Science in the Triangle

Last week I wrote about the impacts of swine operations on our water quality. It’s one example of how land use patterns can disrupt the environment and affect public health. That subject came up again this week during a conversation with Dr. Laura Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL), a unit of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development that is housed in Research Triangle Park.

Dr. Laura Jackson of the EPA's National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL), a unit of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development that is housed in Research Triangle Park.

Dr. Jackson and her colleagues in this RTP lab—more than 100 scientists—conduct research on ecosystem services, those benefits provided by the environment over and above the psychological benefits of being out in nature. These services can have tangible and measurable economic value.

For instance, in a normally functioning ecosystem, vegetation would take up nitrogen and phosphorus from animal waste and keep those nutrients from overburdening groundwater and streams. In last week’s example, when hogs were added to an ecosystem, they knocked it out of balance by depositing more nutrients than the vegetation could handle and by removing plants that could take up the nutrients and provide erosion control. The researchers at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems were developing countermeasures to keep the water clean near hog farming operations and restore ecosystem function. Read more…