Penn State to study Pennsylvania riparian buffers

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — 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.

The most recent Watershed Implementation Plan that Pennsylvania submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency includes 83,000 acres of new riparian buffers along streams on agricultural lands. The estimated cost to establish those buffers exceeds $20 million annually through 2025. Obviously, it would be helpful for state and federal officials to know how effective buffers really are, said research team leader Heather Preisendanz, associate pro-