.
In the other method,
a computer-vision al-
gorithm counted adults
and pups based on the
temperature, size and
shape of their heat
signatures.
The automated
counts were less than 5
percent different from
the human estimates,
and proved better at
counting seals that
are visually difficult to
distinguish from the
background landscape
or obscured by vegeta-
tion.
“Computer-based
assessments of seal
populations such as
this hold great promise
in terms of accuracy
and repeatability,” said
Johnston. “And when
coupled with new
population survey ap-
proaches using drones
or earth-observation
imagery, they help us
reduce surveying costs
and risks, while increas-
ing data quality.”
Read more about the work of faculty
member Johnston: nicholas.duke.edu/
marinelab/people/ faculty/johnston
DUKENVIRONMENT 16
SCHOOL NEWS
BIODIVERSITY LOSSFROM DEEP-SEA MINING
WILL BE UNAVOIDABLE
Biodiversity losses from deep-
sea mining are unavoidable and
possibly irrevocable, an interna-
tional team of 15 marine scien-
tists, resource economists and
legal scholars argue in a letter
published in the journal Nature Geoscience (June 26).
The experts say the Interna-
tional Seabed Authority (ISA),
which is responsible under the
UN Law of the Sea for regulating
undersea mining in areas outside
national jurisdictions, must rec-
ognize this risk. They say it must
also communicate the risk clearly
to its member states and the
public to inform discussions about
whether deep-seabed mining
should proceed, and if so, what
standards and safeguards need
to be put into place to minimize
biodiversity loss.
“There is tremendous uncer-
tainty about ecological responses
to deep-sea mining,” says Cindy
L. Van Dover, Harvey W. Smith
Professor of Biological Ocean-
ography at the Nicholas School.
“Responsible mining needs to rely
on environmental management
actions that will protect deep-sea
biodiversity and not on actions
that are unproven or unreason-
able.”
“The extraction of non-renew-
able resources always includes
tradeoffs,” says Linwood Pendle-
ton, International Chair in Marine
Ecosystem Services at the Euro-
pean Institute of Marine Studies
and an adjunct professor at the
Nicholas School. “A serious trade-
off for deep-sea mining will be an
unavoidable loss of biodiversity,
including many species that have
yet to be discovered.”
Faced with this inevitable
outcome, it’s more important than
ever that we understand deep-sea
ecosystems and have a good idea
of what we stand to lose before
mining alters the seafloor forever,
says Pendleton, who also serves
as a senior scholar in the Oceans
and Coastal Policy Program at
Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Envi-
ronmental Policy Solutions.
Time is of the essence, the
experts stress.
“Undersea deposits of metals
and rare earth elements are not
yet being mined, but there has
been an increase in the number
of applications for mining con-
tracts,” says Elva Escobar of the
National Autonomous University
of Mexico’s Institute of Marine
Sciences and Limnology. “In 2001,
there were just six deep-sea min-
eral exploration contracts; by the
end of 2017, there will be a total
of 27 projects.”
Some mining proponents have
argued that companies could
offset the inevitable damage their
activities will cause by restoring
coastal ecosystems or creating
new artificial offshore reefs. “But
this is like saving apple orchards
to protect orange groves,” Van
Dover said.
“The argument that you can
compensate for the loss of biolog-
ical diversity in the deep sea with
gains in diversity elsewhere is so
ambiguous as to be scientifically
meaningless,” says Craig Smith,
professor of oceanography at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Deep-sea ecosystems and
species can take decades or
even centuries to recover from a
disturbance, if they recover at all,
Van Dover notes.
Deep-sea scientists and legal
experts from the United States,
Mexico, France, the United King-
dom, the Netherlands, Poland and
Australia co-wrote the peer-
reviewed correspondence with
Van Dover, Pendleton, Escobar
and Smith. «
Read more about the work of faculty member Van Dover: nicholas.duke.edu/
marinelab/people/ faculty/van-dover
A commitment to reducing global emissions of short-lived climate pollutants
(SLCPs) such as methane and black carbon could slow global warming while
boosting public health and agricultural yields, aligning the Paris Climate
Agreement with global sustainable development goals, a new analysis by an
international research panel shows.
Methane and black carbon—or soot—are the second and third most powerful
climate-warming agents after carbon dioxide. They also contribute to air
pollution that harms the health of billions of people worldwide and reduces
agricultural yields.
“Unlike long-lived greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, SLCPs
respond very quickly to mitigation. It’s highly likely that we could cut methane
emissions by 25 percent and black carbon by 75 percent and eliminate high-
warming hydrofluorocarbons altogether in the next 25 years using existing
technologies, if we made a real commitment to doing this,” says Drew T.
Shindell, Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Climate Science at the
Nicholas School.
Acting now to reduce these
emissions would contribute to
long-term goals set under the
2015 Paris Climate Agreement
while concurrently offering
governments substantial
benefits in the short term
for investing in sustainable
development—a set of goals
through 2030 that countries
also agreed to in 2015.
“The urgency in dealing with
SLCPs now rather than later is
that if we wait to address them,
we continue to incur all these
damages—increased public
health burdens and reduced
agricultural yields—along the way,” Shindell says. “If we want to avoid those
costs, and keep millions of people from dying, we need to do this now.
“Adding a pathway goal would help reduce the risks faced by the current
generation and our children, complementing the Paris Agreement’s long-term
target that reduces risks for future generation,” he says.
Shindell and colleagues from 10 other international research institutions
published their peer-reviewed policy forum article in Science (May 5).
The article builds upon previous work by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition
(CCAC), an international consortium of more than 100 countries and non-
state partners working to reduce SLCPs. Shindell chairs the CCAC’s Science
Advisory Panel; his co-authors of the new policy forum are all members or
affiliates of that panel.
In the new article, they point out that in addition to saving human lives and
boosting global food security, curbing SLCPs will significantly slow the pace
of climate change over the next 25 years. This could help reduce biodiversity
losses and slow amplifying climate feedbacks such as snow-and-ice albedo
that are highly sensitive to black carbon.
