This month, ROW highlights Indiana University-Purdue University’s Department of Earth Sciences. Director of Urban Health, Dr. Gabe Filippelli has been serving on ROW’s Steering Committee for over 6 years, since ROW’s inception.
Dr. Filippelli helps oversee the Greening Pleasant Run Waterway project as part of IUPUI’s Environmental Change Grand Challenge. This project studies positive feedback between urban biodiversity restoration, citizen engagement through sharing of human-nature narratives, and ecosystem resiliency.
The Greening Pleasant Run Waterway project is currently testing air, soil, and water quality in the Southeast Indy area. This group has also been conducting outreach in communities along Pleasant Run for citizen science projects and other activities.
ROW has also partnered with IUPUI’s Hydrology course to study the stream health of Pogue’s Run as part of a three-year National Science Foundation grant awarded in 2017.
On October 7th, ROW’s Programs and Metrics Manager Kelly Brown led IUPUI Hydrology students in stream habitat and water quality assessments along Pogue’s Run to measure the impacts of stream bank habitat restorations. The results of this work will be presented to the community in December.
ROW is only successful through its many partnerships and we value and appreciate the important work of IUPUI’s Department of Earth Sciences.