Projects

Goal: Identify commercially viable uses for harvested sargassum and opportunities to develop a sustainable, sargassum-based industry. Massive blooms of sargassum seaweed have expanded across the tropical Atlantic, washing ashore throughout the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and West Africa. While sargassum provides valuable habitat in the open ocean, excessive coastal accumulations damage ecosystems, disrupt tourism and fisheries, and create public health concerns as the seaweed

Goal: Support a community-driven economic development initiative that integrates environmental restoration with local entrepreneurship in Cleveland’s Upper East Side neighborhoods. For decades, Cleveland’s Upper East Side neighborhoods experienced chronic underinvestment despite being home to nearly 100,000 residents. Compared with the broader region, these communities faced significantly higher poverty and unemployment rates and substantially lower per capita incomes, limiti

Goal: Support the commercialization of a low-cost, solar-powered desalination technology designed to convert seawater and brackish water into potable water. Desalination technologies are widely used around the world, but high capital and operating costs—particularly the energy required for reverse osmosis—have historically constrained broader adoption. Technologies that reduce these costs could expand access to fresh water, particularly in water-scarce regions. After retiring

Goal: Determine whether jellyfish predation was limiting the recovery of fish populations in Prince William Sound following the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, several fish, bird, and marine mammal populations in Prince William Sound recovered more slowly than expected. TerrAqua participated in a study to determine whether abundant jellyfish were competing with forage fish, such as Pacific herring, by consuming large quantities of zooplankto

Goal: Advance understanding of how pollution, habitat degradation, and other environmental stressors affect fisheries and aquatic ecosystems, and improve their integration into fisheries management. Beginning in 1995, TerrAqua developed and organized a national conference series that brought together fisheries biologists, ecologists, toxicologists, habitat specialists, and resource managers to examine the combined effects of pollution, habitat degradation, and other environme

Goal: Help develop a framework for evaluating the environmental and economic impacts of alternative land-use patterns in Northeast Ohio. As Northeast Ohio sought new strategies for economic revitalization, the Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI) at Case Western Reserve University led a regional effort to better understand the long-term consequences of urban sprawl and alternative development patterns. TerrAqua participated in public and technical stakeholder meetings to

Electric Utility Restructuring in Pennsylvania Goal: Assess the potential environmental and consumer impacts of electric utility restructuring in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania’s electric utility restructuring legislation introduced competition into the state’s electricity market and gave consumers greater choice among electricity suppliers. During the transition to the new system, however, many details of the regulatory framework had not yet been defined, creating uncertainty ab

Goal: Plan a shared green office building for Cleveland nonprofit organizations by evaluating best practices, tenant needs, and development options. http://terraqua.org/Greenbuilding.pdf Working with Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and local nonprofit organizations, we conducted a needs assessment to determine tenant requirements, financial capacity, and preferred building features. We also completed a feasibility study evaluating potential sites, development alternatives, re