Roger Williams University junior Leah Hintz could sit in front of the microscope for hours, so long as her specimen, a species of coral found in the waters off Fort Wetherill in Jamestown, did as she hoped: ingest microplastic beads. “Sometimes the coral don’t cooperate,” said Hintz with a laugh this past summer. “A few times we have been sitting here for three […]

When Shannon Kingsley and Nadia Lahlaf first arrived at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Edna Lawrence Nature Lab in May, their goal was clear: produce a tangible product highlighting how climate change has affected plant life in Rhode Island’s salt marshes since the 1950s. Getting there, however, was a road left wide-open by mentors […]

This past summer, Eva Lincoln was working in an unfamiliar place: a boat at the edge of the continental shelf, facing 12-foot swells and waking up at 2 a.m. to process water samples with tiny specks of phytoplankton in them. And she loved it. “Sleep was relative,” laughs Lincoln, a senior at Rhode Island College. […]