(Left to right) Rami Sadovnik (student), Carrie Sadovnik (Director of Environmental Health and Safety/Sustainability), Stalin Espinal ’18, Paige Rushing (student), and Devlin McKenna (Office of Information Technology Services) help with the new green infrastructure project.

An innovative and environmentally friendly green infrastructure test bed received the finishing touches on June 15 when volunteers planted and mulched over 2,700 plugs of northeast native plants near the sidewalk between the Lily Pond and Whitman Hall.

The project was led by Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Associate Director of the Science and Resiliency Institute at Jamaica Bay Jennifer Cherrier, the Aquatic Research and Environmental Assessment Center, the Office of Environmental Health and Safety/Sustainability, along with support from the college’s Facilities, Planning and Operations, and student, staff and faculty volunteers, including Professor of Television, Radio & Emerging Media Katherine G. Fry.

Earth and Environmental Sciences and Associate Director of the Science and Resiliency Institute at Jamaica Bay Jennifer Cherrier (right) oversees the installation of the hybrid ecoWEIR system at Brooklyn College that students, faculty and staff helped to install. The project will serve as a place for interdisciplinary research for not only the campus but the entire CUNY family and affiliated collaborators, the surrounding community, and the region to help educate and partner with them on issues related to stormwater and climate resiliency.  Helping Cherrier are students Wilson Deng (left) and Paige Rushing.

“Our campus has been long prized for its beauty. Beyond adding lush meadow greenery, Professor Cherrier’s ecoWEIR test bed bolsters biodiversity and offers transformative learning and research opportunities. This and other green space initiatives epitomize our commitment to a sustainable campus,” said Carrie Sadovnik, Director of the Office of Environmental Health and Safety/Sustainability.

The approximately 455 square-feet test bed of drought and flood-resilient plants, which also attract pollinators to further aid the environment, was designed by Local Office Landscape and Urban Design, a Brooklyn-based and minority-owned design firm, in consultation with Cherrier. The site will be used for interdisciplinary research by both students and faculty and functions both as a traditional green infrastructure rain garden—similar to what is currently being installed by the NYC Department of Environmental Protection throughout New York City—as well as a green infrastructure called ecoWEIR, a hybrid system developed by Cherrier’s research.

Both types of green infrastructure, traditional and hybrid, are used to help manage and filter out pollutants from stormwater runoff as well as other surface and surficial groundwater flows into aquatic systems. However, the hybrid ecoWEIR system is designed to give nature a boost to maximize pollutant removal and allow for fit-for-purpose water reuse. The ecoWEIR system is also being piloted in Prospect Park to remove phosphate from Prospect Park’s waterways to help offset toxic algae blooms that have been plaguing the lake for the past decade.

Current Sustainability Coordinator Stalin Espinal ’18, who studied Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences, holds up one of the plants for the project.

 

Cherrier added that in addition to the imminent research that her group will be doing at the test bed site—including that of Ph.D. student Nia Rene, M.S. student Paige Rushing, and undergraduate student Sarah Maria Dos Santos—the project will serve as a place for interdisciplinary research for not only the campus but the entire CUNY family and affiliated collaborators, the surrounding community, and the region to help educate and partner with them on issues related to stormwater and climate resiliency.

“While I was proud to lead the effort, I cannot thank Carrie Sadovnik, Director of Environmental Health and Safety and Sustainability, her staff, my graduate student Paige, the Facilities team, as well as other Brooklyn College and CUNY faculty, staff, and students enough for coming together this past month to help make this happen,” Cherrier said. “I am also indebted to the Brooklyn College administration for their long-term support of this project as well as to my colleagues at Florida A&M University for their collaborative support and contributions to ecoWEIR throughout the years and, finally, I’m thankful for initial funding for this work provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

Rushing, an earth and environmental sciences graduate student, participated in the gardening of the green space event. Rushing has been analyzing the ecoWEIR system for her master’s thesis which explores the effects of nutrient concentrations in stormwater runoff and discovering how effective the system is as a nature-based solution for stormwater management.

“This planting event was one of the final stages in completing the installation. We planted hundreds of native perennials and have been working over the past month to fill the excavated site,” Rushing said. “Getting the system in the ground was a large task and rigorous, so it’s great that we had [Brooklyn College] facilities personnel and volunteers to help with the planting and all the other stages of the installation process. There is still more to learn through the research that will be conducted in this space.”

Rushing is looking forward to watching the garden grow and is optimistic about the future of the green space.

“I’m excited to watch the garden grow throughout the next year and to work on it because I enjoy being outside in nature. I feel optimistic about future research that will happen in this new green space.”