News Environment
Pennsylvania research team gets grant to study effectiveness of riparian buffers

At a time when Pennsylvania is largely counting on riparian buffers to achieve water-quality improvements needed to meet the state’s obligations for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, a multidisciplinary Penn State research team is studying whether the agricultural pollution-prevention devices are working properly.

Riparian buffers — areas adjacent to streams or wetlands that contain a combination of trees, shrubs and grasses — are managed differently from the surrounding landscape to provide conservation benefits. In agricultural areas, buffers intercept sediment, nutrients, pesticides and chemicals of environmental concern in surface runoff and in shallow subsurface water flow to reduce the amounts that get into waterways. | READ MORE