Stroud Water Research Center

Protecting the water you .

Advancing knowledge and stewardship of fresh water in Lancaster County and around the world through research, education, and watershed restoration. 

Did you Know?

Stroud Water Research Center works with farmers and landowners to secure approximately $2M annually in Lancaster County for improving land management to protect our fresh water.

Stroud Water Research Center plants an average of 85 acres of trees every year in Lancaster County on farms and with municipalities and landowners to protect our shared fresh water.

Lancaster farmers improve their practices to protect water quality on approximately 1,400 acres of farmland every year with the help of Stroud Water Research Center. 

Farms and communities in Lancaster County planted over 16,000 trees each year with the help of Stroud Water Research Center.

SAVING STREAMS WITH SMART SCIENCE

For more than 50 years, Stroud Water Research Center has brought together the world’s leading freshwater scientists to collaborate on rigorous, groundbreaking research.

These experiments — often conducted over years or even decades — are yielding science-based insights to help us understand, value, and protect freshwater ecosystems. And in turn, to keep our drinking water safe, control flooding, protect biodiversity, sequester carbon, recharge groundwater, control microclimates, and more.

CARING FOR THE LAND TO PROTECT THE WATER

Our watershed restoration team links research with education and improvements on land to protect fresh water.

We do this through tree plantings, partnerships with farmers, landowners, and conservation professionals, and stream monitoring with partners to evaluate progress.

These relationships lead to projects that reforest the land around streams, reduce flooding, and make our fresh water cleaner. Together, our scientists and watershed restoration team have conducted trials to discover how to improve tree survival rates from 20% to over 85%. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has since adopted these methods into its guidelines.

FRESHWATER EDUCATION FOR ALL

Our education team translates our scientific research and watershed restoration work into meaningful learning opportunities for diverse audiences.

Our programs are hands-on, outdoors, in streams, and on canoe trips, allowing learners of all ages and backgrounds to develop more meaningful relationships with their local watersheds. We also offer virtual and online learning, and bring watershed education programs directly to students in our Mobile Lab.

LANCASTER SPOTLIGHT: PROVIDING VITAL TREE CARE AFTER PLANTING

We’re working with farmers and landowners to plant and care for streamside forests (also called riparian buffers) and clean water practices on farms. Riparian forest buffers are the most effective and cost-efficient option for restoring healthy streams and rivers.

We are working in the most agriculturally intense portions of both the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River watersheds: two of the most important watershed restoration efforts

in the nation.

Nowhere is this work more important than in Lancaster County, where over half of our streams are impaired, sending the highest loads of pollution to the Chesapeake Bay of any county in Pennsylvania.

We plant many acres of forested buffers each year in Lancaster County. Each acre of streamside forest is an incredibly potent ecological resource for fish, birds, pollinators, other wildlife, and of course, people.

In addition to tree plantings, we also offer ongoing buffer care maintenance. This fills a critical gap in many other forest buffer restoration programs. And along the way, we’re continually learning how to improve tree survival outcomes.

Your help today enables us to continue our work in Lancaster County to protect fresh water!