WATERSHED BASED RESEARCH AND EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES AT BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY

The Fuller Hollow Creek Watershed on which the Binghamton University campus is located is used as our base location for research and education activities within the Upper Susquehanna River Basin (USRB) in upstate New York. On campus training involves integrated study of physical, chemical and biological processes at three field sites within areas of differing land use. We use pollution as the common unifying theme to assess the complexity of biogeochemical processes through study of 1) atmospheric deposition and its relation to air quality; 2) transformation processes in the vadose zone and the relation to groundwater quality, and 3) the relation of land use to surface water quality. We have found that establishing a watershed based hydrological-geological-ecological linkage provides an approach to studying processes that are directly applicable to environmental problem solving at several scales. These on campus projects have been supported by the NSF CCLI program.

Off campus, wetland creation, development and functioning demonstration projects are a primary focus for undergraduate and graduate research. Ongoing monitoring and modeling activities within the USRB include predicting and evaluating peak flow attenuation by wetlands, GIS based in-stream geomorphology assessments, developing hydrograph separation techniques for stormwater runoff events, and evaluation of seasonal trends in metal concentrations from a bioavailability perspective. The off campus projects have been conducted through collaborative grants with the Upper Susquehanna Coalition that are sponsored by the U.S. EPA. All of these on and off campus activities occur under the umbrella of the Center for Integrated Watershed Studies at Binghamton University, which provides opportunities for interdisciplinary watershed based training for students in rural as well as urban locations from biology, geology, and geography perspectives.