[IQP] Assessment and Improvement of Solid Waste Pollution Crisis: Restoration of Panama’s Juan Diaz River Watershed

Sponsor: Marea Verde
Student Team: Alexander Boucher, Sophie Chretien, Alexander Guerra, Kristen Soden

Abstract: The goal of this project was to characterize and provide information on the Juan Diaz Watershed in Panama for our sponsor organization Marea Verde. Marea Verde is a non-profit dedicated to cleaning up the environment and preserving the ecosystems within and surrounding Panama. The sponsor provided the team with high-resolution satellite images, communal ground-level photos, and a community outreach survey distributed to residents in the watershed. These batches of data were analyzed. The conclusion was that the infrastructure is nowhere near sufficient to support the current and future populations living in the communities on the river. The WPI team recommends that Marea Verde continue the unfinished work of characterizing the Juan Diaz Watershed with the basis that we have created from this preliminary data. Then present a proposal to the Panamanian government outlining all the issues in the watershed in hopes that they will fund a mass overhaul of resources and garbage collection infrastructure to mitigate this pollution issue for years to come.

Links: Final Report

This final report is available on the WPI eProjects 2.0 platform. Please click on the link above to learn more.