New WVU Center to Help Environment

West Virginia University
Daily Athenaeum

Tuesday 18 November 2003

By Nicholas Tolomeo Correspondent
danewsroom@mail.wvu.edu

Think there are issues with the color of the Monongahela River? If so, help is on the way. The West Virginia University Research Corporation has awarded $225,000 to fund the Environmental Research Center at West Virginia University. Directed by Richard Fortney, research professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering, the first focus of the Research Center will be investigating issues with local waterways. "The Mon River is the ultimate receiving body to a lot of streams. We will certainly be looking at the river as part of the Mon River watershed. I can see projects related to water quality and water use with the river," Fortney said. "We will be looking at the impact associated with land use, wetlands, and also we will be integrating those fields into environmental policy and economic issues." The center is broadly conceived, with water issues just being one component of the research agenda. Other areas the center plans to look at are game management, resource management, invasive species and forest management. "The team is highly interdisciplinary; we have engineers, geologists, wildlife ecologists, soil scientists, plant ecologists, remote sensing specialists, forestry professors. In terms of environmental issues, it is about as broad as it can get," Fortney said.

The WVU Research Corporation receives and administers funds awarded by outside agencies for research and other activities. Awarding the money for the Environmental Research Center was the culmina tion of along proposal process. "We had an internal competition with 35 pre-proposals, which we narrowed down to nine full proposals. They were reviewed by external experts, based on very good reviews. We looked at the fact that we have very good environmental research going on at the University and decided on the Environmental Research Center," said John Weete, president of the WVU Research Corporation. Researchers from the West Virginia Research Institute, Natural Resource Analysis Center, National Mine Land Reclamation Center and Appalachian Hardwood Center will help with the center. Also, the College of Engineering and Mineral Resource, the Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences and the College of Arts and Sciences will assist. The center is also working with the College of Law, the Medical Center, and the School of Medicine. "The whole purpose of the center is to support and encourage interdisciplinary research and instruction across campus. There are various departments and divisions involved," Fortney said. "The center is dedicated principally among faculty departments and divisions on campus." "West Virginia has a lot of fine water resources," Weete said, "And we want to manage them the best we can in terms of research and economic development."