POLICIES TO CURB SHORT-LIVED CLIMATE POLLUTANTS COULD YIELD
MAJOR HEALTH BENEFITS
WE COULD CUT
METHANE EMISSIONS
BY 25 PERCENT AND
BLACK CARBON BY 75
PERCENT AND ELIMINATE
HIGH-WARMING
HYDROFLUOROCARBONS
ALTOGETHER IN THE
NEXT 25 YEARS USING
EXISTING TECHNOLOGIES
«
THE ARGUMENT THAT YOU CAN COMPENSATE FOR THE LOSS OF BIOLOGICAL DI-VERSITY IN THE DEEP SEA WITH GAINS IN DIVERSITY ELSEWHERE IS SO AMBIGU-OUS AS TO BE SCIENTIFI-CALLY MEANINGLESS
THERE IS TREMENDOUS UNCERTAINTY ABOUT ECOLOGICAL RESPONSES TO DEEP-SEA MINING
IN 2001, THERE WERE JUST SIX DEEP-SEA MINERAL EXPLORATION CONTRACTS; BY THE END OF 2017, THERE WILL BE A TOTAL OF 27 PROJECTS
1
2
3
DUKENVIRONMENT 18
My research and professional service have focused mainly on Asia
since my PhD fieldwork in the mid-1980s. I first worked in Thailand
in 1990, as a member of a USAID-funded Thai-U.S. scientific team
that evaluated the country’s biodiversity conservation needs. We
started with meetings in Bangkok, at the time a gray city choked
by smog and traffic. A short cross-town taxi ride could take half
the morning and leave one’s throat scratchy and eyes stinging.
We then toured various locations around the country, including
coastal areas where intensive shrimp farming was just taking off
and felling large swaths of the country’s mangrove forests. Cheap
farmed shrimp was a boon for consumers, but it came at a high
environmental price.
I’ve been back to Thailand many times since, including this
summer, when I again split my time between Bangkok and the
field. Although some things haven’t changed—Bangkok traffic can
still be awful—much has, including some environmental trends.
At the window of my hotel room in Nonthaburi, I was struck that
I could easily see the Bangkok skyline, which would have been
obscured by haze 30 years ago. Bangkok’s air is clearer today,
thanks to cleaner fuels, more fuel-efficient vehicles and expanded
public transportation.
Environmental progress also is evident in rural Thailand. At
Ranong Biosphere Reserve on the Andaman Coast, I saw the
impressive rehabilitation of mangroves on sites that had been
cleared for alluvial tin mining, which entails completely removing
the trees and dredging the soil for ore. It’s hard to imagine a more
disruptive land use, but those sites are now green again.
I came back from the trip with renewed optimism that we
humans can successfully address the environmental messes
we’ve made. Thailand’s progress didn’t just happen. It resulted
from scientific and technical knowledge being applied in response
to public pressure, with government agencies introducing new
policies and programs and the private sector acting on the new,
more sustainable business opportunities they created.
dean’sUPDATE
BY JEFFREY VINCENT S T A N B A C K D E A N
DEAN’S UPDATE
Returning from Thailand with Renewed Optimism for the Environment
ISTOCK PHOTO OF BANGKOK SKYLINE
It happened because leaders in multiple
sectors, including local communities, took
action.
The role of leadership relates to
another reason I’m optimistic about
environmental prospects: an increasing
number of young people are interested in
environmental careers. Last year, we put
forth extra effort to learn more about the
market for our Master of Environmental
Management program. This is our largest
educational program, and the only one
that draws instructors from across all
three of our faculty divisions.
We learned many things. Nationwide
in the United States, the number
of undergraduates majoring in
environmental studies or natural resource
fields has increased by 10-15 percent
annually in recent years, and the number
of students pursuing master’s degrees in
these areas has grown at nearly double-
digit annual rates. And for good reason:
the U.S. Department of Labor projects
robust job growth for environmental and
natural resource professionals over the
next decade.
We also learned that we are competing
for professional master’s students
with many, many more universities and
colleges than when we were formed in the
1990s. I’m pleased to report that we are
competing very successfully. This fall, we
welcomed our largest-ever entering MEM
class, nearly 200 students.
We owe this recruitment success to
several factors. None was more important
than the long hours and dedication of
the large team of staff, faculty, alumni,
and students who participated directly or
indirectly in the recruitment effort.
In addition, we worked hard to make a
compelling case that a Nicholas School
education is worth it. We highlighted
alumni accomplishments, which offer
proof that our MEM and MF programs put
students on a path to careers that are
rewarding and make a difference.
Thanks to the generosity of
contributors to our Annual Fund and our
new $25 million Forging Future Leaders
aid initiative, we tripled the amount of
financial aid we offered across our merit-
based and need-based programs.
This put our program within reach of
more applicants, and it enabled to us
to recruit a class that is more talented
and diverse than usual: the average GRE
scores of the entering class exceed those
of last year’s entering class for all parts
of the test (verbal, quantitative, writing);
first-generation college students account
for more than a tenth of the class; and
the percentage of underrepresented
minorities in our student body will exceed
10 percent next year. The infusion of
resources into our financial aid program
had an immediate, positive impact, and it
demonstrates why financial aid is my top
fund-raising priority.
These students enter with a lot of
promise, and they have high expectations
for the educational experience we will
provide. Those with marine interests will
have their experience enriched in their
second year by courses and field trips
that take advantage of our new research
vessel (see p. 34).
Those intent on careers in the private
sector, which employs more than half of
our graduates, will benefit from our new
Business & Environment concentration,
whose first cohort begins this fall. They
will also benefit from activities stemming
from our recent invitation to be the
first environmental school to join the
United Nations program on Principles for
Responsible Management Education.
Those with international interests
will have opportunities to interact
with counterparts in Duke Kunshan
University’s International Master of
Environmental Policy program, which also
has its first cohort beginning this fall and
is a joint initiative involving us, DKU, and
the Sanford School of Public Policy.
This year is going to be unlike any
previous one at the Nicholas School.
Follow along as our faculty, staff,
students, and alumni investigate and
address environmental problems both
close to home and in distant places
like Thailand. You can stay in touch by
visiting our website, which now has a
“Research” tab and has my schoolwide
Weekly Updates on the news pages; or
by following us on Facebook, Twitter, or
Instagram. You’re an important member
of our community, and we want to stay
connected with you.
“I was struck that I could easily see the Bangkok skyline, which would have been obscured by haze 30 years ago.”
Returning from Thailand with Renewed Optimism for the Environment
DUKENVIRONMENT 20
STUDENT NEWS
P R O V I D E U N F O R G E T TA B L E E X P E R I E N C E S A N D L E A R N I N G T H AT B U I L D S C A R E E R S
SUMMER INTERNSHIPS
BY SERGIO TOVAR
Read on to hear from some of our MEM students about their summer internships:
DUKENVIRONMENT 20
Building experience and a professional network through an internship can make or break students’ ability to land the job they want after graduation.
That’s why helping Master of Environmental Management and Master of Forestry students find summer opportunities after their first year at the Nicholas School of the Environment is a top priority for the Career & Professional Development Center.
