Aufdenkampe, A.K., D.B. Arscott, B. Evans, and L. Perez. 2024. Stroud Water Research Center Report #2024-001.
The Delaware River Watershed Initiative (DRWI) Pollution Assessment was conducted in two stages. The Stage 1 Pollution Assessment: Rapid Assessment provided contextual framing of DRWI achievements to date for a strategy review by the William Penn Foundation. The assessment was developed from existing tools such as Model My Watershed and the Focus Area Evaluation Tool that had datasets in need of updates (land cover from 2011 and weather from 1960–1990) and not all implemented DRWI project data available. The Stage 1 timeline was too short to update these datasets.
The Stage 2 Pollution Assessment: Refined Assessment was designed to:
- Provide a more robust and dynamic assessment system for more accurate future program assessments and conservation planning.
- Update key datasets:
- Land cover from 2011 to 2019 product (2001-2019).
- Weather data from 1960-90 to 2000-19.
- Higher-resolution stream networks.
- Conservation projects from more sources and further back in time.
- Develop assessment system based on previously-developed tools to:
- Rapidly reanalyze progress toward achieving acceptable water quality;
- Explore hotspot maps and summary data to inform focus area targets and opportunities, and to estimate future costs to achieve a beneficial water quality goal.
- Iteratively re-do assessments based on changing input and targets/objectives.
