Projects

Since 2006, students and faculty from Chemistry, Biology, Earth Science and Geography, and Urban Studies conducted water quality monitoring on the Casperkill Creek, which runs from Peach Hill Park through the Poughkeepsie suburbs and Vassar campus to the Hudson River, We have been assessing the amount of road salt in the stream; dissolved oxygen, nutrient loading, bacteria, and heavy metal levels.  Funding for equipment, reagents, and student summer stipends has come from the URSI program, ERI funds, a New York Water Resources Institute grant, and a Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation.

This multidisciplinary environmental science project focuses on the environmental health of one of two streams on the Vassar campus. The Fonteynkill, once originating in a spring near Fountain Brook Avenue in Poughkeepsie, now begins as a storm sewer drain just north of campus. Impoundments, impervious surfaces, road salt, and other impairments make the stream biologically impoverished, yet the riparian corridor remains a haven for wildlife, bird life, and plant life. Faculty and students from Earth Science, Geography, Biology, Chemistry, and other disciplines are collaborating to collect baseline data, to monitor the stream for biological diversity, and to evaluate the impacts of planned riparian restoration of the stream corridor.

Other Projects (more info here)