Streams and Rivers

Do you enjoy outdoor activities? Become a community scientist. First Investigation of Stream Health (FISH) monitors changes to local streams and their habitats.

Plastic pollution is a widespread problem across the earth. One does not have to go far to find litter strewn along roadsides and parking lots and scattered in and around waterways.

Embeddedness is a complicated word to describe a simple concept. Are the rocks, gravel, and boulders in the bed of a stream exposed? Or are they buried by sediment, surrounded by soils, and barely visible?

One of the many visual indicators you might use to assess the health of a stream is the amount of stream bank vegetation and other cover.

Water is one of our most important resources. Numerous farms have a stream or drainageway cutting through heavily used pastures, exercise lots, or barnyards.

A brief introduction and instructional guide to using live staking as an inexpensive and simple technique to restoring eroding stream banks.

This manual for landowners describes where wetland restoration is possible and how it is done. It covers basic wetland concepts, ecological concepts and terms, wetland restoration, and maintenance.

Monitoring our waterways is important for assessing stream conditions and water quality and using visual assessments is a low-tech way to evaluate stream health.

Live stakes are an increasingly popular way to repair eroding streams on a budget. However, moving plants always comes with the risk of spreading pests and diseases.

Transparency tubes are popular for use in stream monitoring programs. They are also part of the "First Investigation of Stream Health" activity.

A riparian buffer involves planting or retaining trees, shrubs, or tall grasses along the banks of rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds.

This restoration includes stabilizing and/or altering the stream channel to slow and direct the flow of water to reduce erosion and flooding.

This article described how to plant and maintain a grass buffer around riparian areas for wildlife. Grass buffers do not replace forest buffers, but they can be used in areas where planting and maintaining a forest would not be possible.

Simple Solutions for your Eroding Backyard Stream receives national award recognition.

"At the Side of Spring Creek" is an ongoing article series telling the stories of Penn State Extension staff and colleagues as they establish and maintain a research-orientated conservation planting along a stream.

Tree shelter cages constructed with metal garden fencing help protect newly planted tree and shrub seedlings from wildlife damage and other problems such as overheating, and wind knock-over sometimes associated with plastic tree tubes.

Trying to determine if a tiny tree is alive while it is dormant and down inside a six-foot tube can challenge even the most expert arborists.

Live staking is a low cost and easy way to add fast growing plants to stream banks. Join this in-person event to learn how, and to help repair a local stream!

At the Side of Spring Creek is an ongoing article series telling the stories of Penn State Extension staff and colleagues as they establish and maintain a research-orientated conservation planting along a stream.

Soil is a valuable and dynamic resource that has impact on water quality in riparian buffers.