{"id":19467,"date":"2017-05-11T09:30:16","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T13:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=19467"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:36:06","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:36:06","slug":"matthew-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=19467","title":{"rendered":"A RAPID response to Hurricane Matthew"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the months following one of the most destructive hurricanes of the past decade, UNC researchers had to act fast. Using a unique grant from the NSF, they\u2019re testing water quality in Lumberton \u2014 one of the hardest-hit places during the storm.<\/em><\/p>\n

https:\/\/vimeo.com\/216893550<\/p>\n

On October 8, 2016, Diego Riveros-Iregui<\/a> couldn\u2019t believe what he was seeing. News stations from all over North Carolina \u2014 and the nation \u2014 streamed endless aerial footage of submerged homes, collapsed roads, and residents escaping their hometowns in kayaks and motorboats.<\/p>\n

Flooding from Hurricane Matthew caused $1.5 billion in damage to 100,000 North Carolina houses, businesses, and government buildings. The Category 5 storm<\/a> took the lives of 28 North Carolinians, forced more than 4,000 people to evacuate, and impacted 50 counties across the state, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHurricane Matthew delivered 350 millimeters in rain over 24 hours \u2014 that\u2019s about the same amount of rainfall that Chapel Hill receives in three months,\u201d Riveros-Iregui, a UNC geographer, says.<\/p>\n

As the storm continued to wreak havoc on the state, Riveros-Iregui called his longtime colleague Ryan Emanuel, an environmental scientist at NC State, to learn how his family in Lumberton was faring. Their phone conversation quickly transformed into an idea for a research project as the two discussed the potential effects of Lumberton\u2019s multiple bodies of surface water, stream water, and groundwater connecting due to the flooding. \u201cThese coastal environments are relatively flat, so water ponds quicker there than in areas with more slope,\u201d Riveros-Iregui explains.<\/p>\n

Lumberton is also home to multiple concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) with waste lagoons that overflowed during the flood. Robeson County, alone, is home to more than 285,000 hogs and pigs and about 7.25 million chickens and turkeys<\/a> in more than 450 barns.<\/p>\n

Sample collection to test water quality, they decided, needed to begin immediately, before water levels subsided. They applied for a National Science Foundation<\/a> (NSF) Grant for Rapid Response Research<\/a> (RAPID), given to researchers with proposals that have \u201csevere urgency.\u201d Within two weeks of their submission, they received about $60,000 to conduct their study, set to begin in December 2016.<\/p>\n

Although NSF RAPID grants are awarded quickly, they usually don\u2019t accommodate large expenses such as hiring staff. Like emergency responders during a hurricane, Riveros-Iregui and Emanuel had to be resourceful. They solicited volunteers from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health<\/a> and the Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology<\/a> to help. Today, their team\u2019s collective expertise spans a variety of disciplines, from watershed hydrology and ecology to environmental microbiology to geospatial analysis and anthropology. \u201cI think a unique aspect of RAPID is that it\u2019s very interdisciplinary,\u201d Riveros-Iregui says.<\/p>\n

Helping hands<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Lumberton swamp overflows with the raw smell of animal excrement. Scraps of paper towels, Styrofoam meat packaging, and other refuse fill the surrounding woods. \u201cLooks like someone dumped their trash here,\u201d says Theo Jass, an environmental scientist at NC State, who\u2019s currently knee-deep in its depths. He sways back and forth as he scoops large samples of water using a graduated dipper (a long pole with a beaker attached to it).<\/p>\n

