Stanford researchers identify strategies for 'remaking' Appalachia's polluted waterways

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/may/appalachia-remake-strategy-050614.html
Stanford Report, May 6, 2014
Stanford researchers identify strategies for 'remaking' Appalachia's polluted waterways
Visible results of watershed restoration efforts inspire citizen action in one of the country's most environmentally damaged regions, according to Stanford research that points the way to more effective volunteer recruitment and motivation.
By Rob Jordan
Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

For many Americans, there is a single word that elicits images of both enduring poverty and environmental degradation: Appalachia.

New Stanford research published in the journal Society and Natural Resources paints a starkly different image of the mountainous region by focusing on an emerging movement of citizen volunteers working to clean up watersheds polluted by abandoned coal mines and sewage-clogged streams.

The study, which was co-authored by Heather Lukacs, a graduate student in Stanford's Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, and Nicole Ardoin, an assistant professor of education and center fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, finds that people share a common motivation to improve highly polluted places. The researchers also found that people were further motivated to participate in cleanup projects if they saw how other volunteers' efforts had restored previously polluted areas.

The researchers' findings about how these "remade places" encourage other projects could help organizations elsewhere recruit and motivate volunteers more effectively.... MORE