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"[Duke's] wetlands research project is a win for water quality and a win for improving the science of stream and wetland restoration."

-- Bill Holman, executive director, North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund
Did You Know?
With more than $492 million received, Duke led all North Carolina universities in 2003-2004 funding from the federal government to support research in areas central to the health and welfare of North Carolinians, including health care, genomics and photonics. Such research not only improves North Carolinians' quality of life, but creates new jobs.
Sociology professor Gary Gereffi teaches a class devoted to the topic of North Carolina and the global economy. In spring 2004, students created a Web site to provide information on how the state's unusually broad mix of traditional and modern industries (including information technology, biotechnology, textiles and apparel, furniture, tobacco and hog farming) are affected by globalization. It also examines how the various stakeholders in these industries can work together to ensure a more prosperous future, while recognizing that short-term tradeoffs and policy-led adjustments must be made for the state's main industries to attain a sustainable competitive edge.
Duke faculty are applying their research expertise to our nation's defense. Duke, the lead institution in collaboration with five other Southeastern universities, recently received a $35 million grant from the federal Department of Homeland Security to establish a biodefense research center. Duke engineers are also heading a national consortium devising new technologies to detect land mines and to protect our U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Duke neurobiologists are exploring the use of brain signals to operate external devices in research supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institutes of Health. This technology may someday be applied to improve the quality of life of paralyzed veterans and others with disabilities.
Duke researchers are trying to help smokers quit the habit—an important goal for North Carolina, where a quarter of adults smoke. In the 2003 book The Smoking Puzzle: Information, Risk Perception, and Choice, Duke and NC State researchers focus on developing more effective messages to convince older adults to stop smoking. In June 2004, Duke University Medical Center announced the formation of a new $15-million Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research.
Anne Whisnant, program coordinator at the John Hope Franklin Center, is writing a book that will shed new light on a North Carolina treasure. In her History of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Whisnant recounts the controversial history of the most-visited site in the national parks system, including pressure by well-connected landowners to influence the parkway's path, negative effects on poor farmers, and efforts by Native Americans to resist becoming a "living exhibit" on the roadway.
Adjunct professor of biology Mary Eubanks is investigating how to make better corn --of which North Carolina farmers produced 72 million bushels in 2002. Eubanks recently shed new light on the genetic origins of modern corn, knowledge important both for the production of new varieties and for preserving the ability to solve agricultural problems such as new pests or the need for new farming methods.
The State of Duke University
Water Watchdogs
Duke professor Curtis Richardson, one of Duke's internationally recognized scholars, brings his expertise to North Carolina by removing pollutants from a regional water supply in Durham and improving the local wildlife habitat. Richardson is one of many Duke professors whose research benefits North Carolinians.

It's a common but unfortunate effect of development: Paving over land for shopping centers, subdivisions and the like can cause stormwater runoff that threatens drinking water sources. Curtis Richardson is doing something to remedy the situation.

Richardson, a professor of resource ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, has been called on to help preserve the Florida everglades and the marshlands in Iraq. The spring, Richardson focused his talents at home, supervising the transformation of about 2,000 feet of heavily eroded, silt-clogged Sandy Creek in Duke Forest into a restored wetland. Once refurbished, the wetlands will treat about 1,400 acres of stormwater runoff from Durham and the Duke campus, removing sediment and nutrients before the water drains into the Jordan Reservoir, a drinking-water source for thousands in the Triangle.

"By restoring the natural flood plain that used to be here before the onslaught of urban development, we'll recreate a healthy wetlands ecosystem that sops up pollutants and improves wildlife habitat," says Richardson, founder and director of the Duke University Wetland Center. "Our goal is to create an ecosystem similar to what you would have found here 75 to 100 years ago."

Project sponsors include the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, the North Ecosystem Enhancement Program, Duke Forest, Duke's Facilities Management Department EPA 319 Program, and the Wetland Center. The reconstruction will take about six months and cost $ 1.5 million dollars. EPA 319 Program will also provide an additional $340,000 for monitoring and construction of treatment wetland at the site over the next three years.

Lessons from the restoration will contribute to a better understanding of what to do elsewhere in the state, says Bill Holman, executive director of North Carolina's Clean Water Management Trust Fund. The fund, created in 1996 by the N.C. General Assembly, makes grants to local governments, state agencies and conservation non-profits to help finance projects that address water pollution problems.

"With most of these restoration projects, we're still in the art, not the science, phase," Holman says. "We're still learning a lot about what really works and what doesn't. [Duke's] wetlands research project is a win for water quality and a win for improving the science of stream and wetland restoration."

Besides being an example of a rare Piedmont wetland, the eight-acre ecosystem provides a site for research on biological diversity, hydrology, mosquito control, invasive plant species and other environmental concerns, Richardson says. The project will serve as an outdoor classroom and field laboratory for students and researchers from Duke and other area schools and universities.

"What we learn here will reach far beyond Durham," adds Richardson. "It will benefit wetlands and watersheds nationwide."

Click here to learn more about environmental research at Duke.
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