William Penn Foundation Grant for Stewardship Panel to Research Impacts of Conservation Lands Stewardship on Water Resources |
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The Tohickon Creek in Richland Township, Bucks County.
Photo credit: Timothy A. Block. |
The William Penn Foundation has awarded a grant of $400,000 to form a Stewardship Panel to study the impacts of conservation lands stewardship on water resources. The project began on January 1, 2016 and will run through June 30, 2017. It will be managed by the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania and forms part of the thought-leadership effort being supported by the Foundation to advance the Delaware River Watershed Initiative (DRWI) http://www.ansp.org/research/environmental-research/projects/watershed-protection-program/
The Stewardship Panel will bring together scientists and practitioners with expertise in managing nature reserves, parks, arboreta, botanical gardens, wildlife management areas, forest management areas, conservation-oriented agricultural lands and large private landholdings from across the Delaware River Watershed and elsewhere in the eastern United States. The panel’s mission is twofold: to provide practitioners a state-of-the-art comparative review of land stewardship practices in terms of their impacts on water resources, and to provide conservation practices and grant-making programs with evidence-based criteria they can use to hone implementation and propose evaluation guidelines— ultimately, to improve water quality and quantity outcomes of funded conservation projects. Results will be in the form of a peer-reviewed handbook summarizing the proceedings and conclusions of the panel, aimed at a broad audience.
Guided panel discussions will address key questions about how investment in stewardship activities affects water resources: What land stewardship practices will bring the greatest benefits (and the lowest risks) to a watershed’s water quality and quantity compared with their costs? How can conservation land managers achieve their goals while enhancing, or at least not degrading, water quality or quantity? One objective will be to categorize land stewardship activities by comparing their costs and risks with their water resource benefits, recommending those that promise high return with modest investment and low risk. Another will be to identify practices whose water resource impacts are poorly known and should be prioritized as subjects of scientific research to evaluate impacts and improve methods.
The panel will focus on land management interventions, particularly routine activities: invasive plants removal and associated native replacement planting, deer population management, mowing, prescribed fire, timber-cutting, managing recreational use and others of similar scope. Given the grant term of 18 months, activities involving significant restoration and soil disturbance— such as streambank stabilization—will be reserved for consideration under a possible future “restoration” panel.
By June 2017, a peer-reviewed report summarizing proceedings and recommendations of the stewardship panel will be published, broadly disseminated and provided to targeted stakeholders to inform and encourage future DRWI land management funders and conservation practitioners towards broad adoption of cost-effective watershed protection-friendly land management practices.
This project is anticipated to lead to more effective stewardship impacts on watershed health. Use of the report could provide funders and practitioners with recommendations to implement cost-effective land management practices in the DRWI that are anticipated to have the
impact on improving and preserving water resources.
For more information on this project, contact Tim Block, The John J. Willaman Director of Botany at Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, at block@upenn.edu
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