Penn State student bridges Indigenous geography and engineering in the Amazon

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Fourth-year environmental systems engineering major Sofia Hoffman spent a month in Ecuador’s Amazon Basin doing the kind of research that many students do not encounter until graduate school. Hoffman worked with native Kichwa communities on an environmental monitoring effort focused on contamination linked to off-the-grid oil extraction as part of Penn State Assistant Professor of Geography Belén Noroña’s research in the Yasuní National Park.

Hoffman joined Noroña in Ecuador as the project moved from campus-based research to data collection. Getting to the research locations required hours of river travel by motorized canoe and speedboat to reach hard-to-access sites with limited basic services.

“At first, it was intimidating,” Hoffman said. “We were deep in the Amazon, and I had a lot of moments where I thought, ‘Am I cut out for this?’ We’re on the back of motorcycles going from site to site, trekking through the jungle trying get to these remote locations.”

Upon arrival, Hoffman and Noroña hosted a two-day workshop grounded in Kichwa knowledge of the territory and of how oil-related pollution manifests in daily life. The sessions included forest-territory mapping, an approach that connects environmental change to the fleshed experience of contamination.

Residents described where oil spills have occurred, how water presumably contaminated by industrial waste moves through wetlands and streams, and where they have seen changes in fishing and hunting areas. As they built the map together, community members identified “where the forest feels pain," they said, and linked those places to specific sites they wanted documented. The team used that participatory map to decide areas to sample.

“The community can see what’s happening in their bodies, and mirror that map in another map of the land, as they think their bodies and livelihoods are entwined with the forest,” Noroña said. “In that framing, where the body feels pain, the land feels pain too, and those places can be located in the territory.”

Hoffman said the mapping helped translate Indigenous observations about spills and environmental change into a field plan the team could carry out.

“This research is interesting because it’s not just collecting information; it’s a collaborative effort,” Hoffman said. “We combined Kichwa knowledge with my background in analytical chemistry and Belén’s knowledge of oil extraction and Indigenous cartography to think through what we might expect to find, then used that to build the map that guided our sampling plan.”

Hoffman said the project’s approach depended on clear communication and the trust developed through Noroña’s ongoing collaborations with Kichwa communities. Hoffman was born in Argentina and is bilingual in Spanish and English and said that community trust and her ability to speak Spanish helped her build rapport, while also navigating the demands of rigorous sampling and community accountability.

Once the team identified priority areas, Hoffman helped collect soil samples to provide a more comprehensive picture of the contamination. The sampling focused on total petroleum hydrocarbons, a common indicator of oil pollution, and PFAS, a class of persistent industrial chemicals that can be associated with extraction processes and infrastructure.

Hoffman said community members connected those environmental concerns to health problems they believe have grown more common in recent years.

“Children as young as three years old report having joint pain,” Hoffman said. “When a three-year-old is telling you, ‘I can’t walk because my joints hurt so bad,’ it’s heartbreaking. There’s also a reported phenomenon where people are starting to experience blindness at an early age.”

Hoffman said while she could not draw medical conclusions from what she heard in the field, the accounts reinforced why residents wanted environmental conditions documented with evidence tied to place. Working at that intersection of lived experience, Indigenous understanding of forest contamination, and environmental engineering tools helped her see how geography, as a discipline, facilitates the integration of cartographic data and chemistry to meet the needs of local communities. Particularly important to this project was asking questions relevant to Kichwa residents and ensuring results benefit Indigenous needs for accountability.

Hoffman said the experience broadened her view as an engineering student, introducing her to geography’s way of working across environmental data and the human dimensions that shape how that data is gathered and used.

“When I first thought about geography, I didn’t realize how interdisciplinary it is,” Hoffman said. “Coming from a STEM background, I think we need more geographers included in important discussions about how the things engineers and scientists design affect people and places.”

Noroña said the collaboration was not one-directional. Hoffman’s technical training helped ensure that sampling and interpretation remained rigorous, and Noroña said Hoffman pushed the work forward through late nights spent reviewing scientific literature and troubleshooting field questions.

“She was working crazy hours … she would wait until night 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. to look for research papers, just to make sure our work was going well,” Noroña said. “I have brought students to the field in the past, and she did remarkably well compared to graduate students.”

As the work moved from collection to interpretation, Noroña said Hoffman became a key source of technical understanding as the team brought results back to the communities communicating what the findings mean.

“Everything I know about the presence of PFAS in processes of oil extraction in this part of the Amazon has been possible due to Sofia’s involvement and commitment to the project,” Noroña said.

Hoffman said the relationships built during the trip will forever shape how she thinks about what research is for and who it should serve.

“The most impactful part was getting to connect with the community, especially the women,” Hoffman said. “It was one of the most life-changing opportunities of my life. I truly feel like the work we’re doing is going to make a difference or at least bring attention to an issue that’s been going on for a long time.”