CNH-L: Stormwater Management Across Urban Ecosystems: Diagnostic Tools and Community Engagement for Ecological Restoration, Equitable Community Development and Revitalization

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AbstractExcess nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment associated with urbanization is a threat to water quality and environmental health in many locations. This project will investigate how urban watersheds can be improved through better stormwater management. The research will examine two watersheds in Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland that possess different degrees of urban decay and revitalization. It will compare the effectiveness of different interventions, both technical and social, at reducing unhealthy processes and feedbacks between the environment and people. Specific research objectives and activities are to: (1) document neighborhood issues and needs in informing stormwater best-management practices; (2) evaluate stormwater volume and quality, flooding risk, trash accumulation, and mosquito production within the watersheds; (3) develop a tool that uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to guide watershed management; and 4) enhance community awareness and positive behaviors to improve water quality and protect urban green space. This project will develop and evaluate practices that foster sustainable water resources and help educate participants, from teachers to students to all residents, many of whom are racial and ethnic minorities and socially, economically, and educationally disadvantaged, on processes and strategies involved in addressing water sustainability. It will train interdisciplinary graduate and undergraduate students in interactive social, biological, and ecosystem sciences as they relate to water resources sustainability, neighborhood planning, mosquito ecology, and environmental justice. This project addresses key biophysical and social drivers of nutrient pollution in watersheds, and the associated factors related to the socio-ecological matrix of the built environment, urban decay and revitalization, and resident attitudes and behaviors. Coupled stormwater-human dynamics have the potential to become a signature model for developing new socio-ecological theory about urban ecosystems, improving quality of life and environmental justice, and initiating sustained community-oriented management of natural systems. This project integrates the required expertise and theory from social science, city planning, hydrological science, ecology, adult and youth education, and environmental justice to explicitly characterize stormwater-human systems. This research combines socio-demographic measures of human behavior and stormwater quantity and quality to dynamically model pollution hot spots, assess the efficacy of interventions, and explicitly quantify the feedback of these variables. It represents an advance in the knowledge of coupled pollution-human dynamics in an urban context and provide valuable information for urban planning, remediation, and public health.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.