Stroud Scientists
& Educators PresentDisseminating 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.
STREAM TREES: OUR WATER’S NATURAL DEFENSE The DuPont Environmental Education Center on the Riverfront of Wilmington, DE, home to the Delaware Nature Society, was the setting for the Delaware’s Watersheds Lecture Series and Bern Sweeney’s presentation, Stream Trees: Our Water’s Natural Defense. Sweeney, the Center’s director, is responsible for orchestrating the planting of more than 100,000 trees in southeastern, PA in an effort to protect the Christina River and improve its water quality for use by New Castle County, DE residents and wildlife. His decades long research on the role of streamside forests in the structure and function of stream and river ecosystems was also the subject of a talk entitled, Water Quality Benefits of Riparian Forest Buffers, for the Society of Women Environmental Professionals Capital Chapter Conference in Harrisburg, PA in March.
To read an abstract or the full paper, Riparian deforestation, stream narrowing, and loss of stream ecosystem services, as published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, go to: http://www.pnas.org/content/101/39/14132.abstract
THE STATE OF THE SCHUYKILL RIVER Stroud Water Research Center scientist, John Jackson, presented The State of the Schuylkill River: Past, Present and Future, at the Schuylkill Learning Community’s annual retreat in April. Jackson used data from 15 years of study on 156 stream sites distributed throughout the Schuylkill River basin, as the basis for his discussion about the differences in ecological condition, the specific factors that contribute to these differences, and how conditions have changed since the early 1970s. Findings from the research provide a foundation that will inform the community’s management and restoration efforts.
For more information about John Jackson, go to: http://www.stroudcenter.org/about/johnjackson.htm
GROUND WATER AND SURFACE WATER: A SINGLE RESOURCE The May 6th gathering of the Pennsylvania Water Symposium in State College, Pennsylvania provided a forum for 200 experts representing watershed groups, conservation districts, planning commissions, and state agencies including the Department of Environmental Protection, Environmental Protection Agency, US Geological Survey, United States Department of Agriculture, as well as educators and research institutions — all of whom where there to discuss the key water resource management issues and priorities of the state. Among the presenters was Stroud Water Research Center Scientist Anthony Aufdenkampe, who discussed the benefits of real-time, in situ sensor networks installed in the Christina River Basin, the result of the new Critical Zone Observatory, and their role in assisting state agencies in monitoring water quality.
TAKING ON NABS Bern Sweeney, the Center’s director, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award, by the North American Benthological Society, and scientists from the Stroud Water Research Center presented scientific findings to their peers at the 2010 joint Summer Meeting of the North American Benthological Society (NABS) and the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, in Santa Fe, NM in June. The meeting’s theme: Aquatic Sciences: Global Changes from the Center to the Edge, focused on inland waters and the interdependencies of aquatic systems and humankind. Presentations from the Center’s scientists covered topics including: food web dynamics, the invertebrate community structures of floodplain ponds, the phenomenon of climatic differences in the tropics and their influence on watershed and stream conditions, the use of a Stroud patented bioreactor as a model system to duplicate various stream metabolism processes, and the effect of temperature changes on warm water fish species and aquatic macroinvertebrates. Presenters included Drs. David Arscott, John Jackson, Lou Kaplan, J. Denis Newbold, Bern Sweeney, research associate Yin-Phan Tsang, and Ph.D. candidate from the University of Pennsylvania, Christine McLaughlin.
WATERSHED = FOODSHED As part of the Livable Landscapes, Sustainable Communities track of the 2010 Pennsylvania Land Conservation Conference hosted by the Pennsylvania Land Trust in Malvern, PA in April, the Center’s director, Bern Sweeney, presented a lecture entitled, Watershed = Foodshed, and discussed the importance of watershed protection and best management practices for farmers to ensure clean water, healthy food and a vibrant community. The 400 attendees who included: land trust staff, watershed professionals, conservation district staff, as well as farm and agricultural preservation boards, joined Sweeney and members of the Brandywine Conservancy and Natural Lands Trust for a presentation about the regulatory and non-regulatory watershed conservation tools available to municipalities.
Stroud scientist Lou Kaplan presented Dissolved Organic Matter in Stream Ecosystems: Watershed Tea Redux to the faculty and students of the University of Connecticut’s Geosciences department in March, to explain the role of leaf litter as an energy supply for downstream communities of microbes and macroinvertebrates, and its potential to affect the climate.
As part of Audubon Greenwich’s Nature Program Events, the Center’s director Bern Sweeney presented The Science of Water. The overview of the Center’s research and the role we each play in the preservation of our drinking water supply came just weeks after Earth Day and during the EPA’s celebration of National Drinking Water Week.
For more information about National Drinking Water Week and educational resources provided by the Environmental Protection Agency, go to: http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/waterweek/index.html
The DuPont Environmental Education Center on the Riverfront of Wilmington, DE, home to the Delaware Nature Society, was the setting for the Delaware’s Watersheds Lecture Series and Bern Sweeney’s presentation, Stream Trees: Our Water’s Natural Defense. Sweeney, the Center’s director, is responsible for orchestrating the planting of more than 100,000 trees in southeastern, PA in an effort to protect the Christina River and improve its water quality for use by New Castle County, DE residents and wildlife. His decades long research on the role of streamside forests in the structure and function of stream and river ecosystems was also the subject of a talk entitled, Water Quality Benefits of Riparian Forest Buffers, for the Society of Women Environmental Professionals Capital Chapter Conference in Harrisburg, PA in March. 
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