Environmental SciencesEnvironmental Sciences
From protecting water quality at home to cleaning industrial contaminants to learning lessons from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, University of South Carolina researchers are tackling a broad range of environmental issues.
Preserving, restoring our waters
Madilyn Fletcher, director of the School of the Environment in the College of Arts & Sciences,
will oversee a $2-million state appropriation for research to protect the Congaree River, which runs
through Innovista. Fletcher previously directed the University's Baruch Institute for Marine and
Coastal Sciences, focusing on the state’s coastal marshes and estuaries. The University is
building a 9,500-square-foot education and training center for Baruch’s field location using
a $2.9-million National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency grant.
Savannah River research
Faculty member Lee Newman holds a dual appointment from South Carolina’s Department of Environmental
Sciences in the Arnold School of Public Health and the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology
Lab. Her research, which includes collaborative projects with the Army, Navy, NASA, and the universities
of Washington, Florida, and Missouri, focuses on phytotechnologies.
She has successfully used plants to degrade contaminants in groundwater at the former Savannah River nuclear weapons site, and is exploring genetic manipulation of plants to improve their ability to degrade industrial solvents and remediate explosives. The University’s Earth Sciences and Resources Institute also has received $720,000 to work with the U.S. Department of Energy to improve predictions about the movement of groundwater contaminants at Savannah River.
Katrina and ERIC
Within days of the Hurricane Katrina devastation, the University awarded nearly $400,000 for 18 faculty
research projects on the societal and environmental impact of the storm. Additionally, the National Science
Foundation has funded $100,000 to engineering researchers to study levee failures in New Orleans. A team of
researchers from geography, history, and psychology will use $719,000 from the NSF to study the Gulf Coast’s recovery.
The University supports cross-discipline support through the Environmental Research Initiatives Committee (ERIC), which examines the potential for integrated, large-scale environmental research proposals.
Environmental Sciences Links
Environmental Health Sciences research
Including industrial hygiene, hazardous materials, environmental quality, coastal studies
School of the Environment
Interdisciplinary academic and research unit within the College of Arts & Sciences
Baruch Institute
Research on environmental processes, tidal, estuarine and coastal ocean environments
Earth Sciences and Resource Institute
Integrating geology, hydrology, and geochemistry with advanced computer applications
Hurricane Katrina CRISIS
University-sponsored research and Coastal Resiliency Information Systems Initiative for the Southeast
