CSAW PROJECTS
Geoscientists and community members will collaborate to identify and solve local issues including lead contamination, radon exposure, air pollution, extreme heat, water pollution and urban flooding.
Potential Research Projects
Soil
- Lead contamination on the West Side
- Soil and water issues around slag dumping
- Lead paint prevalence and dust analysis in Atlanta
- Radon exposure in Atlanta
- Arsenic contamination in soils
Air
- Building community tools for engagement in data collection, analysis, and recommendations around urban heat island in Atlanta
- Modeling heat waves in Atlanta
- Air quality monitoring in Atlanta using low cost and research-grade monitors
- Climate change resilience
Water
- Continuing/expanding the Atlanta Watershed Learning Network including workforce development
- Expanding Neighborhood Water Watch-type programs to the southside
- Impacts of brownfields and hydrologic movement on metal transport
- Pluvial flooding drivers for chronic flooding
...and more!
- Soil, air, and water impacts of illegal dump fires
- Toolkits and working groups around green gentrification
- Assessing potential error ranges in community measurements compared to laboratory measurements
- Building expanded relationships with decision makers
- Centralized access to data for community members
Past Projects
The Georgia State-ECO-Action-WAWA History
Georgia State, ECO-Action and WAWA have worked as partners on multiple projects for over a decade. For example, in 2012, faculty and students from Geosciences and Public Health (including PIs Hankins and Fuller) joined with ECO-Action and other community groups on an initiative called TIRED (Tire Initiative to Reduce and Eliminate Dumping) to locate and remove over 2,000 tires in the historically Black neighborhoods of English Avenue, Vine City, Summerhill, Peoplestown and Pittsburgh.
Working with students and community members, significant dump sites were geo-located and mapped for collection by a tire-recycling firm. From 2012 to 2016 both Hankins and Fuller participated with other Georgia State faculty in a NSF REU site grant, “Addressing Social and Environmental Disparities through Community Geography and Geographic Information Systems” (award #1156755) where they worked with REU students and community partners ECO-Action and WAWA to address environmental threats, such as air and water pollution and lead contamination in Atlanta neighborhoods. Georgia State and ECO-Action have partnered in the collection of air pollution data that has shed light on the impact of local traffic sources on community-level pollutant levels. These data were disseminated to the community as well as presented at scientific conferences.
As a partner, Georgia State has provided analytical expertise in the form of students and faculty along with research supplies and software and has benefited from the knowledge and expertise of community members and environmental leaders who routinely confront environmental threats. ECO-Action and WAWA have trained Georgia State students and interns and, in turn, hired Georgia State graduates to work in their organizations and further the mission of environmental justice in Atlanta neighborhoods. Much of this partnership work has relied on the longevity and commitment of community leaders and that of faculty members, who have built trust over more than a decade of working together.
Other community-based work: Soil
Since 2018, the Saikawa lab at Emory University has involved graduate and undergraduate students and partnered with community member organizations to determine baseline heavy metals and metalloid levels in urban gardens, farms and backyards in the westside of Atlanta. Her research group found a slag dump site across from a children’s garden with high Pb contamination. Students and community partners analyzed slag and soil from the dump site and found that Pb mean 95% Upper Confidence Levels were all significantly elevated in slag and in the soil near slag.
These concentrations for Pb were both much higher than the EPA Regional Screening Levels for residential soil. Additionally, this soil was in the “high risk” category of over 1,200 ppm for Pb in gardening soil. The EPA initiated a Removal Site Evaluation and made the site a Superfund site, it was also listed on a National Priorities List in the Spring of 2022. In March 2020, we worked with our Historic Westside Gardens, EPA, DPH and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry collaborators and hosted an online event, which we called community science soilSHOP, to screen soil Pb levels. We collected 256 soil samples, setting a national record for soilSHOP. We continue to conduct soilSHOPs regularly.
Other community-based work: Water
Additionally, at Georgia State, researchers Milligan and Ledford engage students with West Side River Rendezvous events of the Neighborhood Water Watch (NWW) program and have subsequently acquired IDEXX water quality monitoring lab capacity at Georgia State.
They have partnered with researcher Jelks at Spelman as well as ECO-Action, WAWA, South River Watershed Alliance, the Flint Riverkeeper and American Rivers to develop a Southside Water Quality Monitoring Network, initially funded by the Atlanta Global Research and Education Collaborative, that expands community-based water quality monitoring beyond the NWW focus on the Chattahoochee River watersheds of Atlanta.
Contact Us
The Department of Geosciences
Office Hours:
Monday - Friday
8:30 a.m. - 5:15 p.m.
Office/Delivery Address
38 Peachtree Center Ave. SE
7th Floor
Suite 730
Atlanta, GA 30303