Although internships are not required as part of the MEM/MF program, seeking one of these opportunities is almost an expectation.
“Most, if not all, students will participate because we see extremely high value in being able to do one of a number of things, including exploring a field or sector they’re not as familiar with to really understand if this is a good fit for their interests,” says Deb Wojcik, director of Career and Professional Programming and Counseling.
During MEM students’ first year, the center helps them with job description analysis to figure out what kind of jobs they want and what skills they should seek in and outside the classroom.
“They need to be empowered to network, to showcase their skills, to be able to really target where they want to use those skills in their first job,” says
Karen Kirchof, who recently retired after 27 years as assistant dean for the Career & Professional Development Center. “That’s where we spend most of our time.”
The Career Center also sets up info sessions, provides one-on-one coaching to help students prepare for the application process and interviews while also maintaining an online listing of internships and jobs for students to apply.
The Career Center can help students be strategic, so they can find an opportunity that will not only be a top-notch experience but will help them reach their larger goals.
“An internship is an excellent way to fill those gaps and enhance the strengths you already have,” says Wojcik.
The center has a good track record of helping students secure internships. Wojcik says the percentage of second-year students who had an internship this summer was in the high 90s—a figure they see often.
Most environmental careers don’t have a formal recruiting cycle, so students have to take an initiative to land internships.
But the Nicholas School does have some established infrastructure to help students with internships.
The biggest is the Stanback Internship Program, a university-wide initiative
open to returning students looking to work for environmental organizations for a summer. In its 22nd year, the program brought 52 organizations to campus this past spring offering 174 internship opportunities.
The program provides a wide variety of positions with nonprofits large and small for an 11-week learning experience. Students receive a $5,000 payment to help with their expenses.
“It’s been a great program for the Nicholas School,” says Kirchof, adding that 55 of the 114 Stanback Interns this summer were MEM/MF students.
Among other competitive programs, the school has a partnership with EDF Climate Corps for energy efficiency internships, and a new donor-funded program that awards two students $7,000 for World Wildlife Fund internships.
Students also can apply for grants and endowments—both internal and external. This year, the Nicholas School awarded more than $161,000 to support summer internships. Most money for MEMs and MFs is for students going abroad, and a few are for community-based projects or for students seeking to work on Capitol Hill.
Sergio Tovar is the Nicholas School’s social media specialist.
Read on to hear from some of our MEM students about their summer internships:
THE BEST PART ABOUT INTERNING? YOU REALLY GET HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE AND SEE
HOW ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE COMES ABOUT.
“”
ISTOCK PHOTO
DUKENVIRONMENT 22
STUDENT NEWS
DUKENVIRONMENT 22
This summer, I interned with the U.S.
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural
Resources. At risk of sounding cliché,
I must admit it was a dream internship
for someone like me—an unabashed
energy and environmental policy wonk
with a passion for politics. When I began
considering summer internship options,
I set my sights on Capitol Hill, knowing
that a congressional internship would
offer a unique, firsthand look into the
policymaking process. Without any direct
connections to staffers on the relevant
committees, I turned to a tried-and-true
tactic: I sent cold emails. I tracked down
the appropriate contact on the Energy
Committee and, in a matter of weeks, I had
an interview on the books.
My internship in the Senate exceeded
my admittedly high expectations. When
I look back on how my first year at the
Nicholas School prepared me for the
position, I would say all my experiences
taken together helped me hit the ground
running. The Nicholas School provides
students with an interdisciplinary, flexible
set of skills to tackle complex challenges,
regardless of their size or shape.
Policymaking and policy analysis similarly
demand a broad mix of skills—from
creative problem-solving to synthesizing
data to communicating with diverse
audiences. The Nicholas School helps
students hone those exact capabilities.
My experiences this summer highlighted
the importance of taking on challenges
outside your comfort zone as well as the
value of being conversant in a range of
topics—not just your niche. Working with
the committee provided indispensable
insight into the dynamics that underlie
energy and environmental policymaking.
ADAM FISCHER MEM’18, ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTPolicy Intern, U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
The first time that I heard about Counter Culture Coffee (CCC) was in Elizabeth
Shapiro-Garza’s fall 2016 Community-Based Environmental Management
class. Meredith Taylor, the CCC sustainability manager, gave an impressive
presentation about the company’s commitment to achieving measurable
environmental, social and fiscal sustainability in the specialty coffee industry.
With a love for coffee and fascination of CCC’s business model, I was thrilled to
find out that Dr. Shapiro-Garza and Meredith had developed a summer internship.
I then worked with Meredith to develop and test a three-day climate change
adaptation workshop that will be implemented at CCC’s partner coffee
cooperatives. The project was the culmination of two years of work conducted by
previous Nicholas School master’s students.
Skills I gained at the Nicholas School—and practiced in class and in professional
settings—helped prepare me for the work. Two semesters’ worth of community-
based environmental management theory and application helped me develop
a participatory workshop that can be applied throughout all coffee cooperative
levels. A course in social science surveys gave me the necessary expertise
to design a comprehensive, but appropriate, evaluation tool for workshop
participants. Without the academic foundation I gained in areas like sustainable
agriculture and climate change, the workshop would be less effective.
Through this internship, I gained an immense wealth of knowledge about
participatory action research methodologies and learned that Predictive
Analytics Reporting (PAR) frameworks have a meaningful place in business. I
see myself applying what I’ve learned at CCC throughout my career to inspire
businesses to invest in sustainability to make a difference from the ground level.
KATHRYN GAASCH MEM’18,ECOSYSTEMS SCIENCE AND CONSERVATIONClimate Change Workshop Intern, Counter Culture Coffee
S K I L L S I G A I N E D AT T H E N I C H O L A S S C H O O L H E L P E D
P R E P A R E M E F O R W O R K .
“”
I worked on the Rachel Carson Reserve site. My work primarily focused on a
research project involving a long-term analysis of the effects of stabilizing
structures, such as bulkheads, on salt marsh. I also participated in other ongoing
projects, including ones dealing with marine debris and marsh monitoring. I was
able to interact with incredibly knowledgeable people who have helped guide me.
I really came to learn firsthand how science doesn’t go as planned most of the
time. You run into road bumps and you learn from them and move on.
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do an internship in the Beaufort
area. So, in January I called the reserve site and talked with the research
coordinator. He told me about the bulkhead project that he had been
brainstorming, and I got really excited about it. We ended up creating an
internship out of it, and I was fortunate enough to receive the Edna Bailey
Sussman Grant to fund it.
