The following story was published by WAND-TV on Sept. 8, 2026.

There’s a surprising amount of science behind the way that cities are planned and built. University of Illinois Springfield researcher and assistant professor of ecohydrology Kyle Blount is tackling research regarding environmental equity and impacts in cities.

“There’s this concept called the urban heat island where cities are hotter than surrounding rural areas, and that can interact with how much water is in the environment and where that water is going,” said Blount. “So a lot of my work has been focused on trying to understand how water and energy interact in urban environments, and how that affects how hot it is.”

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