NEWS
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Rhett Jackson speaks to how we can improve water quality in urban streams
In a recent feature in Georgia Magazine, IRIS affiliate Rhett Jackson spoke to how home lawns impact water quality in urban streams and beyond, and provided practical tips for what homeowners can do about it. As he said in the article, “People can reduce their water quality and carbon footprint…
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Researcher feature: Charles Van Rees
IRIS researcher Charles Van Rees was recently featured in an article by the Odum School of Ecology. In the article, he speaks specifically to the power of interdisciplinary research: “We sit there and try to communicate across huge differences in expertise, professional culture and vocabulary, and then we write cool…
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Developing Flood Solutions Along the Mississippi and Missouri River Basins
During a time of extreme rainfall patterns, river communities face unprecedented challenges. In a recent NPR article, writers Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco and Eva Tesfaye covered the flooding along the Mississippi River Basin, where IRIS researchers are looking for solutions to frequent and severe flooding caused by intensified rainfall. Families within these…
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Tybee Island Natural Infrastructure Plan
Tybee Island combines human ingenuity with natural resilience in combatting sea level rise By Sarah Buckleitner We don’t usually associate sunshine and blue skies with the sort of flooding that can shut down roads and creep into homes. But as sea level rise creeps further inland, coastal communities face a…
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Thesis Defense: Modeling Oyster Reef Resilience with Rebecca Stanley
Join us for a IRIS graduate student’s thesis defense! Rebecca Stanley, MS candidate in Civil & Environmental Engineering with Emphasis in Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering, University of Georgia will defend her thesis: “Modeling Oyster Reef Resilience as a Form of Nature-Based Infrastructure in Response to Local Hydrodynamic Conditions” The application of…
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Rainwater Harvesting with Cisterns
Whether it’s at the turn of a faucet or a bucket from the well, every person in the world relies on having clean water. In Ceará, Brazil, where water scarcity is an issue, communities rely on collected rainfall in cisterns to ensure that they have access to water through the…
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IRIS Affiliate Jenna Jambeck awarded MacArthur Grant
Congratulations to Dr. Jenna Jambeck, a Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering, for her being named a 2022 MacArthur Fellow! Jambeck was given this honor for her work investigating the scale of plastic pollution and galvanizing efforts to address plastic waste. Read the full story here.
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Sizing up marshes for flood prevention
Just how big do coastal marshes need to be to do their job as protectors of the coastline? IRIS researchers from the University of Georgia, Viyaktha Hithaishi Hewageegana, Matt Bilskie, Brock Woodson, and Brian Bledsoe investigated the matter by running simulations that tested how changes in marsh geometry impacted the…
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Special Section on LTER and Climate Change
Story by Sean Turner Forest and freshwater ecosystems are not just important for their natural beauty. They also provide our communities with drinking water, power, transportation, and provide habitat for other species. And because of their importance as infrastructure, it is imperative that we know how climate change has affected…
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Engineering coastal structures to centrally embrace biodiversity
Story by Sean Turner Image from Pexels.com Protecting ecosystems or protecting our communities is not an “either-or” scenario. Both are possible using natural infrastructure in place of and alongside gray infrastructure. Natural infrastructure is capable of protecting our coastal communities from floods as well as increasing biodiversity on our shorelines. Network…
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IRIS in the News: Leaky infrastructure driving antibiotic resistant pathogens in local waters
How are antibiotic resistant microbes and septic tanks related? IRIS affiliate Krista Capps and her collaborators were recently featured by the UGA College of Public Health for their research on the link between microbial resistance and leaky septic tanks: their research pointed to the fact that old infrastructure could be…
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IRIS Affiliate Clark Alexander voted 2022-23 president-elect of the Southern Association of Marine Laboratories
Congratulations to IRIS affiliate Dr. Clark Alexander, the director of the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, for being voted president-elect of the Souther Association of Marine Laboratories. He’ll serve his term during 2023-2024. Read the full story here!
