Research has found that poor levels of air quality have significant effects on environmental and public health. It is essential to monitor and limit hazardous air pollutants, as research shows low-income communities of color are often the most affected by these pollutants. California Assembly Bill 617, enacted in 2017, seeks to address this issue by requiring local air districts to reduce air pollution to protect communities who are disproportionately affected. This study will monitor air quality in the South Sacramento region, which has a history of environmental injustice, increased exposure to commercial diesel truck emissions, and an executive airport that may be leading sources of air pollution. The long historical roots of environmental injustice that have been examined are a direct effect of redlining which pushed communities to outer regions of Sacramento, where processing plants and industries were established. Leveraging a community engagement approach, we will deploy a novel, low-cost, real time monitor (Toxic-metal Aerosol Real Time Analysis, TARTA) to identify and quantify metallic pollutants, such as Lead, Arsenic, and Cobalt. The findings of this research will aid in implementing potential policy changes to mitigate toxic emissions and will inform South Sacramento communities of their air quality levels.

This study aims to explore the relationship between redlining practices and water pollution in marginalized communities, thereby contributing to the broader discourse on environmental racism. Environmental racism, which includes discriminatory policies and practices affecting marginalized communities disproportionately, encompasses issues such as redlining—a set of laws and practices that harm these communities physically, mentally, and environmentally. The research will focus on drinking water contamination as a critical aspect of environmental racism in ten major U.S. cities. The study's objectives include identifying contaminant concentrations in drinking water across different neighborhoods to determine the presence of redlining tactics. This involves examining socioeconomic factors, pollutant sources, and historical impacts of redlining. The methodology involves comparative analysis of demographic and environmental data, including zoning, household income, education levels, and industrial pollution sources, along with an assessment of water filtration systems and infrastructure. Additionally, GIS mapping systems utilizing government data will be employed to visually correlate contaminated drinking water with redlined areas. By analyzing data from cities such as Detroit, Michigan, Los Angeles, California, and Jackson, Mississippi, this research expects to demonstrate a significant correlation between redlined areas and higher levels of water contamination. The findings aim to substantiate the concept of environmental racism, highlighting the urgent need for policy interventions to ensure equitable access to clean water for all communities. This research will provide a foundation for advocating improved infrastructure and stricter regulations to mitigate the impacts of environmental racism.

For over a hundred years, scientists have used the shapes of tree leaves to learn about past climates, especially temperature and precipitation. Typically, scientists compare these ancient leaf shapes to complete leaves from living forests. This is potentially fraught because most fossil leaves are incomplete due to the decay process that occurs before fossilization, a process called taphonomy. We sought to test the existence of a preservation bias in leaf fossilization, and whether this would affect the calibrations for the leaf-climate relationships, by looking for trends in leaf characteristics at various points in the leaf taphonomic process. We sampled modern leaves from Harvard Forest in Massachusetts, targeting leaves in environments that are most likely to produce fossils: swamp and river margins. In this regard, these incomplete leaves represent a natural experiment of leaf taphonomy that is a good partial analog for leaf fossilization. We find that in comparison to fresh leaves, leaves from the surface litter and buried litter are progressively smaller. We plan to expand our study to another site, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland.