Molly Brown and Gianna Haro

In July 2023, NYSDEC, in coordination with state agencies and partners, including the New York State Water Resources Institute at Cornell University, released New York’s Great Lakes Action Agenda 2023 (GLAA), identifying goals, strategies and actions needed over the next ten years to restore, enhance, conserve, and protect New York's Great Lakes region by applying an ecosystem-based management (EBM) approach. A key tenet of applying an EBM approach is the principle of science-informed adaptive management. To facilitate this, there is a need to identify and evaluate outcomes of GLAA implementation. In consideration of existing data sources, these outcomes are proposed in the GLAA (page 43). The focus of this WRI internship will be for one or more interns to assess baseline conditions for the proposed data sources and how these can be measured over time to evaluate outcomes. A key project deliverable will be a fact sheet(s) that can be used by stakeholders to guide management needs related to 2030 targets. 

Community Science for Riparian Restoration Monitoring

Molly Corley

There is a growing push to restore and protect riparian systems in NYS to provide many benefits including improved water quality, flood abatement, and streamside habitat. The NYS Environmental Bond Act has specifically called out funds for restoring NYS riparian systems, but this funding does not cover monitoring. Monitoring is critical to determine if these restorations take hold and provide the functions they were intended for. Beyond the Bond Act, there is a long-term lack of capacity for monitoring of riparian restoration projects. For example, the Hudson Estuary Trees for Tribs program (HREP T4T) provides free native trees and shrub seedling to landowners in the Hudson Valley to plant in riparian buffers. The program has planted 350+ sites and more than 60,000 plants. They monitor for plant survival at many of the sites but have limited staff resources (1 full time and 1 part time staff person) and can’t monitor the sites through time or monitor for changes in function.

One possibility is to leverage the power of citizen scientists to augment the monitoring capacity of programs like the HREP T4Ts. We are looking for help in understanding both what tools and approaches are currently being used for monitoring riparian systems and what tools could be leveraged for these purposes. The project will include a literature review (peer-reviewed and grey literature) and, possibly, interviews with experts to help identify the appropriate tools, indicators to monitor, and key aspects of successful citizen science monitoring efforts.

Violations of Disinfection By-Product Regulations across New York: a 10-Year Assessment of Community Water Systems

Sarah Cooke and Molly Corley

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was passed into federal law in 1974, with amendments to it in 1986 and 1996, to protect public health (42 U.S.C. §§300f-et seq., 1974, 1986, 1996). This law stipulates that federal drinking water standards must be met by every state’s public water systems (PWSs) for all waters that are designated for drinking, whether surface or ground water. A PWS is defined as a system that provides water for human consumption to at least 15 service connections or one that serves an average of at least 25 people for at least 60 days each year. A PWS can be one of three types: 1) community (CWS; e.g., towns and mobile home parks), 2) non-transient non-community (NTNCWS; e.g., schools), and 3) transient non-community (TNCS; e.g., rest stops and parks).

Under this law and its amendments, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has set maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) and treatment requirements for more than 85 contaminants (USEPA, 2024). These are collectively referred to as National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (NPDWRs) and are enforceable by USEPA to limit the levels of contaminants in drinking water. In all US states, including New York, PWSs are required to provide their consumers with an Annual Water Quality Report with information on the quality of water delivered, including the levels of contaminants detected and violations of the PDWRs. New York State (NYS) collects the information from the annual reports and submits the data to the USEPA Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) Federal Data Warehouse. The focus of this project will only be on one set of NPDWRs, namely disinfection by-products (DBPs), in community water systems (CWSs).

The United States Census Bureau Data can also be utilized to identify “Areas of Persistent Poverty” or areas that are designated as “historically disadvantaged” that host these PWSs. Both publicly available datasets will allow us to better understand the state of PWSs with respect to violations of DBP regulations and to superimpose pertinent demographic information onto retrieved SDWIS data. The interns will therefore be required to compile and analyze the SDWIS and US Census data for the purpose of analysis and hypotheses testing. The interns will also investigate significant correlations that may be present between PWSs with recurrent and/or high number of DBP violations and areas identified as being “Areas of Persistent Poverty” or as being “historically disadvantaged”.

Not all Wetlands are Created Equal: Comparing Mercury Research Among Different Wetland Morphologies

Sarah Cooke

Mercury is an ongoing threat to humans and wildlife as a neurotoxin primarily ingested via food (ex. fish). In aquatic systems, mercury moves around readily and will continue to do so because of A) its ability to cycle in different chemical forms, B) landscape-wide mercury contamination from human activities (ex. coal burning), and C) its ability to bioaccumulate and biomagnify in food webs. Among aquatic ecosystems, wetlands are particularly prone to mercury transformation and mobilization (Zhang et al. 2023). Wetland mercury research has occurred across a range of wetland types, but we predict here that mercury research over-generalizes across wetland morphologies. Many diverse and unique wetlands exist, including nutrient poor and acidic bogs, lush and productive marshes, stagnant swamps, small and ephemeral vernal pools, and many more. Few studies compare between or among these diverse wetland types, making it challenging to state broad conclusions about how wetland functioning impacts mercury cycling. For this project, a meta-analysis of primary literature on mercury in wetlands is proposed to tease apart differences among different types of wetlands, ultimately to identify (A) wetland types and characteristics that promote the bioavailability of mercury to the adjacent food chain and downstream ecosystems, and (B) estimates of relative mercury methylation (the process in which inorganic mercury is converted to methylmercury, the form that bioaccumulates in organisms) across wetland types and compartments. The overall objective is to be able to identify which wetlands, in a given landscape, are likely to be the greatest contributors to food web mercury burdens?

Assessment of Environmental Factors Impacting the Biotransformation of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Recycled Biosolids

Adrian Cardona Young and Tomas Schmieder

In New York State, two of the most common beneficial reuses (e.g., recycling) of biosolids are direct land application and composting to serve as soil amendments on agricultural and non-agricultural lands. It is well established that many biosolids contain organic contaminant mixtures that can limit their beneficial use [1-4]. Due to the high-organic carbon and lipid content of biosolids, these materials serve as favorable partitioning media for hydrophobic organic contaminants, many of which are resistant to degradation, persistent, and potentially bioaccumulative. One such contaminant-class, per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are of particular concern due to their ubiquity and potential human health and ecological risks [5]. The fate of PFAS in biosolids is poorly understood, which is problematic in agricultural settings because of the potential for PFAS to mobilize, transform, migrate, and be taken-up by plants. Prior studies, including those within the Cápiro lab [6-8], demonstrated that biological processes impact the fate and transport of PFAS in the environment, but are influenced by the microbial community composition and environmental conditions (e.g., soil organic carbon content and sulfur concentrations). Therefore, to address these knowledge gaps surrounding the fate of PFAS in biosolids, it is essential to understand biological processes during these two beneficial reuse techniques.

As a first step to improving our understanding of the environmental factors that influence the biological transformation of PFAS in biosolids, this project will evaluate the physical and biogeochemical properties of the biosolids and the underlain agricultural soils. Additionally, this project will design experimental systems to mimic field application of biosolids.

Phenological Calendar of Hudson River Valley Phenomena for Student Research

Adrian Cardona Young and Tomas Schmieder

We work with lots of students to conduct research in the Hudson River Valley. Project ideas are constrained by the time frame in which students are available to conduct field research rather than the timeframe when the phenomena is occurring in the wild. We need an easy to interpret visual tool where students can see the phenomena occurring in our region during their project timeline to choose scientifically compelling topics to conduct field research on. This would take into account a wide variety of projects, research questions, data, and observations to compile a dataset that could then be curated into a simple to understand and visually appealing “calendar” for quick reference during research project planning stages.

Submerse NY: Flood Risk Communication and Outreach through Visual Markers and Public Art

Molly Brown and Gianna Haro

Communities in New York State are increasingly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme flooding. Yet, homeowners and the public do not have an adequate understanding of flood-risk, leading to misinformed decisions regarding the purchase and development of private property, low disaster preparedness, and limited public participation in resilience planning (O'Neill et al., 2016). Though there are a variety of models and applications available to visualize flooding risk, many people appreciate, prefer, or can only access physical indicators of their environment. Public art is an evocative and effective mode of communication for some and can be used to generate awareness in ways that traditional communication tools cannot.

In 2022, we initiated a state-wide flood risk outreach effort complementing the FEMA High Water Mark Initiative and that aims to supplement local community capacity to communicate flood-risk creatively through visual markers and public art. As a part of this original effort (Phase I and II), we developed and executed design concepts for physical flood markers and community engaged exhibitions that frame flood risk in a creative and accessible way for three NYS communities - Hudson, Poughkeepsie, and Ossining. This work was presented at the 2023 NYSFSMA conference, where multiple other communities expressed interest in participating. We also began creating a standardized process for scoping and developing creative flood-awareness projects in any community through an interactive ‘Menu’ that stakeholder groups can use to build and visualize customized projects, and we wish to extend this to include community engagement materials, editable templates for outreach documents, posters and flyers, and a customizable digital campaign for online engagement that will be made publicly available for communities to use.