ESTABLISHING A PUBLIC, MULTIDISCIPLINARY STREAM DATABASE IN THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT

Each graduate student in the SCSU Environmental Education program's Water and the Environment class undertakes a detailed multidisciplinary study of one of Connecticut's numerous streams. Each student prepares a stream biography which includes a physical description from headwaters to mouth (including photos), channel and basin geology and their impacts on stream course and hydrology, hydrologic characteristics such as maximum and average discharge, runoff coefficient, and basin precipitation, land use history including historical industrial use, contemporary uses such as water supply or hydroelectric power generation, current environmental issues such as water quality and channel or flow alteration, and characteristic stream and riparian biota. In addition to direct observation, student research relies extensively on existing sources of information. Each student becomes an expert on a local stream and publishes her/his results in an online database accessible to the public for educational and community resource purposes. Salient environmental issues that are identified by the students include engineered reduction of flow to a unique freshwater tidal wetland on the Mill River, an small chemical plant on the pristine Hammonassett River that is currently awaiting potential listing as a national superfund site, and degradation of New Haven's historical wetlands via installation of tides gates and extensive channel alteration.