Chesapeake Watershed Initiative
Franklin & Marshall College
Funded by grants from the Richard King Mellon Foundation and the Steinman Foundation, the interdisciplinary Chesapeake Watershed Initiative (CWI) studies the legacy of human impacts on floodplains within the Chesapeake Watershed and applies its findings through targeted action focused in Lancaster County, PA. The CWI, housed at local Franklin & Marshall College, aims to understand the effects of colonial settlement, dam construction, dam removal, and restoration. The Initiative interacts with a wide variety of disciplines including history, hydrology, earth science, communications, politics, and economics to understand the complex relationship between our society and the Chesapeake Watershed. The CWI carries out its mission through a three-fold approach of science, education, and action.
In the News: Leap Day Lecture
Join us, as principal investigator Dorothy Merritts delivers the opening Mather Scholar Lecture at West Chester University, titled "Unearthing Earth's past, envisioning its future: Rewilding landscapes to improve ecosystems and waterways"
New publication: Peck et al.
Back from the past? Assessment of nitrogen removal ability of buried historic wetland soils before and after a 1-year incubation on a restored floodplain
"Ultimately, our results suggest that while inclusion of historic, hydric soils and their legacy micro-biomes is valuable for N-removal in floodplain restoration, the recovery of historic, hydric soils is predictably slow, and attainment of restoration goals, such as increased denitrification, may require multiple years."
Our team in the field, investigating The Trench...
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