2008 An Environmental Crossroads

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Global warming clouds our future. Pollution degrades our air, soil and water. Environmental toxins compromise the health of our children. Misuse threatens the sustainability of our forests, fisheries, wetlands and coasts, and the health of species that live there.

But there is reason for hope.

Through sound science and policy research, we're finding answers to these problems. Airborne lead and acid rain have been dramatically reduced. Industrial water pollution has decreased. Habitats are being preserved.

Faculty members from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University are part of the effort to help find these answers and establish new environmental practices and policies to safeguard our natural resources for generations to come.

To contact our experts or learn more about what we're doing in states across the nation, click on the state you're interested in.

Water Quality
Nutrient- and toxin-laden runoff threatens the health of many streams and rivers statewide.

David Hinton studies the causes and effects of environmental contaminants on ecosystem health, particularly on fish. He has bred a strain of guppy-like Medaka fish that are highly sensitive to contaminants and can be used as sentinels to detect water quality problems in urban drinking water.
tel: (919) 613-8038: e: dhinton@duke.edu

Research focus: Mechanistic and integrative understanding of the manner in which environmental contaminants exert their effects. Pathobiology and toxiopathology of persistent environmental contaminants in fishes. Deciphering deleterious effects and establishing causal linkages.

Some of Hinton’s specially bred Medaka sentinel fish have been sent to Orange County, Calif., where they are being use to evaluate the safety of its drinking water. Any hints of lesions on or in their tiny bodies may hint of unseen toxic agents.

Lincoln Pratson studies the role of sediment transport and erosion on lakebeds and the sea floor.
tel:(919) 681-8077: e:lincoln.pratson@duke.edu

Research focus: Sediment failure, erosion, transport and deposition. Pratson’s field research includes studies of the dynamics of current- and gravity-driven sediment transport, submarine canyon formation and seafloor and lakebed evolution.

Joseph Ramus studies the impact of nitrogen pollution from animal and human waste on estuarine and coastal marine health.
tel:(252) 504-7617 : e: jramus@duke.edu

Research focus: Algal ecological physiology, especially photosynthesis; estuarine and coastal ocean productivity; wastewater management; marine ecology.

As more land in coastal regions is cleared for suburbia or converted into intensive agricultural operations,water quality is suffering downriver, in environmentally sensitive estuaries and coastal waters, Ramus says. With "more and more land use change, more water comes off the watershed and it comes off faster," Ramus says. “One major consequence of this is that excess nitrogen runoff from automobile emissions, animal wastes and fertilizers enters the water, where it nurtures algae growth that robs the water of oxygen and promotes fish kills.”

Kenneth Reckhow is director of the Center for the Analysis and Prediction of River Basin Environmental Systems.
tel:(919) 613-8026: e: reckhow@duke.edu

Research focus: Reckhow is a policy expert on water quality assessment and management, risk assessment, water quality modeling and decision analysis.

Recent work by Reckhow and his research team has focused on the assessment of nonpoint source pollution on surface water quality and the development of "Total Maximum Daily Loads" (TMDLs). Reckhow was recently chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee assessing the scientific basis of the EPA TMDL program.