Doctoral Dissertation Research: Nutrient Pollution, Riverine Mud Investment, and Environmental Governance

在上个世纪，将氮和磷等营养物质纳入农业耕作实践中，使农业生产的规模和效率都得到了显著提高。然而，另一个后果是，当地生态系统承受的压力增加，需要吸收从农田中过量沥滤出来的这种营养物质。这种现象被称为营养物污染，已被发现显著威胁关键淡水供应的健康，因为过量的营养物可鼓励有害藻类大量繁殖，从而向人类和非人类群体释放有害毒素。因此，最近有科学和法律的投资在位于工业农田周边的河流泥浆中，这些泥浆以关键的方式介导了营养物质从农田到水道的转移，尽管人们对这种方式知之甚少。该项目支持对人类学研究生进行经验、科学数据收集和分析方法的培训，调查河流淤泥的科学和法律的框架如何创造一种新的工具来应对营养物污染问题，以及这种工具对地方和国家健康和治理的后果。档案研究，并建立一个特定区域的河流泥的社会和环境意义的历史数据库，调查人员将审查由国家资助的科学家和政策制定者进行的实际，科学和官僚工作，将河流泥转化为环境治理的宝贵资源。在主要淡水供应附近的农田、研究营养物污染的实验室和制定营养物污染政策的办公室的科学现场，遵循这种做法，本研究旨在更广泛地澄清环境治理实践的技术复杂性。此外，通过关注河流淤泥的特定物质及其与营养盐污染治理实践问题的关系，这项研究的目的是更好地了解具体的物质和历史问题如何影响当代国家的努力，使其以环境可持续和经济可行的方式进行管理。这项奖项反映了国家科学基金会的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响评审标准。

The incorporation of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous into agricultural fertilizing practices over the last century has enabled a dramatic increase in both the scale and efficiency of agricultural production. An additional consequence, however, has been an increase in the pressure placed upon local ecosystems to absorb the excess leaching of such nutrients from agricultural fields. This phenomenon, referred to as nutrient pollution, has notably been found to significantly threaten the health of critical freshwater supplies as excess nutrients can encourage the growth of harmful algae blooms which release harmful toxins to both human and nonhuman populations. As a result, there has been recent scientific and legal investment in riverine mud located on the periphery of industrial farmlands, which mediate the transference of nutrients from fields to waterways in critical, albeit little understood ways. This project, which supports the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, investigates how scientific and legal framings of riverine mud create a new tool for confronting the problem of nutrient pollution and the consequences of such a tool for local and national health and governance.Through participant observation, interviews, focus groups, ethnographic film elicitation, archival research, and the creation of a regional-specific historical database of the social and environmental significance of riverine mud, the investigators will examine the practical, scientific, and bureaucratic work carried out by state-funded scientists and policy makers to transform riverine mud into a valuable resource for environmental governance. Following such practices across scientific field sites in farmlands near major freshwater supplies, laboratories where nutrient pollution is studied, and offices where nutrient pollution policy is created, this research aims to clarify the technical complexities of environmental governance practices more broadly. Additionally, by focusing on the specific material of riverine mud and its relation to the problem of the nutrient pollution governance practices, this research aims to better understand how specific material and historical concerns inflect contemporary state efforts to govern in ways which are both environmentally sustainable and economically viable.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.