04/22/24 - 117 New Stories - REAL Environmental & Conservation Leadership In PA: http://tinyurl.com/9bh4zbtr
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Spotlight- Promoting Forest Buffers In The Lower Susquehanna
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By Matt Royer, Penn State Agriculture and Environment Center Dr. Bern Sweeney, Executive Director of the Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale, Pa, was the keynote presenter at a Stream Ecology and Forest Riparian Buffers Workshop sponsored by AEC (Agriculture and Environment Center) on November 15 in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County.
Over 100 attendees learned more about the ecological function and value of buffers, programs and incentives for restoring buffers, and toured a buffer restoration site in the neighboring Conewago Creek watershed.
Attendees were primarily from Lancaster, Lebanon, and Dauphin Counties, and represented a wide variety of interests and organizations, including Penn State Cooperative Extension, Penn State undergrad environmental majors, County Conservation Districts, state agencies such as the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, federal agencies such as the U.S.D.A. Natural Resource Conservation Service and USGS, municipalities and county planners, private environmental consultants, engineers, landscape professionals, watershed groups, and others.
Forest riparian buffers are areas along streams where native trees and shrubs have been protected or planted. They have long been recognized as one of the preferred best management practices for addressing nonpoint sources of pollution to rivers and streams. Forest buffers filter pollutants, cool water temperatures, help prevent stream bank erosion, and provide stormwater management and flood control.
In recent years, Dr. Sweeney’s research has also shown that forest buffers increase the instream processing of pollutants up to several times greater than grassed buffers. They do this by creating a greatly improved instream ecological system, with increased stream widths, diverse and higher quality substrate, and more food in the form of leaves and woody debris.
Consequently the organisms living in forested streams are far more abundant and active than streams that do not have the benefit of a forest buffer. This instream processing means that forest buffers can play an even greater role in addressing nonpoint source pollution, and can play a role in addressing point source pollution as well.
After Dr. Sweeney’s presentation on the ecology of forest buffers, David Wise, Watershed Restoration Program Manager for the Pennsylvania Office of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, presented information on the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.
CREP, a highly successful program in Pennsylvania for the restoration of forest buffers, pays 100 percent of the cost of planting forest buffers, as well as an annual financial payment to the landowner over the life of the contract (usually up to 15 years). It also covers some of the cost of the maintenance that is so critical in the first several years after trees are planted, so that landowners can hire a contractor to assist with maintenance.
After lunch, attendees visited the nearby John Hertzler farm for a tour of a CREP buffer. John talked about his project, which totals over a dozen acres along Brills Run, a tributary to the Conewago Creek. The project was planted with the help of volunteers and a contractor, but John has opted to do the maintenance himself.
While the maintenance keeps him busy, John really enjoys the project and has voluntarily added several hundred trees since planting his buffer in November 2008. The trees are growing well, and in years to come this project and many others like it will help bring cleaner water to local Pennsylvania streams like the Conewago, and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.
Video Blog: Streamside Forest Buffers Preserving Water Quality-GreenTreks
Matt Royer is Director, Lower Susquehanna Initiative, Agriculture and Environment Center, Penn State Cooperative Extension. You can reach him by sending email to: mroyer@psu.edu.
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1/24/2011 |
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