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Marginalized communities lack full participation in social, economic, and political life, and they disproportionately bear the burden of environmental and health risks. This special issue of Environmental Engineering Science, the official journal of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP), reports research on the unique environmental challenges faced by historically marginalized communities around the world. The results of community-based participatory research with an Afro-descendant community in Columbia, Native American communities in Alaska, United States, villagers in the Philippines, disadvantaged communities in California, United States, rural communities in Mexico and Costa Rica, homeless encampments in the San Diego River (United States) watershed entrepreneurs in Durban, South Africa, and remote communities in the island nation of Fiji are presented. The research reported in this special issue is transdisciplinary, bringing engineers together with anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and public health experts. In the 13 articles in this special issue, some of the topics covered include inexpensive technologies for water treatment, novel agricultural strategies for reversing biodiversity losses, and strategies for climate change adaptation. In addition, one article covered educational strategies for teaching ethics to prepare students for humanitarian engineering, including topics of poverty, sustainability, social justice, and engineering decisions under uncertainty. Finally, an article presented ways that environmental engineering professors can engage and promote the success of underrepresented minority students and enable faculty engaged in community-based participatory research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "spotlight" column draws attention to selected articles in I Environmental Engineering Science i , the official journal of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP). Dixon I et al. i ([2]) assessed the use of a high solids anaerobic digestion (HS-AD) method for treating food waste, yard waste, and biosolids individually as well as through codigestion. Chen I et al. i ([1]) examined an ozonation step for enhancing the feasibility of biodegradation processes designed to treat total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs) and the associated total organic carbon. [Extracted from the article]

The "spotlight" column draws attention to selected articles in I Environmental Engineering Science i ( I EES i ), the official journal of the I Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors i ( I AEESP i ). These nanomaterials include hematite, magnetite, ferrihydrite, goethite, hematite-alpha, hydroxyapatite (HAP), brucite, and four different titanium dioxides. As expected, the chemical oxygen demand exerted by all the fluids decreased over time; however, a significant recalcitrant fraction was observed for four of the six amended fluids. [Extracted from the article]