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
Utah residents enjoy relatively clean water: Only four percent of the state’s surface waters are impaired, according to state and EPA reports. One area of concern, however, is water quality in lakes, ponds and reservoirs. Low dissolved oxygen and organic enrichment are the most common problems affecting these bodies of water: 85 percent of all impaired lakes, ponds and reservoirs in the Beehive State suffer from them.

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 recently completed a mapping of lakebed erosion, sedimentation and topographical changes in Lake Powell. His study may shed new light on the upriver causes of the lakebed disruptions, and their possible consequences for communities downriver that draw drinking or irrigation water from the Colorado River.
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 both current- and gravity-driven sediment transport, submarine canyon formation and seafloor and lakebed evolution.

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.