I was hoping to get more applied GIS skills as well as some statistical skills. The
GIS coursework that I’ve taken gave me most of the skills I needed to get through
this project. I also was eager to learn more about the general management
of nature reserves and different topics like marine debris—which I’m really
passionate about—living shorelines, marsh restoration and things like that.
SAMANTHA GODWIN MEM’18, COASTAL ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENTIntern, N.C. Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve
I came to the Nicholas School knowing
I wanted to study protected areas in
Togo and the consequences on local
population. In September of my first year,
I already was talking to my advisor about
the feasibility of such a project and how
I could make it happen as a master’s
project. I contacted the Environmental
Management National Agency in Togo
and shared with them that I wanted
to do an internship on conservation in
Fazao-Malfakassa National Park. After I
submitted a proposal, they approved my
three-month internship at the agency,
where I conducted 150 household surveys
and interviewed the national park
managers.
I applied what I have learned at the
Nicholas School in so many ways in the
field. The social science survey class that
I took with professor Randall Kramer
was the backbone of my field work. I also
found to be true what my teachers said:
what you learn in class sometimes doesn’t
translate literally in the field. I had to
adapt.
Through the internship I not only
learned about the environment but also
the people. I learned you cannot do one
without the other. To be able to encourage
people to conserve, it is very important to
make them at ease, in other words provide
them with basic infrastructures such as
a hospital, clean water, electricity and
more. The issue of conservation in low-
income countries has an interdisciplinary
solution to it. My internship helped me
reinforce one thing, my commitment to
go back home to Togo and strive for the
sustainable development of my people and
the environment.
RAJAH SAPARAPA MEM’18, ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS AND POLICYIntern, Togo’s Agence Nationale de Gestion de l’Environnement
For the summer, I interned at the NCSEA, a nonprofit
focusing on driving the clean energy policy and market
to provide economic opportunities and affordable,
clean energy within North Carolina. I focused on
energy efficiency analysis of low-income
communities—something I didn’t have formal
experience with, so I felt it was a great opportunity
to do it locally.
My first two days were like getting thrown into
the pool: sink or swim. I came in and immediately
was preparing a grant for about $130,000, which
was a new experience for me. I also was able
to participate in a NCSEA working group about
electric vehicles. They had people from Duke
Energy, representatives from the Governor’s Office,
people from North Carolina environmental quality. They were all focusing on how to
change the market, infrastructure and policy to improve electric vehicles within
North Carolina.
The best part about interning? You really get hands-on experience and see how
environmental change comes about. I like the fact that you’re exposed to new things,
because how else are you going to grow?
And taking Dalia Patino-Echeverri’s modeling classes and using Excel to figure out
how to do data analysis in a way that’s efficient definitely helped me out.
LINA KAHN MEM’18, ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTEnergy Efficiency Intern, North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA) A Stanback program internship
Watch a video about Lina’s
internship: youtube.com/watch?v=WD4GtjE8tPQwatch?v=WD
4GtjE8tPQ
Watch a video about Samantha’s internship: nicholas.duke.edu/samgodwin
DUKENVIRONMENT 24
STUDENT NEWS
I found my position through the
Stanback Internship Program. I worked
on environmental justice policy in North
Carolina, spending time between the
NCCN office, the legislature and the
Department of Environmental Quality.
My core coursework as an environmental
economics and policy student included
Environmental Law and Environmental
Politics in my first year. So I was able to
apply a lot of what I’ve learned when doing
advocacy work at my internship.
In addition to what I was able to
bring to my internship, I learned a lot. I
became much more familiar with local
processes when it comes to environmental
permitting and regulatory actions. What I
appreciated most in my internship was the
ability to really own my summer projects
so I could have deliverables to present
to potential employers. I completed an
environmental justice fact sheet for
legislators and contributed to a fact sheet
for a bill to make it more understandable
for the public. My long-term project was
an environmental justice policy toolkit
for North Carolina advocates, which I
had to present in a webinar. I think being
confident in my knowledge of the ins and
outs of public policy will be a major benefit
of my internship and will help me in my
career.
GLORIA G. ALDANA MEM’18,ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS AND POLICYEnvironmental Justice Intern, North Carolina Conservation Network (NCCN)
A recent Nicholas School alum and friend within the forestry program had done
this internship last summer and convinced me that I would be a good candidate.
In my application, I pitched a project that looked at finding revenue sources from
stream and wetland restoration across properties the group owned. I got an
invite for lunch and before I knew it had a start date for early May.
On any given day, I was dealing with topics surrounding forestry, wetland/
stream ecology, geospatial analysis and finance. Some days I was up to my knees
in mud, while others I was up to my nose in papers in an office cubicle. There was
a wide range of diversity in my experience and I think that speaks more generally
to today’s expectations surrounding environmental management. It’s not enough
to be just a specialist. Looking back, I think this was one of the great strengths
of Duke’s program. I was able to showcase many different skills and tools such as
resource economics, forest measurements/silviculture and GIS that I learned as a
graduate student.
I had a professor tell me once that forestry is about 10 percent dealing with
trees and 90 percent dealing with people. This experience absolutely confirmed
that. Even in a field dominated by science, we can’t escape the judgments,
regulations and, ultimately, the values of people we work with. This was
especially true working with other foresters, contractors and stakeholders in
the field. The hardest part was not applying the knowledge and skills learned in
graduate school but building the rapport and good working relationships with
those around you to get the job done right.
JOHN BURROWS MEM’18,FORESTRY AND ECOSYSTEM SCIENCECharles Collins Intern in Conservation Forestry, The Forestland Group
I H A D A P R O F E S S O R T E L L M E O N C E T H AT F O R E S T R Y I S A B O U T 1 0 P E R C E N T D E A L I N G
W I T H T R E E S A N D 9 0 P E R C E N T D E A L I N G W I T H P E O P L E . T H I S
E X P E R I E N C E A B S O L U T E L Y C O N F I R M E D T H AT.
