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Students Take On Sustainability Research

A Celebration of the 2023 McCullough Fellows

By UNC Asheville

January 18^th, 2024

Casey King, director of sustainability at UNC Asheville, describes the McCullough Fellowship program as a labor of love.

“Everyone who is involved loves it. Everyone feels a great joy in being involved, in watching and partaking in the growth of student skills, research abilities and personal skills,” King said. “It takes an incredible amount of sheer labor for this to work well and be successful. It is really a pleasure to be a part of this really hard working group of students, faculty and community members.”

The McCullough Fellowship was created through an endowment from Charles and Shirley Ann McCullough, inspired by their lifelong civic and environmental legacy. The McCullough Institute for Conservation, Land Use and Environmental Resiliency aims to address environmental issues, while creating new job opportunities for students in environmental careers.

McCullough Fellows propose and execute applied research projects addressing one or more of the following areas: land use and conservation, urban planning, sustainable agriculture, resilience and environmental sustainability. The Fellows partner with a local organization and UNC Asheville faculty member for support. The Fellows also plan a program day to take the other Fellows on to learn about each other’s research.

On December 6, 2023, the Fellows gathered for a celebration event to showcase their work in short presentations to their faculty advisors, community partners and other University community members. Herman Holt, interim provost and vice chancellor of academic affairs, and Daniel Casso, son-in-law to the McCulloughs, both spoke glowingly about the program and its benefits.

Learn more about this year’s McCullough Fellows and their real-world work:

Casey King, director of sustainability, said it is an honor to be a part of such a well-regarded and successful program.

Hope Donnellan

Project: Developing a Heat Vulnerability Index for Buncombe County, North Carolina

Community Partner: GreenWorks

Faculty Advisor: Jackie Langille, associate professor of environmental studies

Hope Donnellan worked with Nicole McNeil at GreenWorks to expand on a heat study of the Asheville City area in 2019 to include the whole of Buncombe County. She used mapping software to overlay temperature and social vulnerability data over the map of Buncombe County, with district zones to create a visual, and analyzed the data to target neighborhoods for tree planting and other methods to reduce heat vulnerability. She found that downtown, the River Arts District and South Slope had high levels of heat vulnerability.

"These areas have relatively high temperatures, not a whole lot of vegetation and a large portion of the population with health issues that are exacerbated by heat, such as heart disease or asthma, even depression,” Donnellan said.

She is working on an interactive website with her faculty advisor, Jackie Langille, and the National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), to be launched in March.

For her program day, the students went to various places around Asheville to measure temperatures with portable heat sensors loaned by the UNC Asheville Atmospheric Sciences Department.

“We went to the MST [Mountains-to-Sea Trail] by the Folk Art Center, and we went to the third floor of the parking garage at the Asheville Mall,” Donnellan said, “which is actually the hottest location in all of Buncombe County.”

Hope Donnellan presents her heat vulnerability data.

Felipe Ahumada

Project: Evaluating Inclusivity and Access to Outdoor Recreation in Western North Carolina and Exploring Equity in Trail Maintenance Volunteer Work

Community Partner: Carolina Mountain Club

Faculty Advisor: Jonathan Brown, assistant professor of economics

Felipe Ahumada examined inclusivity, access and equity among outdoor recreation and trail maintenance volunteer work by creating a survey and completing a literature review. His survey was distributed by the Carolina Mountain Club (CMC), the Noir Collective and Latinos Adventureros. He found that people mostly needed more opportunities and more information in order to get involved.

"By far people need more information. They just don't know there are volunteer opportunities going on or trail main opportunities," Ahumada said.

For his program day with the other Fellows, they helped build steps on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail with CMC.

"Super labor intensive work; it took us four hours to build three steps,” Ahumada said. The Fellows got “some boots on the ground experience on what goes into volunteer trail work."

Felipe Ahumada discusses inclusivity in outdoor recreation and volunteering.

