Award Abstract # 2052889
Focused CoPe: Supporting Environmental Justice in Connected Coastal Communities through a Regional Approach to Collaborative Community Science

NSF Org: RISE
Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER)
Recipient: EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date: August 27, 2021
Latest Amendment Date: June 6, 2025
Award Number: 2052889
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Manda S. Adams
amadams@nsf.gov
 (703)292-4708
RISE
 Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER)
GEO
 Directorate for Geosciences
Start Date: September 1, 2021
End Date: August 31, 2026 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $4,999,056.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $5,054,069.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2021 = $4,999,056.00
FY 2023 = $25,138.00

FY 2024 = $29,875.00
History of Investigator:
  • Stephen Moysey (Principal Investigator)
    moyseys18@ecu.edu
  • Heather Vance-Chalcraft (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Michael O'Driscoll (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Poonam Arora (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Emily Yeager (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Natasha Bell (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Jacob Petersen-Perlman (Former Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: East Carolina University
1000 E 5TH ST
GREENVILLE
NC  US  27858-2502
(252)328-9530
Sponsor Congressional District: 03
Primary Place of Performance: East Carolina University
NC  US  27858-1812
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
03
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): HWPEKM8VFTJ9
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): SPECIAL EMPHASIS PROGRAM,
CoPe-Coastlines and People
Primary Program Source: 01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
4082CYXXDB NSF TRUST FUND

01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 4444
Program Element Code(s): 061900, 097Y00
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.050

ABSTRACT

The project will strengthen coastal resilience in communities along the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary system of coastal North Carolina. This area has been impacted by poor water quality that threatens ecosystems and economic activities important to coastal communities. The team of researchers will measure how contaminants flow throughout the natural and built environment over time to understand processes that control their distribution and their impact on the watershed. A key goal of the Hub is to integrate a broad coalition of academic, community, NGO and government stakeholders to develop mitigation strategies and understand tradeoffs in adaptation and management plans. The Hub?s Coastal Environmental Justice Institute will serve as the central coordinating unit to catalyze connections within the community, coordinate internships (high school and college students) embedded with partners and communicate with community stakeholders. Manhattan College, a primarily undergraduate institution, will also serve to integrate STEM with non-STEM fields (business and management) to better prepare and inform the next generation of decision makers in the community.

Does engaging diverse communities in regional science partnerships make them more resilient to coastal hazards and less susceptible to environmental injustices? This project will investigate how the co-production of scientific knowledge between community members, regional stakeholders, and academic researchers contributes to understanding socioenvironmental drivers that impact resilience to coastal hazards and the adoption of solutions to overcome them, particularly for marginalized populations that are being disproportionately affected by poor water quality, hurricanes, floods, droughts, and sea level rise. Divergent economic interests, significant racial inequities, and differing degrees of flood and water quality risk for communities throughout the region around North Carolina?s Pamlico Sound, along with the ecologic and economic importance of these coastal waters, make this estuary an ideal study area for a CoPe hub. Stakeholders in the project represent fishers, farmers, local and state government, tourists, and residents at multiple nested scales of decision making reflecting different social contexts built on environmental attitudes, economic incentives and inequities, and propensities for social cooperation. These contexts are themselves dependent on individual perceptions of identity, trust, norms, and control over the environmental system. Our team of academic researchers takes a transdisciplinary approach to understanding this complex system by pursuing four objectives: (1) mapping key natural, built, and socioeconomic resources and interdependencies that define the regional socio-engineered- environmental system (SEES); (2) understanding how coastal hazards enhance vulnerabilities in the region; (3) identifying opportunities for locally appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies to build community and regional resilience; and (4) establishing a Coastal Environmental Justice Institute as a long-term mechanism to promote and support collaboration among stakeholder groups from diverse communities throughout the region and beyond.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Petersen-Perlman, J and Arora, P "How Social Capital Can Aid Resilience and Disaster Recovery in Eastern North Carolina" Water Resources IMPA , v.24 , 2023 Citation Details
Tapas, Mahesh R and Etheridge, Randall and Tran, Thanh-Nhan-Duc and Finlay, Colin G and Peralta, Ariane L and Bell, Natasha and Xu, Yicheng and Lakshmi, Venkataraman "A methodological framework for assessing sea level rise impacts on nitrate loading in coastal agricultural watersheds using SWAT+: A case study of the Tar-Pamlico River basin, North Carolina, USA" Science of The Total Environment , v.951 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.175523 Citation Details
Tran, Thanh-Nhan-Duc and Tapas, Mahesh R and Do, Son K and Etheridge, Randall and Lakshmi, Venkataraman "Investigating the impacts of climate change on hydroclimatic extremes in the Tar-Pamlico River basin, North Carolina" Journal of Environmental Management , v.363 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.121375 Citation Details

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