On shore, UNC junior Haley Moser bubbles with excitement \u2014 regardless of the smell. Today is her first field site visit. She stands at the ready with her water collection containers. Clad from shoulder-to-toe in tan waders, Moser uses a portable multiparameter to test the pH, oxygen levels, conductivity, and temperature of the water they\u2019re collecting. She writes down her findings on a clipboard. Once she and Jass have filled an array of colored and clear plastic and glass bottles, they pack up all their materials into a large bin and move on to the next site. They\u2019ll repeat this procedure six more times over the course of the day.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cI\u2019ve
\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to be a \u2018scientist,\u2019 but never really knew what that meant,\u201d Moser explains. \u201cGetting involved in this research has put me into contact with a ton of real scientists who have shown me how I can some day be in their shoes, and that it\u2019s possible to have a science career.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Each month since February, Moser, an environmental science major, and Jass have traveled to Lumberton to collect water samples from area taps, wells, and surface and groundwater systems. Before that, Jass and researchers from Gillings were going out into the field every two to three weeks. \u201cThat timeframe is called logarithmic sampling,\u201d Jass explains. \u201cYou sample with more frequency in the beginning and then decrease that frequency as the study continues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, back in the lab, they test the water using non-targeted screening \u2014 a technique that provides a broad survey of the compounds in the water. \u201cWe want to characterize the chemical signatures of these waters,\u201d Riveros-Iregui says. \u201cWe\u2019re also looking for biological markers. Think of these like a fingerprint \u2014 they can tell us where the contaminants come from such as poultry and swine operations or human septic systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Protecting a community<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lumberton and surrounding Robeson County are home to more than 60,000 members of the Lumbee Tribe<\/a> \u2014 descendants of the Cheraw Tribe and other indigenous peoples who have lived in and around the county since at least the early 18th<\/sup> century. After the storm, Emanuel, a member of the tribe, and Riveros-Iregui decided to also study how the changes in water quality due to the hurricane affected the Lumbee population as a whole.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to do meaningful work in the Lumbee River Basin without considering the tribe,\u201d Emanuel points out. \u201cNot only do the tribe and river share a name, but a lot of our culture derives from the fact that the river is our ancestral territory. Who we are and what it means to be Lumbee is bound up, in part, with that river.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atthe start of the project, Emanuel and Riveros-Iregui met with the tribal chairman and administrator to explain their research goals. Today, a handful of their sampling sites are located at public river accesses, churches, and private homes that have cultural significance to the Lumbee community. \u201cOnce this project is finished, we plan to put together a report that is relevant to the tribe,\u201d Emanuel says. \u201cThey care about the water quality implications of Hurricane Matthew for certain activities on the river like fishing, swimming, and even collecting plants. There are still cultural and medicinal plants that are harvested along streams and wetlands.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Ultimately, Emanuel and Riveros-Iregui hope this will spark a conversation within the Lumbee community to get people thinking not just about the short-term impacts of the hurricane like severe flooding and destruction, but really how these major weather events create potentially long-lasting impacts. \u201cAs horrible as events like hurricanes are, they are cultural touchstones that everyone has a story about,\u201d Emanuel says. \u201cAnd programs like the NSF RAPID Grant create an easy way to get people talking about the science behind these storms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u201cI\u2019ve
\u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot about research behind-the-scenes,\u201d UNC junior Haley Moser says. \u201cI\u2019ve gained a new respect for people who work in labs because you have to constantly \u2013 and carefully \u2013 focus on your samples and equipment.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Preparing for future storms <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to see if surface contaminants made it to the deep groundwater,\u201d Riveros-Iregui shares. \u201cOnce in the groundwater, their residence times could be a lot longer.\u201d Like groundwater, contaminants may disperse slowly \u2014 so slowly that they can remain within the watershed for several years.<\/p>\n

At the end of the study, the team plans to launch a second proposal with the NSF that looks at new questions and hypothesis drawn from the results of testing. Riveros-Iregui also hopes to include information from this project in a new class he\u2019ll begin teaching in Spring 2018. \u201cGeography for Future Leaders\u201d is an interdisciplinary course<\/a> that he will lead alongside Elizabeth Havice<\/a>, a UNC geography professor specializing in environmental policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cUndergraduate students don\u2019t usually think about taking interdisciplinary courses during their freshman or sophomore years,\u201d Riveros-Iregui says. \u201cWe want to bring this information to them early on during their first year of college. We want to discuss real examples of social and environmental issues, including the Flint water crisis, forest fires, and now Hurricane Matthew.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Diego Riveros-Iregui is an assistant professor of geography within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ryan Emanuel is an associate professor in NC State\u2019s Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources.<\/em><\/p>\n

Haley Moser is a junior within the College of Arts & Sciences, majoring in environmental science, with a minor in geography.<\/em><\/p>\n

Theo Jass graduated from UNC in August 2015 with an M.S. in Geological and Earth Sciences. He currently works as an environmental scientist within the College of Natural Resources at NC State.<\/em><\/p>\n

Co-investigators for this project include UNC chemist Jill Stewart; NC State professors Elizabeth Nichols (UNC PhD), Katie Martin, and Josh Gray (UNC PhD); and Rosalind Franklin University professor David Shane Lowry (UNC PhD and Lumbee Tribe member).<\/em><\/p>\n

Story and video by Alyssa LaFaro, Endeavors magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the months following one of the most destructive hurricanes of the past decade, UNC researchers had to act fast. Using a unique grant from the NSF, they\u2019re testing water quality in Lumberton \u2014 one of the hardest-hit places during the 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