Ava Ingle

Project: Discovering Energy Efficiency Opportunities in Asheville’s Craft Brewing Industry

Community Partner: Asheville-Buncombe Air Quality Agency

Faculty Advisor: Evan Couzo, associate professor of atmospheric science

Ava Ingle worked with the Asheville-Buncombe Air Quality Agency to evaluate energy efficiency opportunities with four local breweries: Cellarest, Wicked Weed, River Arts District Brewing and Hi-Wire.

“The process of brewing beer is actually extremely energy intensive,” Ingle said. “In a brew house where all the magic happens, breweries consume a lot of natural gas to generate steam, and also once the beer is complete, they use a lot of electricity in the refrigeration section to keep it at a certain temperature.”

The consumption of this energy leads to a higher greenhouse gas emissions in our local atmosphere. She used the EPA’s Energy Star Treasure Map program and found the best opportunities for efficiency were in the hot water, steam and refrigeration systems. If the breweries implemented the suggested efficiency methods, 309,336 pounds of CO2 would be avoided from the atmosphere and they could potentially save up to $25,827.

Ava Ingle and the partners who supported her work in reducing carbon emissions in brewing.

Julia Thomas

Project: Soil Arthropod Biodiversity: An Investigation in Eastern Hemlocks Following Chemical Treatment

Community Partner: Hemlock Restoration Initiative

Faculty Advisor: Camila Filgueiras, assistant professor of biology

Julia Thomas’ research centered on the effects of the pesticides used to manage the invasive hemlock wooly adelgid, which are decimating eastern and Carolina hemlock trees, on the soil biodiversity, particularly arthropods. The phylum Arthropoda contains a wide diversity of animals with hard exoskeletons and jointed appendages, such as insects, spiders, centipedes and millipedes.

She completed her research with the Hemlock Restoration Initiative, collecting 500 samples from three treatment sites in Sandy Mush game lands. Among the sites were an untreated control, sites treated in 2018 and sites treated in 2023. All sites were treated by soil drench, a method of applying chemical insect control to the soil around the tree, and had two different pesticides used. Thomas looked for changes in biodiversity and abundance across the samples.

"The values were consistent across all the different treatments that we sampled. This suggests that there is no effect by the chemical use on the biodiversity of the arthropod communities," Thomas said. “When we looked at abundance, we noticed different changes in abundance in different groups.”

There was a decrease in some species at recently treated sites, but the 2018 sites showed a potential for recovery over time. For some other species, an increase in abundance could be tied to a loss of predators or reduced competition. Others were consistent across all the treatments and weren't affected by the treatments.

Julia Thomas presents on the effects of hemlock wooly adelgid pesticide on soil biodiversity.

Juliette Malowany

Project: Photographing Roan Highlands: An Insight into Art and Land Conservation

Community Partner: U.S. Forest Service

Faculty Advisor: Carrie Tomberlin, senior lecturer of art and art history

Juliette Malowany sought to better understand photography’s role in public land conservation and environmental education by taking photographs of Roan Highland National Forest. She also completed a survey and literature review, looking at what inspires and challenges people when protecting public lands.

Roan Highlands sits at an elevation 6,285 feet, which creates a unique biome.

"Because its elevation is so high in such a southern area, it creates such a wonderful biodiversity hotspot,” Malowany said. “Roan Highlands is home to 27 globally rare plant communities, 800 plus known plant species, and 33 endangered species, whether federally or state recognized."

The Southern Appalachian Highland Conservancy estimates Roan Highlands sees 306 visitors a day during busy seasons. The Appalachian Trail also runs through the forest. Malowany’s photos show the signs of over-tourism—unofficial social trails made by people going off trail, trail widening and parking issues—all of which can lead to habitat and ecological degradation.

They found that many people wanted to help, but photographs or face-to-face interaction was more effective than written signs.

“Photography is one of the most accessible mediums of art; we all have phone cameras,” Malowany said. “Photography can go past language barriers, class barriers and education barriers.”

View their photography of Roan Highlands here.

Juliette Malowany partnered with the U.S. Forest Service in their work focusing on conservation photography of Roan Highlands.

For more information about the McCullough Institute and Fellowship, please visit https://mccullough.unca.edu/.

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