Picture this: A couple walks hand in hand in a community park, gazing at the picturesque stream meandering its way through banks that look like the cliffs of Dover.

Where some see eroded banks and begin to calculate the pounds of sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus flowing downstream, the couple sees a beautiful park. It's green. It has water. It appears natural.

This is a scene played out in urban watersheds everywhere. Urban streams always have cliffs, and invasive species tend be the dominant plant life. Most people don't even know bare banks equal trouble downstream. And the ultimate downstream of Pennsylvania is the Chesapeake Bay.

With half of our land mass in Pennsylvania falling within the Bay drainage area, more trees and more buffers are always welcome. The benefits of forested riparian buffers include the filtration of runoff, erosion control, flood abatement and habitat for fish and wildlife. The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay has partnered with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and Department of Environmental Protection to increase forest buffer coverage in urban areas.

StreamVitalize, a program managed by the Alliance's Pennsylvania office, offers watershed, civic and other groups the training and trees to establish riparian buffers. It is an offshoot of the statewide TreeVitalize program, a public-private partnership to help restore tree cover, educate citizens and build capacity among local governments to understand, protect and restore their urban trees. The goal is to plant 1 million trees in urban areas within the next five years.

Bringing this program to urban areas is crucial to educating a population that thinks highly degraded streams and stream banks are the norm. While we may never restore these streams to pristine conditions, many still hold healthy fish populations.

What's more, these urban and suburban streams offer some residents-mostly children-their only contact with nature. People protect what they love.

One of the requirements to receive this help is to have access and permission to establish a buffer on public-or somewhat public land. Buffers on public land will help to meet two goals: water quality benefits from the buffer and public relations for buffers and water quality.

Other perks of StreamVitalize include helping cash-strapped urban communities without the means to beautify their parks, schools and lands with native species.

Another requirement is that the landowner, whether it be through volunteers or the public works department, must follow a maintenance program. The Alliance staff will write a maintenance manual for each community once the buffer is established.

Pennsylvania has 83,000 miles of river and streams. Needless to say, there are many streamside residents to reach-some of whom have never heard the terms "riparian," "erosion" or "buffer."

Our hope is that while strolling through their local park, residents will see a lovely native tree or read an interpretive sign about water quality-and learn how to better take care of the stream they live alongside.

It is hoped that the experience will help multiply the 1 million trees by a few hundred or several thousand through the actions of those who encounter the newly planted buffers.