Water challenges rarely remain in a laboratory. At Duke University, researchers are channeling them into restoration projects, public policy work, infrastructure strategies, and new technologies to help communities manage water more effectively.
Faculty are working on solutions for everything from coastal flooding to drought resilience to drinking water contamination. Across the Nicholas School of the Environment , the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability , and the Pratt School of Engineering , these projects show how research moves into real-world applications to help communities build more resilient water systems in a changing world.
Building Stronger Coastlines
Rather than serving as static barriers, living shorelines can grow and adapt over time.
One example is Duke's Living Shorelines work along North Carolina's coast. These projects combine marsh grasses, oysters, rock structures and other natural components to reduce erosion, absorb wave energy, improve water quality and strengthen coastal resilience.
The effort is part of Brian Silliman's research, which is reshaping how scientists and coastal communities approach shoreline restoration. The work moves beyond traditional approaches that focus on individual species toward systems built around biological partnerships.
Historically, ecosystem restoration has focused on planting a specific species and keeping competitors away. However, Silliman, a professor of marine conservation biology in the Nicholas School of the Environment , is challenging that idea.
His research, supported by a three-year, $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant, shows that under stressful conditions such as drought, extreme heat, pollution, and other climate-related pressures, species often survive and thrive better with neighbors present. It turns out that in stressful conditions, rather than competing, neighbors help each other out through positive biological partnerships.
"During non-stressful times, they might compete with their neighbors, but during stressful times, they'll cooperate," Silliman said.
Examples of biological partnerships between neighbors include dense aggregations of plants protecting each other from wave stress, mussels and oysters increasing seagrass growth by fertilizing the plants as they poop, and crab predators protecting marsh grasses from otherwise lethal grazers.
These partnerships can improve survival, accelerate recovery and more quickly return the services that these systems provide humans, like pollution absorption. This new understanding is changing restoration plantings worldwide. They now focus on systematically harnessing cooperation among organisms.
Restored healthy wetlands and reefs help manage flooding, filter pollution, protect drinking water sources, reduce coastal erosion and capture carbon. As sea-level rise and stronger storms increasingly threaten coastal communities, these nature-based systems are becoming even more valuable.
Silliman refers to these approaches as a form of ecosystem technology, or "eco-tech" : using natural processes to inspire hybrid technology that solves problems historically addressed through expensive engineered systems. Rather than choosing between engineered and natural solutions, he advocates hybrid approaches that combine the strengths of both.
Looking ahead, Silliman is optimistic that a more interdisciplinary approach to restoring ecosystems can help deal with water challenges. He envisions ecologists, engineers, policymakers, environmental justice experts and technologists working together to design systems that strengthen both natural habitats and human communities.
"The power of partnerships is huge," Silliman says. "When organisms work together, they become more resilient. The same is true for people. If we combine disciplines, technologies, and natural systems, we have enormous opportunities to improve how we manage water and rebuild ecosystems for the future."
Keeping Tabs on Fish and Rivers
Protecting marine ecosystems often depends as much on public policy as on science. That is where John Virdin and Martin Doyle - both experts with the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability - focus their work: helping decision-makers translate research into policies that support both environmental resilience and community well-being.
As director of Duke's Ocean Policy Program , Virdin collaborates with governments worldwide on fisheries management and coastal development, working through a partnership with the United Nations. His research examines policies that help sustain fish populations while supporting food security, jobs and economic opportunity for those living on the coast.
Virdin has worked with governments outside of the U.S. in places such as Eastern Indonesia, West Africa, and the Pacific Islands to develop policies that protect marine ecosystems while supporting those who depend on them.
"I'm interested in the strategies that governments use to try to conserve and protect the ocean environment and particularly how those can help create more food and jobs for people along the coast," Virdin says.
For Doyle , a river scientist and engineer, the focus is on resilience. The director of the Water Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute studies how the nation manages water infrastructure and the decisions that determine whether communities can remain resilient in a changing climate.