“
”
DUKENVIRONMENT 24
R E A L - W O R L D E X P E R I E N C E
M AS T E R’S P R OJ E C T PA I R S S T U D E N T T E A M
W I T H I R R I G AT I O N D I S T R I C T TO
I N V E S T I G AT E P U M P I N G S TAT I O N F I N A N C E
( BY SERGIO TOVAR )
Cle Elum Lake
Naches River
Middle Fork Ahtanum Creek Ahtanum Creek
Simcoe Creek
Toppenish Creek
Dry Creek Satu s CreekYakima Rive r
Cle Elum
Ellensburg
Naches
YakimaUnion Gap
Wapato
Toppenish
Sunnyside
Prosser
KionaRichland
0
0 10 20 30 40
10 20 30 40
50 KILOMETERS
50 MILES
WASHINGTON
Study area
Location of the Yakima River Basin
science for a changing worldscience for a changing world( M A P ) B Y U S G S O F T H E L O C AT I O N O F T H E YA K I M A R I V E R B A S I N & V I C I N I T Y( B A C K G R O U N D P H O T O ) S TO R M C L E A R I N G O V E R A G R I C U L T U R A L L A N D YA K I M A R I V E R , C E N T R A L WA S H I N G TO N
ISTOCK PHOTO
DUKENVIRONMENT 26
STUDENT NEWS
DUKENVIRONMENT 26
Master’s Projects are a fundamental component of professional students’ education at the Nicholas School. MPs give Master of Environmental Management and Master of Forestry candidates a practical way to showcase what they’ve learned through the program.
Some projects offer students the opportunity to work with real-life clients and stakeholders while getting professional experience and building a network before entering the workforce.
That was the case for 2017 MEM graduates Catherine Bowler, Jennifer Brennan and Samantha Kuzma, who worked with an irrigation district to investigate the best solutions for financing a water pumping plant to offer the area drought relief.
Brennan, now a research associate at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charleston, says this kind of endeavor complemented the education she received at Duke.
“That’s a real strength of the Nicholas School,” she says. “You have the opportunity to receive an interdisciplinary education. It was also nice to have a project that brought together financial analysis as well
as ecologic, hydrologic and other components.”
Martin Doyle, professor of river systems science and policy connected the students to the Roza Irrigation District, located in an affluent agricultural hub in the Yakima Basin of central Washington.
Doyle, who is program chair for the school’s water resource management concentration, discovered the project during a year-long fellowship at the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Natural Resource Investment Center. Kuzma coincidentally spent a summer concurrently at the DOI as she completed a Sussman Fellowship, so she became familiar with the venture.
Doyle thought the project had all the pieces for a good MP and pitched the idea to the group, knowing they had the skills to handle the task.
“The Nicholas School has been building an underground program in environmental finance,” says Doyle, who teaches a water and infrastructure finance class that the trio had taken. “Really, it’s one of the only classes like it in water programs around the United States. They could actually contribute as much as any other consultant or regulatory agency.”
Loss of snowpack in the Cascade Range—where the Yakima Basin is located—has resulted in water shortages that threaten the basin’s $3 billion
agricultural economy. The project assessed the economic and enviromental impacts of the proposed pumping plant, which is intended to provide supplemental flows for the irrigation district during drought.
“There’s a lot at stake,” says Kuzma.It really forced us to consider
different stakeholders that use water. Really putting ourselves in the shoes of agriculture and thinking about their needs—how they use water, how they see water—and also expanding to other stakeholders in the basin like the ecological ones and tribal interests, federal interests.”
The students focused on the hydrology of the basin to understand water supply, looked at revenue of crops to understand water demand, and more. Their analyses also revealed potential benefits of the project to supply water for fish populations and habitat in the basin.
“Part of what makes this project so unique is the ecological benefits associated with the pumping plant,” Bowler says. “In addition to providing water to farmers in Roza during time of drought, that same water could serve ecological purposes in an upstream irrigation district by supplementing instream flows and important tributaries that contain priority species.”
The group developed four finance
S P E C I A L 2 0 1 7
STUDENT AWARDS
THE DEAN’S AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING RESEARCH PAPER FOR 2017
Given annually since 2008 to recognize outstanding research by a current PhD candidate who has a manuscript accepted
or published in a peer-reviewed journal. This year’s winner was acknowledged at the spring graduation ceremony and
received a check for $3,000.
COOPER ROSIN (advisor John Poulsen) PhD’17, “Hunting-induced Defaunation Drives Increased Seed Predation and
Decreased Seedling Establishment of Commercially Important Tree Species in an Afrotropical Forest,” Forest Ecology and
Management, (Rosin and Poulsen, Dec. 2016) doi: 10.1016/j.foreco.2016.10.016.
strategies to pay for the pumping station ranging from traditional bonds to alternative finance options like environmental impact bonds.
They found that a layered capital approach where the irrigation district attempts to attract as much capital from environmental impact investors and other funding sources while financing the rest of the project through a municipal bond could save the district up to 40 percent in project costs.
“There’s a lot of opportunity these days, a lot more momentum behind impact investment and that sort of thing,” Brennan says. “So they’re trying to take advantage of that and leverage those benefits for the district as well as other basin stakeholders.”
Running through the actual numbers on financing a large infrastructure project was new for the group, which Doyle says made the project even more educational.
“Doing analysis with real data is great, but the biggest learning curve you get with a real client is you get to work with questions that occur in the real world, not questions that occur in academia,” he says. “And those are very different questions.”
Doyle adds that working with time scale and data limitations also teaches students an important lesson.
“Generating a perfect, academic answer
would take three to five years, but that’s an irrelevant answer in a project like this, so the answer that can be generated in three to five months actually has the chance to be put to use,” he says.
“In class, you have the perfect data to analyze, but in the real world clearly you don’t—you get whatever snippets of data that may actually exist.”
Doyle says there are also advantages in helping a client navigate through this sort of project.
“Clients don’t necessarily know what they want and part of being a consultant is helping them understand what questions they actually need answered,” he says.
Working on a project that integrated different disciplines also taught the group many other important lessons that they’ll be able to use for the rest of their careers.
“I’ve gained this invaluable project management experience,” says Bowler, who now serves as water policy coordinator for U.S. government relations at The Nature Conservancy. “I think going forward this type of infrastructure project is going to become increasingly necessary as our water resources are challenged, especially out west.”
Kuzma says the experience doing data analysis for the Master’s Project has come in handy at her job as an analyst
for the World Resources Institute in Washington D.C.
“It was a great foundation to build upon,” she adds. “I’m using that every day.”
Kuzma says that she also learned to dig into technical aspects and how to translate complicated ideas to a non-technical audience.
“It was pretty invaluable experience to learn how to talk about detailed hydrology to someone who doesn’t know anything about water,” she says. “That was a really big gain from working on this project.”
Doyle says Roza Irrigation District officials were happy with the results—which were compiled into a 79-page report and were presented at the Spring Master’s Project Symposium in April—and discovered some useful facts that will prove valuable as the project moves forward.
“How much of what we did will show up on the final project is almost irrelevant,” says Doyle. “We were part of keeping the momentum going and affecting the overall thinking of the project. That’s about as cool as it gets for them as students as well as for me as a professor.”
