Gardenroots: A Citizen Science Project (2015) is the product of a needs assessment, revealing environmental quality concerns of gardeners living near hazardous waste or resource extraction activities. Participants were trained, collected garden samples for analysis, and later received their data visualized (individual and aggregated) via community events or mail. This article describes participant motivations, changes in knowledge and efficacy, and whether these depend on the mode of data sharing and visualization. Motivations were internal, and self-efficacy increased, while knowledge and satisfaction were higher in event attendees due to increased researcher contact. This reveals importance of data-sharing events, data visualizations, and participatory research processes.

Climate change is a pressing issue for society as temperature increases will range from 0.03°C to 4.8°C by 2100, depending on mitigation strategies implemented (Pachauri et al., 2014). The effects of climate change on public health will be substantial as there is already a disproportionate distribution of risk in our society based on socioeconomic factors, such as education level, ethnicity, and poverty level. Thus, we can anticipate that climate change will only perpetuate these disparities in health (Frumkin et al., 2008). Climate justice stresses how those living in poverty contribute the least to climate change but suffer the most consequences (Cox & Pezzullo, 2016). This is further exacerbated by their voices being left out of solution discussions (Cox & Pezzullo, 2016). Climate justice seeks to remedy this by providing a platform for disadvantaged voices to be heard and to create community-based solutions (Cox & Pezzullo, 2016). To stimulate and sustain change, the groups of interest must be part of the problem-solving dialogue. To do this, popular education has been proposed, which introduces democratic values and emphasizes that the groups that will be affected by an action must be part of the problem solving (Freire, 1970). This approach has inspired the 751476P HPXXX10.

Ecosystem-bedrock interactions power the biogeochemical cycles of Earth’s shallow crust, supporting life, stimulating substrate transformation, and spurring evolutionary innovation. While oxidative processes have dominated half of terrestrial history, the relative contribution of the biosphere and its chemical fingerprints on Earth’s developing regolith are still poorly constrained. Here, we report results from a two-year incipient weathering experiment. We found that the mass release and compartmentalization of major elements during weathering of granite, rhyolite, schist and basalt was rock-specific and regulated by ecosystem components. A tight interplay between physiological needs of different biota, mineral dissolution rates, and substrate nutrient availability resulted in intricate elemental distribution patterns. Biota accelerated CO2 mineralization over abiotic controls as ecosystem complexity increased, and significantly modified the stoichiometry of mobilized elements. Microbial and fungal components inhibited element leaching (23.4% and 7%), while plants increased leaching and biomass retention by 63.4%. All biota left comparable biosignatures in the dissolved weathering products. Nevertheless, the magnitude and allocation of weathered fractions under abiotic and biotic treatments provide quantitative evidence for the role of major biosphere components in the evolution of upper continental crust, presenting critical information for large-scale biogeochemical models and for the search for stable in situ biosignatures beyond Earth.

Considering that community members continue to garden in and near environments impacted by pollutants known to negatively impact human health, this paper seeks to characterize the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of a gardener and elucidate their perception of soil quality and environmental responsibility, awareness of past land use, and gardening behavior. Via semi-structured interviews with community gardeners in the Boston area (N = 17), multifactorial motivations associated with gardening as well as ongoing environmental health challenges were reported. Gardeners are knowledgeable about their garden’s historical past and are concerned with soil quality, theft, trash maintenance, animal waste, and loss of produce from foraging animals. Study findings directly inform the field of environmental health exposure assessments by reporting gardening duration, activities that can lead to incidental soil ingestion, and consumption patterns of locally grown produce. This information combined with an understanding of a gardener’s intrinsic and extrinsic motivations can be used to develop urban agricultural infrastructure and management strategies, educational programming, and place-based environmental public health interventions.

No abstract