Communities Investigating Their Environment: Climate-Related Community Science in the Mississippi River Delta

Under-resourced communities along the United States coasts experience year-round flooding hazards including stormwater, ponding, coastal flooding, flash-flooding, and riverine flooding. To accommodate and recover from the effects of these occurrences, community resilience or the capacity to persist, adapt, and transform when met with such challenges is critical. Community Science, which involves collaboration between the public and scientists, is a mechanism, along with community resilience, through which flood hazards can be addressed. Engaging in and studying Community Resilience and Community Science hold potential benefits for not only the participants, but also their communities and the greater science field. Led by Pontchartrain Conservancy, The Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and Louisiana Sea Grant, this project seeks to co-design, implement, and study a model for community science-based flood monitoring in under-resourced, rural and urban communities in Southeast Louisiana that are disproportionately impacted by climate change. The project builds on current flood monitoring efforts by investigating how to increase multi-directional communication, community participation in STEM research efforts, and pathways for community leadership and participant decision-making. Activities such as charrettes and training will build flood literacy, foster a sense of agency, and prepare participants for flood monitoring, data analysis, and participating in possible mitigation processes and projects. The project is based on and seeks to further inform the use of frameworks such as community resilience, community science, environmental science agency, and community capital. It does so by investigating the ways in which an intentionally designed community science project can be an effective lever for supporting informal STEM learning for adults. By employing mixed method studies, including observations, focus groups, surveys, and design-based research, the research component addresses the following questions: 1. What are the essential features and considerations necessary for developing a community science project to engage individuals from under-resourced communities in flood monitoring? 2. How are community members engaging in the project? What data are reported, and by whom? Is there variation among communities, and what factors might explain this variation? 3. Can a community science project build flood literacy, increase sense of agency, and improve perceptions of science for participants? 4. In what ways can community science lay a foundation for community resilience to climate change? The dissemination of the resulting research and model seeks to inform similar communities with respect to key components that are needed to ensure participatory and effective community science. These outcomes can lead to individual and community level impacts as well as cultivate greater community resilience in the face of climate change. In addition, the flood monitoring activities seek to generate useful data to inform local efforts with respect to flood mitigation in the region. This Integrating Research and Practice project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.