Sergio Tovar is the Nicholas School’s social media specialist.
VIRLIS L. FISCHER AWARD
Goes to the graduating professional degree student with the highest
academic achievement. Given by Bernice Fisher in memory of her husband.
MIKIA LYNN WEIDENBACH of Hawaii; MEM, Ecosystem Science
and Conservation
THOMAS V. LASKA MEMORIAL AWARD
Given by the Earth and Ocean Sciences faculty to the most
outstanding senior major.
JOHN (JACK) MCDERMOTT of Chicago, Ill.; BS, Earth and
Ocean Sciences.
SARA LABOSKEY AWARD
Given in recognition of personal integrity and academic excellence.
DONOVAN LOH of Singapore; BA, Environmental Sciences and Policy
and Biology, with Distinction.
DUKENVIRONMENT 28
ALUMNI PROFILE
DUKE ALUM SPEARHEADS ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AT LOS ANGELES AIRPORTS
BY LISA M. DELLWOPHOTOS BY CASEY BRODLEY
ON THE WINGSUSTAINABILITY
DUKENVIRONMENT 28
DUKE ALUM SPEARHEADS ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AT LOS ANGELES AIRPORTS
BY LISA M. DELLWOPHOTOS BY CASEY BRODLEY
MORE THAN 1,500 FLIGHTS TAKE OFF FROM LAX EVERY DAY
80.9 MILLION ANNUAL PASSENGERS
6,000 VEHICLES ENTER THE AIRPORT
IN AN HOUR
50 MILLION GALLONS OF WATER USED ANNUALLY IN THE NINE
LAX TERMINALS
SUSTAINABILITY
DUKENVIRONMENT 30
like Los Angeles International Airport might seem to be an environmentalist’s worst nightmare, what with jet fuel emissions, noise, traffic, acres of paved, impervious surfaces, and thousands of toilets that flush whether you want them to or not.
But where some people see problems, Erica Blyther T’98 sees opportunities. The environmental science and policy major (and chemistry minor) has built a career addressing the environmental challenges at LAX, working on a vast portfolio of issues from green building and alternative energy use to environmentally preferred purchasing and water use, a critical topic in drought-prone southern California. She also has helped in the comeback of a small, endangered butterfly. (See story below.)
“Airports do have a lot of impacts,” Blyther says. “But a lot of sustainability can be driven by airports as well.”
Blyther is an environmental supervisor in the sustainability section of Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), which encompasses LAX and Van Nuys, a smaller regional airport. Her current focus is at LAX, which is planning a major overhaul in anticipation of hosting the Summer Olympics in 2028. The airport’s last major modernization was done to prepare for the 1984 Olympic Games, but the number of passengers has been on a steady rise, with recent years setting new records.
“More flights will take off in the future. That’s our nature,” says Blyther’s colleague Robert Freeman, an airport environmental manager. “Every additional aircraft emits. Every new passenger uses water.”
In the face of this inevitable growth, how do you green an airport?
Let’s start with transit, as Blyther did in our recent
conversation. LAX is the busiest “origin and destination” airport in the United States, meaning that more passengers begin and/or end their flights there than anywhere else. Getting those passengers to and from the airport involves cars, buses, taxis—emissions and congestion. During peak periods, according to the airport’s sustainability website, 6,000 vehicles enter the airport in an hour. Space is needed for parking and rental car facilities.
Some buses serve LAX, including the affordable FlyAway bus service, but currently, access to LA’s Metro train service is awkward, requiring a shuttle from the nearest terminal, about two miles away. That is due to change with LAX’s Landside Access Modernization Program, a ground transportation update that will feature a relocated centralized car-rental facility, a Metro rail and bus station being built adjacent to the airport, and a people-mover train that will serve these two locations as well as all nine terminals.
On the working side of the airport, an alternative fuel policy is in place, and now 40 percent of the ground service equipment used at LAX is powered by electricity.
Blyther also is involved in the airport’s efforts to control energy and water usage. A recent Los Angeles city ordinance requires disclosure of energy and water use in all existing buildings, information that will be used to set benchmarks for future efficiency efforts.
The amount of water used at the airport is staggering; just think of the water used if each of the 80.9 million annual passengers flushed a toilet once. (Not to mention the number of extra flushes performed by the automatic toilets.) Add to that water used for landscaping and window washing, in food service, and in the airport’s cooling and heating system. According to Freeman, this all adds up to 50 million gallons of water used annually in the nine LAX terminals.
Blyther, who is involved in gathering water- and energy-use information to fulfill the city’s mandate, says that the
More than 1,500 flights take off from LAX every day. Except in the summer, when the number “rises” by about 140,000 because of some tiny fliers.
A big metropolitan airport
tinyfliers@
LAX
ALUMNI PROFILE
challenge is that many airport buildings are leased by contractors and tenants. “Some buildings have no meters and some have multiple meters.” Depending on the terms of the lease—and each of them is written differently—some tenants pay their own water and energy bills, and some do not. “We may not be entitled to the data, depending on the lease,” she says.
Freeman explains that greening an airport is different from greening a large corporate campus for this reason. LAWA is the host, and “the airlines bring in the planes and the companies that support them. We act as facilitators.”
That said, LAWA has taken steps to reduce water usage in its own operations, particularly in response to the mayor’s 2014 Emergency Drought Response directive. Turf has been removed and replaced with water-reducing landscaping or simply gravel. Reclaimed water is being used in irrigation, and a new advanced water treatment plant will add more reclaimed water to the system by 2020. During upcoming renovations and construction, ultra-low-flow toilets will be mandated, and those problematic auto-flushing toilets may be reconsidered.
On the energy front, Blyther says that her department has created a map showing where solar panels would work at the airport. “It’s complicated because of the light that reflects off of them.” The map shows where panels can be located without creating a problem for the pilots of incoming and outgoing flights.
But in the end, the decision to install solar has to come from the individual tenants—the airlines and concessionaires who operate at the airport. To some extent, the upcoming modernization effort may slow this effort down, because some buildings may be reconfigured. “For instance, the central terminal area will probably change a lot,” she says. The German airline Lufthansa is looking into a solar installation on one of its facilities that will be unchanged. Another possibility is putting solar panels on top of the people-mover train stations and on the large central rental car facility. But because concessionaires will operate these facilities, the decision is theirs and not LAWA’s. And it has to make business sense for them.