Doyle's research examines how agencies and reservoir managers decide how much water to store and release, and how those choices affect communities and regional economies. He has worked with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, among others.
Much of the nation's water system depends on dams, reservoirs, levees, and flood-control projects built decades ago. Rather than replacing them, a major challenge is learning how to operate these systems amid changing climate conditions.
"One of the main things I do that might be a bit unusual is that I cross over between science and infrastructure finance. So where do we get the money to build the really big infrastructure that is kind of the backbone of the way the U.S. manages its rivers?"
The work is relevant to North Carolina. Reservoirs such as Jordan Lake and Falls Lake support drinking water supplies, drought resilience and regional growth. Understanding how these systems are managed is increasingly important as climate change introduces new challenges.
Together, Virdin and Doyle demonstrate how applied policy research can help governments make better decisions about the water resources and infrastructure that communities depend on.
California's Water Future as a Test Case
California's recurring droughts have turned the state into a living laboratory for water innovation. For civil and environmental engineer Marta Zaniolo at the Pratt School of Engineering , those challenges are an opportunity to understand how utilities can balance water conservation, affordability and financial stability.
Awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant in September, the assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering is leading a project focused on understanding how water utilities balance these three competing priorities.
The project, funded through the NSF Infrastructure, Systems and People program , looks at how utilities make decisions, particularly in drought-prone regions, and how those decisions affect long-term outcomes.
The challenge is growing more difficult as climate change is upending many of the assumptions utilities once relied on. According to Zaniolo, water managers can no longer rely on historical patterns to predict future conditions.
Her goal is not just to model water systems, but to help decision-makers anticipate future challenges and understand the consequences of today's choices.
California has already become a leader in water reuse and decentralized treatment technologies, offering examples that other states may eventually follow. Zaniolo's research seeks to understand which approaches work best and how to adapt them in other states, including North Carolina, where growth is placing new pressures on infrastructure.
North Carolina has regions where demand is rapidly increasing, and Zaniolo notes that's a problem because it may lead to water scarcity. On the other hand, she notes that rural areas are depopulating, which means there are fewer taxpayers to finance an oversized infrastructure system, which leads to water affordability issues. And then there are tourist regions such as Wilmington, where water demand in the summer is significantly higher than in the winter.
"This makes it hard to plan and maintain infrastructure for these large seasonal swings," Zaniolo says.
Inventing Water Re-use Technologies
At Duke's Pratt School of Engineering , Sonia Grego and Julia Darcy are developing practical tools to address pressing water quality and scarcity challenges.
Grego's research focuses on water reuse technologies that could significantly reduce demand for drinking water in homes and buildings. She envisions systems that treat wastewater on-site and produce water suitable for non-potable uses such as toilet flushing and irrigation.
"We use drinking water to flush the toilet. Personally, I think of it as a crime against humanity," Grego says.
Darcy's work addresses a different challenge: removing contaminants before they threaten public health or ecosystems. Her research includes technologies for removing nitrate pollution from stormwater and PFAS compounds from drinking water supplies.
"PFAS is the contaminant of the day, but surely we will have other contaminants," Darcy says. "This is kind of an ongoing challenge that we see in this space."
Her projects include developing absorbent materials to remove nitrates from stormwater and designing sorbent materials to remove PFAS from drinking water.
A critical part of this effort is the DukeUniversity Center for Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Infectious Disease (WaSH-AID) , which provides facilities for researchers to evaluate technologies under realistic conditions using contaminated water streams. The facility serves as a bridge between laboratory discovery and real-world application.
As these technologies mature, Duke's innovation ecosystem, including the Office for Translation & Commercialization , helps move promising solutions toward licensing opportunities, startup formation and eventual deployment. This helps ensure these discoveries can ultimately benefit communities.
Looking ahead, both researchers see growing urgency. Water reuse, contaminant removal and resilient treatment systems will likely become increasingly important as stresses such as population growth and emerging pollutants place new demands on water infrastructure.
