PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (Nov. 13, 2025) – Southeast Texas communities are no strangers to flooding, industrial pollution, and the growing challenges of climate change. Prairie View A&M University is stepping up to help.
Noel Estwick, Ph.D.
Dr. Noel Estwick, assistant professor and research scientist in PVAMU’s College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, has been awarded a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to lead a new initiative that brings science and community voices together to tackle these overlapping threats.
The project — “Southeast Texas Urban IFL: Equitable Solutions for Communities Caught Between Floods and Air Pollution” — will create an Urban Integrated Field Lab (IFL) in the Beaumont–Port Arthur region, an area long affected by flooding and air quality issues tied to the petrochemical industry.
Researchers will study how natural systems, infrastructure, and human behavior intersect in communities that regularly experience hurricanes, oil spills, and other disasters. Their work will help forecast environmental risks and guide equitable adaptation strategies like green infrastructure and community-based resilience planning.
The findings will help design solutions that can be applied not only in Southeast Texas but across other vulnerable Gulf Coast regions.
A key part of the project is collaboration with residents and local leaders. The DOE’s Southeast Texas Urban IFL initiative emphasizes co-producing knowledge with the community, ensuring that the people most affected by these challenges help shape the research and solutions.
For Prairie View A&M University, the award highlights the institution’s leadership in environmental and climate resilience research, creating opportunities for faculty and students to engage directly in work that can improve lives across Texas and the Gulf Coast.
A modified version of this story was originally posted at pvamu.edu/research.
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