Steve Wolverton and his students focus their research in zooarchaeology and ethnobiology on human impacts on the environment. They approach this topic in two ways: first, they use an archaeological perspective and second (in many cases) they use prehistoric data. Archaeologists are the ultimate mystery solvers in the sense that they work with flawed datasets using traces of cultural materials to understand past behaviors. In an applied context, Evan Carpenter (MSAG 2014) has used this perspective to understand behaviors that lead to littering based on the profiles of litter collected from sites along Hickory Creek, Texas. His research represents archaeology in a contemporary context in that he has been able to identify processes that lead to pollution in different settings. Traci Popejoy and Jon Dombrosky (current MSAG students) also do research that relies on an archaeological perspective, but the applied value of their research concerns using prehistoric data to understand past and modern environments. Traci's research centers on evaluating changes in freshwater mussel communities in the Trinity and Leon Rivers between the late Holocene and today that relate to modern human impacts. One aspect of Jon's research focuses on the late Holocene biogeography of the blue sucker in the Upper Rio Grande, an area from which the fish has been extirpated. In June and July of 2014 Steve Wolverton gave two presentations summarizing important aspects of these and related projects, one for the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC and the second for the Four Corners Lecture Series at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado. Find out more about these projects by listening to this interview with Steve entitled "Using Archaeology to Tackle Today's Problems" by Tom Yoder of KSJD's program The Zine.