Blyther says that the leadership that is driving environmental efforts at the airport is coming from state and city leaders, not the federal government. The airport is a department of the city of Los Angeles, whose mayor, Eric Garcetti, has spearheaded a number of city initiatives and ordinances, including a green building standard that aims for new construction at city properties to achieve, at minimum, LEED Silver status.
The unique requirements of airport construction mean that LEED status can’t
Every summer, dune
lands owned by the airport
are host to tens of thou-
sands of the tiny, endan-
gered El Segundo Blue
butterfly, which flutters
around fresh plantings of
coastal buckwheat, a plant
critical for its survival.
In the first half of the
twentieth century, devel-
opment in coastal South-
ern California practically
drove the species extinct.
In 1976, the El Segundo
Blue was the first insect
listed as a Federal Endan-
gered Species. One of the
last known populations
was located in a small
dune area just beyond the
runways of LAX.
Ironically, the arrival of
the Jet Age was critical
to its survival. A tract of
homes built on the dunes
between the airport and
the Pacific Ocean became
uninhabitable, due to the
noise of the jets. Uninhab-
itable for humans, that is.
The butterflies don’t seem
to mind the noise and traf-
fic—they just need access
to that coastal buckwheat.
Its entire life cycle
involves this plant. The
adults nectar on it and lay
eggs on its flowerheads.
The larvae feed on the
flowerheads and seeds,
and pupate at the base of
the plant.
Erica Blyther is in-
volved in the preserve that
the airport has created,
now more than 300 acres
that hosts a resurgent
population of the butterfly
and other wildlife.
Parts of the preserve
that are distant from air-
port operations are open
to the public, and volun-
teers help maintain it by
removing invasive plants
and planting more coastal
buckwheat to keep the
butterflies happy.
— Lisa M. Dellwo
Read more about them in National
Geographic article that quotes Blyther: news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160421-
butterflies-endangered-species-animals/
DUKENVIRONMENT 32
always be achieved there. For instance, says Blyther, the Federal Aviation Administration has strict requirements about the load-bearing capacity of runways, meaning that certain kinds of concrete and/or recycled asphalt can’t be used there. But environmentally friendlier mixes can be used on auxiliary surfaces like taxiways.
Blyther recently brought the LAWA Sustainable Design and Construction Policy incorporating LEED Silver to the Board of Airport Commissioners.
Blyther often reaches out to colleagues at other airports for information on what has worked elsewhere. Robert Freeman says that a collaborative spirit is one of her key skills: “The airport is just different from other places in so many ways. Erica has a handle on this. She finds out what works at other places to see if there is a solution for the airport.”
An upcoming project for Blyther will be working to adopt the City of Los Angeles’s environmentally preferred purchasing policy at LAWA.
Blyther grew up in L.A. in a family that valued education and science. “I was raised with Jacques Cousteau, and my Christmas presents were chemistry sets and microscopes,” she says. She went to Westchester High School, in the shadow of LAX. She chose Duke for her undergraduate degree after also considering environmental studies programs at UCLA and UC-Berkeley. Her father graduated from North Carolina Central University in Durham, and she had family in the area.
“The coursework at Duke was great and prepared me in core science and the ways that environmental policy is made.”
She remembers in particular studying environmental policy with Marie Lynn Miranda and geology with Peter Malin, which helped in the HazMat phase of her career.
She returned to Los Angeles after graduating in 1998 and found work in the city’s Environmental Affairs Department, then started at LAWA in the Noise Management Bureau in 1999. Her early career at the airport focused primarily regulatory compliance, involving hazardous materials, waste, and stormwater management.
In 2005, she received a Master of Science from California State University Northridge in Environmental and Occupational Health, studying for her degree while working fulltime.
A sojourn at the LA Department of Water and Power from 2007 to 2013 proved challenging and rewarding, both personally and professionally. She spent four sweltering summers and five freezing winters in the Owens Valley, 220 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The aqueduct that supplies half of LA’s water originates there. Blyther handled difficult assignments, many of them involving the air and water quality issues that resulted from the 1913 aqueduct and the subsequent drying out of Owens Lake. It is where she first became a supervisor and where she experienced a horrific car accident while driving to work. She broke bones in her neck and had to have a spinal fusion and a titanium plate installed.
Blyther has practiced the Afro-Brazilian martial art of Capoeira since 2003, and her doctors said that Capoeira made her neck strong and helped
ALUMNI PROFILE
After 27 years building and
leading the career services
department at the Nicholas
School, I stepped down as
assistant dean for career and
professional development on
Sept. 1.
When considering a career
change and asking myself
what’s next, I have had to put
into practice what I have taught
and shared with many students,
alums, and friends as they sought
their own professional transitions.
I admit, I thought, “How hard
can this be? I am the career
professional here.” But it is
harder than you think to separate
your emotional connection
to your work and focus on
professional change.
As I grappled with my own
transition over the last 18
months, a five-step plan of
action helped me to focus, and
perhaps it will be useful to others
considering a career change.
My “what’s next?” plan has
begun unfolding. I have accepted
a 10-month part-time transition
position at the Nicholas school,
assisting with special recruiting
and admissions and career
services projects, as well as
cross-training new Student
Services staff.
Several years ago, an alum
was reentering the workforce,
and when I asked what she was
seeking, she said “I want to do
what makes my heart sing.”
Great advice for us all!
CAREER MATTERS
prevent a spinal cord injury. “I’m truly blessed to retain an incredible range of motion and enjoy all my athletic activities,” she says.
She is now a Capoeira professor, and she and her school have performed at LAX terminals for the past three years as part of the LAX Holiday Entertainment Program to help alleviate the stress of holiday travel for passengers.
As her work has shifted from the regulatory and technical to the sustainability end of things, Blyther foresees endless opportunities for projects at the airport. “There are so many things to deal with and so many opportunities here,” she says.
One subject that interests her is the value of sustainability as a way of doing business. Leaders come and go who value or don’t value environmental issues, but, she says, we need a culture change in which sustainability is seen as an intrinsic value, a way of doing business that makes business sense.
“That’s a work in progress,” she says.
Lisa M. Dellwo is a freelance writer specializing in environment and nature, based in Down East Maine.
TIMES OF CHANGEBY KAREN KIRCHOF
Karen Kirchof shares a framework for career transition planning that guided her as she planned her own transition.
ONE Self-reflection. Why change?
What outcomes are you seeking? What is your timeline?
TWO Write and refine your value proposition.
Separate your professional and emotional connection to work; focus on professional connection. A value proposition details your relevancy,
specific quantifiable benefits and unique differentiation you bring to your current
employer or a future employer.
