Stroud Scientists
& Educators Present Disseminating Our Findings to our Peers & the Public at Large

Our ability to disseminate our findings to a broad audience allows us to increase awareness and create a public dialogue centered on the protection, preservation and restoration of watersheds everywhere. It’s for that reason that our scientists and educators engage in both scientific and public forums to share their findings. The following highlights recent presentations.

Our Partners in Stewardship: Watershed Associations
The Value of Streamside Buffers
Just Who Owns the Water, Anyway?
Taking Water for Granted
Stream Metabolism & Dissolved Organic Molecules
The Making of Great Scientists

OUR PARTNERS IN STEWARDSHIP: WATERSHED ASSOCIATIONS

Stroud educator Vivian Williams spoke to the Chester-Ridley-Crum (CRC) Watersheds Association on September 12th as part of the association’s annual efforts to train new volunteers and review quality control protocols to ensure that the water quality data collected by this mostly volunteer group of waterkeepers is of consistent quality.

The group’s efforts focus on the Chester, Ridley and Crum streams — major sources of drinking water for the area, including the town of Media, PA — and help to document water quality. The primary reason for the good quality of much of Ridley Creek is the riparian corridor provided by the trees in the Ridley Creek Park and Tyler Arboretum.

Vivian was honored for her contributions in the field of watershed education by the Chester-Ridley-Crum (CRC) Watersheds Association at their Annual Awards Dinner, which was held at the White Manor Country Club in Malvern, PA on Nov. 4th.

For more information on the Chester Ridley Crum Watersheds Association, go to:
http://crcwatersheds.org/

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Municipal officials and members of the public gathered at PPL Wallenpaupack Environmental Learning Center to hear Stroud educator Vivian Williams present the findings from buffer research conducted over decades by the Stroud Water Research Center — reinforcing what was so eloquently stated in the opinion piece, Trees Improve the Health of our Waterways, by Jamie Blaine and Bernard Sweeney in The News Journal during the month of October.
 
In his commitment to educate the community at large, conservation organizations and our public officials about the science behind the benefits of streamside forests, best practices for planting and maintaining them, how to overcome objections and seek funding for these efforts, the Center’s director Bernard Sweeney also addressed attendees at events hosted by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and the Natural Resource Conservation Service. In addition, senior scientist John Jackson presented, Trees, Streams and Water Quality: The Connections, to the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy and Lower Salford Township in September.

For more information about Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy, go to:
http://www.perkiomenwatershed.org/

For more information about PPL Wallenpaupack Environmental Learning Center, go to:
http://www.pplweb.com/community+partners/our+communities/environmental
+preserves/ Lake+Wallenpaupack+Home.htm

To read or comment on the Op Ed piece in The News Journal, go to:
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20091004/OPINION09/910040303/1110

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JUST WHO OWNS THE WATER, ANYWAY?
As Communication Studies students at West Chester University (WCU) learned in a lecture given in a conflict resolution course, Who Owns the Water is a complicated and challenging issue. Exactly how complicated, was an eye opener for many students who sat wide-eyed at the facts they learned from Stroud educator Christina Medved about where their water comes from, just how much it costs, and why people around the world — and here in the U.S.A. — are fighting over it. The key take aways? Resolving our freshwater crises will take understanding, cooperation, and vigilance by each of us. It’s in our best interest to become educated about the issues, to engage in finding solutions, and to do our part on a daily basis. 

“Not only did the students report that this topic was interesting,” said Dr. Denise Polk, Assistant Professor of the Department of Communication Studies at WCU, “but a purpose of the guest lecture series was to give students ideas for developing their own projects to advance an environmental issue. As a result of Christina’s presentation, one group selected water conservation at West Chester University; they have designed a survey posted on Facebook and are collecting data about WCU student water usage as one part of their project.” Perhaps most satisfying of all, Polk went on to say that “undoubtedly the students will walk away with a much more sophisticated understanding of the complexity of issues surrounding limited resources such as water, as well as a sense of empowerment that they can do something about these issues.”

For more information about West Chester University’s Communication Studies department, go to:
http://communication.wcupa.edu/

To hear more about the education department’s mission, check out this brief video clip of Christina Medved, a Stroud educator for more than eight years:
click here

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TAKING WATER FOR GRANTED
Members of Delaware’s Hockessin-Greenville Rotary were reminded of the vital need to protect and conserve our freshwater resources at a September breakfast presentation entitled, Backyard Solutions to a Global Water Crisis, by Bernard Sweeney, director of the Stroud Water Research Center. Sweeney outlined scenarios that most of us rarely think about but which put our limited water supply at risk. He reminded guests that our underlying health, as well as the economy, rely on the availability of fresh water. “We really take it for granted,” said one attendee after the presentation. “There’s an assumption,” said Sweeney, “that we have a right to fresh water — and that it will always be here, yet we see that this isn’t the case in many places around the world.” As Sweeney pointed out, it’s our collective responsibility to ensure that we do what we can to protect and conserve our water supplies in our own communities, and the good news is that there are many things we can do as individuals. Step one: conserve.

For more information about the Hockessin-Greenville Rotary, go to:
http://www.hgrotary.org/

For more information about Bernard Sweeney, go to:
http://www.stroudcenter.org/about/bernardsweeney.htm

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STREAM METABOLISM & DISSOLVED ORGANIC MOLECULES
The Gordon Research Conference on Catchment Science: Interactions of Hydrology, Biology, and Geochemistry, was the setting for senior research scientist Lou Kaplan of the Stroud Water Research Center to present research on Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM) and its role in stream metabolism. In his poster presentation, Whole-stream measurement of semi-labile dissolved organic matter uptake, Kaplan described an innovative combination of novel methodologies used to determine the amount of organic molecules being used for energy by microorganisms in a stream ecosystem.  These methods include the use of bioreactors he developed and patented in the 1990’s and extracts of tulip poplar trees grown in a chamber enriched with 13C (the stable isotope of carbon) carbon dioxide. Kaplan’s data suggest that much of the metabolism in streams is fuelled by organic molecules dissolved in the “watershed tea” found within stream water.

The Gordon Research Conferences were established to provide a forum for direct communication between scientists, to promote discussions and the free exchange of cutting edge ideas at the research frontiers of the biological, chemical and physical sciences.

For more information on The Gordon Research Conferences, go to:
http://www.grc.org/about.aspx

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THE MAKING OF GREAT SCIENTISTS
Critical thinking and the ability to clearly articulate hypotheses and findings are seminal facets of a scientist’s training. Poster presentations allow scientists to hone these skills while soliciting feedback from peers. This process ensures the important collaboration and dialogue that are fundamental to the scientific process and move scientific fields forward. As such, Stroud Water Research Center scientists encourage the post-doctoral researchers and Ph.D. students they mentor to leverage this important vehicle and present their research at scientific meetings. Most recently, Dr. Yin-Phan Tsang, a research associate at the Stroud Water Research Center, and Ms. Christine McLauglin, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania doing her research at the Stroud Water Research Center, presented posters at the Gordon Conference on Catchment Science.  Yin-Phan presented her model of stream flow in the White Clay Creek, which incorporated the amount of groundwater evapotransporation (outgassing of water to the atmosphere) by trees in the riparian zone and its impact on the water budget for the stream.  

Chris presented her research ideas for integrating the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and nitrogen with the hydrologic cycle to better understand the processes influencing water quality in stream ecosystems.  Both Yin-Phan and Chris received scholarships from the Gordon Research Conference that allowed them to accompany Lou Kaplan to this meeting held at the Proctor Academy in Andover, New Hampshire.

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