Team Bio

MaRSHiI

Jennifer R. Pournelle

I am a landscape archaeologist, cultural ecologist, and anthropologist who uses satellite imagery, air photography, ethnographic studies, and environmental data to study the relationship of ancient cities to their natural environments. I am especially concerned with social and environmental processes that affect urban sustainability over thousands of years. This project will open a new chapter in my life's work: applying the lessons learned from those studies to help solve real-world problems. Cities cannot survive without the wetlands that store and filter their water supplies - for drinking, agriculture, industry, and transportation. Basra has lost most of its water supply, and what's left is highly polluted. By building new wetlands, can we help remedy that situation? We believe we can - and we'd like the opportunity to prove it.

Jassim Almaliky

I am an environmental manager from Iraq, and I live there, in Basra City (by population the second largest city). I hold an M.Sc. degree in the field of Environmental Management (Natural Resource Management) from Queensland University, Australia (2012), and am now completing my PhD at the University of Basra's Marine Science Center (which holds a memorandum of cooperation with the University of South Carolina's School of Earth, Ocean, and Environmental Science). I am interested in the fields of water pollution remediation and water resource protection, focusing on natural, sustainable water treatment methods, such as bioremediation and phytoremediation. My current research tests the effectiveness of constructed wetland systems for treating local wastewater for reuse in agricultural irrigation, fish farming, and release into local rivers. My aim is to help solve one of the most serious issues in Iraq: direct discharge of untreated urban wastewater into our waterways.