Growing Impact

Malawi, like many countries in Africa, is facing environmental challenges including deforestation, soil erosion, and unsustainable farming practices. However, restoring the land is much more complex than planting additional trees. The degradation of the land is closely related to the socio-economic status of the people of Malawi, who are connected to the land through agriculture as well as social,...

Wastewater treatment plants serve approximately 75% of Americans—more than 248 million people. However, many people do not recognize the energy burden these facilities create, which can be more than 30% of a municipality's energy bill. Most of this energy comes from fossil fuels. With rising energy costs and the worsening climate crisis, some wastewater treatment plants have started using solar en...

Plastic is part of virtually every aspect of our lives. However, our relationship with this hydrocarbon-based material is complex. As much as we use plastic, it often gets a bad rap. Images of plastic bottles and plastic bags clogging waterways and nightmarish tales of microplastics invading our food supply make it is easy to point the finger at plastic as the villain. Nonetheless, it seems that p...

In season four, Growing Impact is expanding: more team members from different disciplines and deeper conversations around the challenges their project is addressing, the inspiration that turned an idea into a project, and the solutions that may arise from these interdisciplinary researchers.

Substance use is similar to extreme weather due to climate change in multiple ways. Both have had impacts in rural towns and big cities. Both can impact any socio-economic class. Both are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and both can damage lives. Another connection is the impact of one on the other, specifically, how extreme weather, like flooding, can impact a community's ability to supp...

Every material that makes up a building, be it steel, concrete, wood, or plastic, has a greenhouse gas emission associated with it. This is called embodied carbon, and calculating the amount of GHG for one building is achievable. However, calculating that number for an entire city is still a challenge. To assist policymakers to better manage their city's carbon emissions, a team of researchers is...

As cities are built, a lot of vegetation is replaced with building materials such as concrete and brick. These materials absorb the sun's heat and then radiate it back into the atmosphere. This leads to urban heat islands where cities are much hotter than the surrounding areas. But trees offer shade and cooling, reducing the temperature in cities. So, what is stopping cities from planting more tre...

Creating laws and policies informed by science and facts was not always the primary method used by legislators and policymakers. Until around 2000, policies were often based on a policymaker's intuition. Today, there are concerted efforts to get vetted, fact-based scientific research on numerous topics into the hands of policymakers. One of those topics is climate change and its impacts on human h...

Waste heat has been a challenge that scientists and engineers have been pondering for decades. What can be done with this lost energy and can it be harnessed in a useful way? As combustion and technology improved, the percentage of waste heat has decreased, but it is estimated that up to 50% of all industrial energy is lost through waste heat. If that heat could captured or used in a meaningful wa...

Combustible fuels have been around ever since humans realized that they could burn wood. Over time, we discovered new energy sources—fossil fuels, which still dominate the world’s energy portfolio. But what if we could find another fuel source, one that was abundant, easy to procure, and people were happy to give it away? Something like municipal or agricultural waste? One fuel, called hydrochar,...

A lot of our lives is impacted by the air we breathe, both inside and outside. And where we live is an important factor in this equation. For those living in the Pittsburgh area, it is likely that they could be impacted by poor air quality related to large industrial sites that dot the western Pennsylvania landscape. To better understand the air quality concerns of this region and how it's impacte...

As Mihyun Kang sees it, if renewable energy is the future, then it should be engaging and appealing. She combined that idea with her passion for nature and sustainability to develop art installation concepts that she hopes to bring to life throughout Pennsylvania, in an effort to bring rationally sound and emotionally compelling solutions to climate change.

What does it take to get a piece of steak or chicken to someone's table? The amount of time, energy, water, land, and the resulting carbon footprint may be surprising. Today, scientists are exploring the farms of the future, including the generation of meat products through cellular agriculture. These animal-based proteins have plenty of pros, including sustainable production, and groups, ranging...

Wetlands are some of the richest ecosystems in the world. They support an extensive variety of plants and animals, from the smallest of microbes to the largest of mammals. Wetlands also filter and protect water, improving its quality. However, as climate change intensifies, wetlands are threatened by changes in precipitation, both too much and too little. They also may provide early signals of cli...

The groundwater level in India is consistently dropping year to year. In fact, India uses more groundwater than any country in the world. However, it is also a nation that lacks water availability, and its population continues to grow. A team of researchers is analyzing how an Indian government policy aimed at installing and using solar irrigation pumps in agriculture may further lower groundwater...

Cleveland, like many cities, aims to become greener in the coming decades by decarbonizing infrastructure and using renewable energy. However, implementing solutions has its challenges, from technological to financial. Add to this the challenges of ensuring equity, and the situation gets even more complex.

What happens to a community or a livelihood when a key resource disappears? In Southwest Madagascar, the farafatse tree, a tree of great importance in that region, appears to be vanishing, and where it is traditionally found seems to be shifting. A team of researchers are investigating this phenomenon in concert with Malagasy communities to identify causes and potential risks for plant life more b...

Plastic of all shapes and sizes is showing up in bodies of water around the world, including microplastics, which are 5mm or less in size. But how these tiny pieces of plastic move through water and what impacts that movement is still a bit of a mystery. This includes biofilms, the thin layers of organisms that build up on material found in water.

A team of researchers seeks to better understand the social effects associated with flooding, such as whether racial and ethnic minorities, children, and those with low income suffer the most.

Melissa Bopp and her colleagues examine the role of the built and natural environments and their influence on physical activity, healthy eating, and air quality in the Mon Valley, an area that has seen steady economic decline since the departure of the steel industry in the late 20th century.

A transdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers is exploring how One Health, an approach that recognizes the interconnectedness among human health, ecosystem health, and animal health, may be able to tackle complex health problems facing Pennsylvania.

As sea-levels rise due to climate change, historical monuments and landscapes near bodies of water are at risk. A new research project will provide decision makers with information on what that could look like for their site. Specifically, the project is focused monuments and landscapes that are significant to African American, Indigenous, and other minority communities.

The latest episode of the Growing Impact podcast features a research team that is designing and building a biofiltration system that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, specifically methane and carbon dioxide.

This episode of Growing Impact features Emily Pakhtigian, assistant professor of public policy and the Jeffrey L. and Sharon D. Hyde-McCourtney Career Development Professor. On the podcast, she discusses her seed grant project, titled “Assessing Distributional Effects of Coal-Fired Power Plant Operations on Pollution and Health,” through which she and her colleagues are investigating how the trans...

Lisa Emili, an associate professor of physical geography and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona, discusses her project titled “Coastal Carbon Dynamics in a Riparian Buffer Ecosystem, Lake Erie Basin,” which is investigating carbon accumulation in freshwater wetlands around the Great Lakes area. She and her team are interested in better understanding how these wetlands fit into the carbon...