Southeastern launches Environmental Research Center

Southeastern Louisiana University, with approval from the Louisiana Board of Regents, has launched a new, unique and innovative academic research unit. The Center for Environmental Research will build on past and ongoing research efforts to monitor and investigate the health of the environments of the Lake Maurepas region and more as new projects, such as Carbon Capture and Storage (sequestration), also known as CCS, are planned throughout Louisiana.

Due to its rich and abundant natural resources and unique geography, Louisiana has been an energy producing state for generations, including oil, gas, natural gas, wind and solar. CCS is the latest of these industries and is focused on mitigating climate change, explained the Center for Environmental Research Director Kyle Piller. Essentially, it consists of capturing industrial carbon and sequestering it in deep subsurface storage reservoirs.

“Having a research center undertaken by a state university that conducts environmental monitoring will provide new baseline and ongoing data on associated regions,” he said. “Many of these regions have never been thoroughly assessed or tracked. This ensures that we are able to have real data to understand these environments. Importantly, this new center designation allows us to scale up and provide similar services to additional environmental regions and industrial projects.”

As new industries and technologies come to area regions, the research center strives to serve as the independent environmental monitoring entity for industrial and CCS activities and to make that data available to the public in real time. The center has strengths and expertise in several focal research areas, including the following:

     • Biodiversity Monitoring – The center tracks species diversity in aquatic, wetlands, and terrestrial ecosystems to assess the impacts of perturbations on species presence and abundance, using both traditional sampling and modern environmental DNA approaches.
     • Ecological Physiology – To determine how perturbations, such as industrial and CCS activities, impact organisms, the center gathers baseline data on the physiological health of organisms. Numerous physiological analyses can be employed for various target species.
     • Wetland Monitoring and Remediation – Monitoring wetlands through vegetation and habitat monitoring is part of the center’s rigorous wetland restoration program that includes a large-scale production and planting program for Bald Cypress and Water Tupelo.
     • Chemical Analyses – Non-targeted analyses are conducted to detect and identify unknown chemical compounds in environmental, biological, and chemical samples to provide a broad assessment of chemical compounds in an environment.
     • Microbiological Analyses – Microbes are crucial for understanding ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles, and environmental health. The center’s team monitors microbial communities in soil and water to assess if or how industrial and CCS activities impact microbial communities, which are important for ecosystem and human health.
     • Education and Outreach – The center develops and implements activities to increase public awareness through the creation of project specific websites, as well as outreach programs and educational paraphernalia. The outreach and education programs engage students, communities, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to enhance the understanding of potential impacts of CCS and industrial activities.

“Our research center builds on what we are currently doing at Southeastern with our Maurepas monitoring project,” said Southeastern President William S. Wainwright. “The center is ideally positioned to monitor and study current and proposed CCS projects both near and afar. We are building this center and its capacity to be leaders in environmental monitoring. This is yet another way in which Southeastern is utilizing its strengths and expertise to innovate and lead.”