Since 2016, Stroud Water Research Center has been a part the Delaware River Watershed Initiative (DRWI), a groundbreaking, multi-year project to monitor, protect, and restore critical freshwater sources for 15 million people from New York to the mouth of the Delaware Bay. The Stroud Center helps guide community science volunteer monitoring of water quality in eight regional subwatersheds in the Delaware River basin.
Deforestation and runoff from farms, cities, and suburbs threatens the health of the Delaware River watershed. With funding from the William Penn Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, and others, the Stroud Center’s Robin L. Vannote Watershed Restoration Program is helping Berks and Chester County farmers implement pollution reduction practices and riparian forested buffers.
The wide-ranging initiative features eight ecologically significant “sub-watershed clusters” — about 25 percent of the total Delaware River Basin — across four states. Of these, the Stroud Center is collaborating with over 14 organizations in the Brandywine-Christina, Middle Schuylkill and Schuylkill Highlands cluster groups. As this effort progresses, we will be using a variety of techniques to measure the ecological responses to these restoration efforts.
DRWI News
Students Take to the Woods to Monitor Streamside Forests
Through a Scientist’s Lens: Training Citizens in Freshwater Stewardship
Volunteers to Monitor Threats to Water for 15 Million People
DRWI Projects and Publications
