The Anacostia River, an important urban waterway flowing through the District of Columbia and Maryland, is severely contaminated. The Anacostia has had a long history of contamination due to mismanagement, dumping of trash, stormwater runoff, release of toxic chemicals from industrial sites along its banks, and an antiquated combined sewer overflow system which releases raw sewage directly into the river after heavy rainfall. It is one of the nation’s 10 most contaminated rivers and has been cited by the U.S. EPA as a ‘‘major area of concern’’ for the Chesapeake region. Despite this contamination, recreation on the river is very popular, including kayaking, canoeing, rowing and sport fishing.

Rianna Murray, a recipient of a 2014-15 Graduate Research and Travel Grant from PSE, conducted a recent study with the recreational population of the Anacostia River to investigate the potential health risks faced by recreational users from exposure to the river’s pollutants. A total of 197 recreational users of the Anacostia River were surveyed regarding general demographic information, their recreational behavior and health over the previous year, including frequency and duration of recreation and specific questions related to their water exposure. 84.1% of respondents who engaged in canoeing, kayaking, boating, rafting or paddling were exposed to water on their bodies during recreation. Some 27.2% of this group reported getting water in their mouth while recreating, and 16.5% reported swallowing some of this water. 

Study participants were also asked to indicate whether they had experienced symptoms typically associated with gastro-intestinal (GI) illness within 12 months prior to taking the survey. Approximately 30.9% of recreational users reported having diarrhea, 24.8% experienced nausea, 23.5% experienced dizziness, 18.8% reported a skin rash, 15.5% experienced vomiting and 8.05% reported experiencing lung irritation. Logistic regression analyses (controlling for gender, age, race/ethnicity and level of education attained) detected statistically significant associations between educational attainment and symptoms of vomiting, and associations also exist between gender and symptoms of dizziness and nausea. Recreational users without a college education have higher odds of experiencing vomiting (OR= 3.7; 95% CI, 1.27-10.92). Male participants who recreate also had a higher odds of experiencing symptoms of dizziness (OR= 4.4; 95% CI, 1.73-11.41) and nausea (OR=2.5; 95% CI, 1.10, 5.69) compared to females. These findings suggest that limited-contact water recreation may pose risks to human health, risks which are exacerbated by the growing trends of recreation in urban rivers.

This work is novel in the Anacostia watershed and provides the foundation for future studies related to recreational activity in the region. Through the survey, information about recreational activity and user demographics, characteristics, habits and exposure were obtained where no such information previously existed. Although definitive associations cannot be made between exposure experienced while recreating in the Anacostia River and a specific health outcome in this work, future research will involve exposure assessment studies around these associations, utilizing groups of highly exposed and unexposed recreational users. Personal samples from recreational users and environmental samples will be used to establish the relationship between water quality, microbial levels in personal samples and the onset of GI illness. This data may have utility for current efforts to address contamination of the Anacostia including the Urban Waters Partnership and the Anacostia Watershed Partnership as efforts are made to transform the Anacostia from its current state as the “forgotten river”. The travel grant awarded by PSE allowed Ms. Murray to present her research at the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual meeting in November 2014 in New Orleans, LA.

The role people play in maintaining and improving urban greenspace has emerged in recent years, particularly through the collection of data on actors and organizations that steward urban areas. At the NYC Urban Field Station, we are interested in understanding what explains the spatial pattern of civic stewardship in US cities.

In 2007, the USDA Forest Service, in collaboration with Dana R. Fisher, now at University of Maryland, created the first STEWardship Mapping and Assessment Project in New York City. STEWMAP involves surveying civic organizations to capture which organizations are engaging in stewardship, where they are engaging in stewardship, how they are engaging in stewardship, and how stewardship networks share resources, including information. Since 2007, the Forest Service has replicated STEW-MAP in Chicago, Seattle, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, with emerging efforts in Los Angeles, Puerto Rico, and Atlanta.

With STEW-MAP in multiple cities, we can begin to examine how stewardship can vary across cities, and in relation to environmental and socioeconomic variables. As a Forest Service researcher with access to all the datasets and a spatial analysis background, I am in the unique position of being able to do this. To start, I created a poster for the Urban Environmental Stewardship Conference, held on Friday April 17, 2015 by the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland.  The poster’s analysis is to look at four cities: NYC, Chicago, Seattle, and Baltimore, with a focus only on civic organizations (to make the analysis comparable across cities). The poster does three things: (1) provides a basic comparison of civic stewardship organizations across cities, (2) examines the potential for hotspots/coldspots in each city with spatial statistics, and (3) examines the number of stewardship groups operating in a census block group as a function of percent vegetation from the National Land Cover Dataset and socioeconomic variables from the American Community Survey (education, race, income). In this preliminary analysis, no single pattern emerged across cities for these explanatory variables, suggesting stewardship distribution varies by city or that there are other important variables not yet analyzed. This is just the start of our exploration into the roles of the city and neighborhood in stewardship activity.


Michelle Johnson's poster was the winner of the UESC15 poster competition. The competition was judged by Dr. Isabella Alcañiz (UMD Government and Politics), Dr. James Connolly (Northeastern University), and Dr. Erika Svendsen (USFS).

On September 21, 2014, University of Maryland Sociologist and PSE Director Dr. Dana R. Fisher led a group of researchers into New York City to conduct a survey of people who participated in the People’s Climate March (PCM).  While the actual number of demonstrators has been disputed, with estimates ranging from 125,000 to 400,000(1), the PCM is heralded as the largest demonstration to call for action on global climate change in history.  Our research team spread out across the staging area for the march, collecting surveys from 468 respondents in total. We kept track of where survey respondents gathered before the demonstration—giving us the ability to analyze the data at the block level.  And for good reason.  Aside from being the largest climate change demonstration, the social movement organization, 350.org, planned the organization of the march in a very unique and particular way. 

In order to make a broader and more general appeal, the organizers intended to gather a great diversity of groups and people. At the same time, organizers arranged for participants to gather at specific block locations so that each group could be visually recognized and attributed a specific voice in the call for action on climate change.  The planning of the demonstration was meant to accomplish two goals: to showcase the array of actors involved in the climate movement and to create a call to arms that world leaders could no longer ignore.  As the organizers said, “To make that happen, we’re trying something new and arranging the contingents of the march in a way that helps us thread our many messages together” (2). To accomplish these goals, they attempted grouping people into one of six contingents as pictured below.

Each of the block group contingents were meant to contain a cadre of smaller groups. For example, “The Debate is Over” block was meant to be composed of scientists, beekeepers, supporters of ‘Save the Arctic’, ‘Wildlife Preservation’, and ‘Healthy Lifestyles and Spiritual Practices’ movements, and faith communities (you can read a more detailed description of the contingents here).  

So, why does this matter?