THREE Define your non-negotiables and stick to
them! This a specific and small list.
FOUR Enlist support from trusted colleagues
and friends and use them for advice and motivation to stay the course.
FIVE Network. Informational interviews with
targeted employers or professionals in desired professional roles, or internally if your desire is to move within your current organization. The goal is to broaden your change possibilities.
Read more about Erica’s latest project:
lawa.org/news Contentbs.
aspx?ID=2406.
DUKENVIRONMENT 34
GIVING
DUKENVIRONMENT 34
Some lucky people get to design their “dream home.” Faculty at the Duke University Marine Laboratory are getting to design their “dream research vessel.”
Thanks to a $11 million gift from the Grainger Family Descendants Fund, the Marine Lab will have a state-of-the-art oceangoing research vessel, and when it hits the water in 2019, it will expand Duke’s marine science research and teaching capabilities significantly in fields such as marine ecology and conservation, biological oceanography and renewable ocean energy development.
The new, 65-foot catamaran will enable Marine Lab faculty and students to travel several hundred nautical miles offshore (from Beaufort, N.C., to the Bahamas, for instance) and to stay at sea for several days—something they have not been able to do since 2014, when the 50-foot R/V Susan Hudson was retired after decades of service.
The Marine Lab’s primary research vessel right now, the 30-foot R/V Richard Barber, is great for daylong research trips near the shore, but is not large enough to support overnight operations. As a result, Duke faculty members have been unable to regularly take students offshore or conduct deepwater oceanographic research on the lab’s own vessel for several years.
“This new vessel, which will be more than twice the size of our current boat, will give us the ability to conduct research further offshore and to stay out for days at a time. That will significantly expand our reach along the Atlantic seaboard where we can work safely and efficiently,” says Andy Read, the Marine Lab’s director and Stephen A. Toth Professor of Marine Biology.
“This is especially important for our teaching mission, because we’ll be able to expose our undergraduate and graduate students to a broader variety of marine environments than we currently can.”
NOT YOUR TYPICAL CLASSROOMStudents who set sail on the new vessel will have a living and learning experience unlike any other at Duke. They will bunk along with teachers and crew in small, shared cabins, with enough space to sleep and store a few clothes, but not much
TO GET ITS “DREAM” OCEAN RESEARCH AND TEACHING VESSEL
DUKE MARINE LAB
“This is especially important for our teaching mission, because we’ll be able to
expose our undergraduate and graduate students to a broader variety of marine
environments than we currently can.”
by Laura Ertel
*The new research vessel will look similar to the one pictured.
else. After rolling out of their bunks, students can grab a bite and some coffee in the full galley kitchen, and then head out on deck for the day’s activities.
On most research vessels, work is conducted 24/7, so someone always is up. Life at sea revolves around food—and good coffee—and mealtimes mark the passage of time, provide opportunities for informal learning and forge memories and bonds that will last a lifetime.
Nicholas School professional environmental master’s and PhD students and Duke undergrads will have a variety of opportunities to study or conduct research on the ship. A new “Semester at Sea,” based at the Marine Lab’s Beaufort campus, will include an open ocean research voyage where undergraduates will hone their oceanographic research skills and learn about marine policy and marine biology.
Students in Oceanography, Biology of Marine Mammals, Marine Ecology, Bioacoustics and a variety of other classes will spend time on the vessel to gain field experience.
DESIGNING TO MEET CURRENT AND FUTURE NEEDSA well-maintained ship’s lifespan is about 30 years, so the Duke Marine Lab faculty is thinking carefully about current needs as well as how marine science research capabilities may evolve in the future.
They favor a catamaran design, with a main deck and bridge above, because of its speed and stability. The vessel likely will have propulsive jets rather than propellers, which will allow it to navigate some of North Carolina’s shallow inlets. Read and his colleagues have toured similar research vessels in Texas and California, and are working with a naval
architect to custom-design Duke’s ship.“We’re going through details large and
small, thinking about living quarters, about scientific equipment we want to be able to deploy, what capabilities are we going to need. This is an oceangoing classroom, so we know we want sufficient living space to take a dozen students at a time out to sea for several days,” says Read, who can’t wait to take students in his Marine Mammals course out to observe the sperm whales that live 50 nautical miles off the North Carolina coast.
Zackary Johnson, the Arthur P. Kaupe Associate Professor of Molecular Biology in Marine Science, is planning a weeklong trip to the Bahamas with his Biological Oceanography class to study the dynamics of the Gulf Stream and the ecology of plankton in the North Atlantic.
“In addition to the sleeping quarters and galley, we’ll need wet and dry labs and oceanographic equipment. We know we want to fly Dave Johnston’s drones off the boat; launch remotely operated underwater vehicles for Cindy Van Dover’s deep-sea studies; and deploy Doug Nowacek’s oceanographic gliders, for example. So, this is all very exciting to plan and consider the possibilities,” Read says.
“The tricky part is to build in enough flexibility so that, in the future, we can take advantage of things that we can’t even imagine now. I mean, 20 years ago, if you told people you were going to fly drones off an oceanographic research vessel, they would’ve said you were crazy—and here we are!”
Once the ship’s specs are finalized, Duke will contract with a shipyard. The actual building process will take about a
year. When complete, it will be the only research vessel of its size and capabilities in North Carolina and one of a small number in the Mid-Atlantic.
The boat will be available for charter by researchers from other academic institutions and organizations for research and teaching, providing a valuable resource to UNC Systems and other regional partners.
The gift from the Grainger Family Descendants provides $5 million to build the new vessel and an additional $6 million to create an endowment to support operating costs, including a full-time captain and mate/technician proficient at both sailing and marine research. There also will be a part-time mate for longer trips.
The operating endowment also will support science outreach programs for local K-12 teachers, students and community members, enabling the Marine Lab to take local groups and students out on day trips.
“We are extraordinarily thankful for this visionary gift because it allows us to fulfill the Duke Marine Lab’s potential as one of the world’s best research and teaching centers for marine science and conservation,” says Jeff Vincent, Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School.
“Having a world-class oceangoing research vessel is essential our ability to address the many issues that affect our marine ecosystems and the people who rely on them. This gift gives us the flexibility to design and operate exactly what we need. As a result, it will truly be our ‘dream boat.’”
Laura Ertel is a freelance writer living in Durham, NC, and is a longtime contributor to Dukenvironment magazine.
“This new vessel, which will be more than twice the size of our current boat, will give us the ability to conduct research further offshore and to stay out for days at a time. That will significantly expand our reach along the Atlantic seaboard where we can work safely and efficiently."
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