River and Stream Restoration
Educational Programs and Training
By providing internship opportunities for students to work on
both state-based case studies and on the development and implementation of
regionally oriented projects, New England Land Grant Universities are enhancing
the graduate and undergraduate learning experience. Here are a few examples:
Northeast Instream Habitat Program (NEIHP) is a multidisciplinary effort combining environmental engineering, biology and geology for restoration and conservation of running waters. Seven undergraduate and graduate students from UMass and UConn gained valuable training and experience while working as technicians on NEIHP projects. Following are examples of student participation on NEIHP projects:
Graduate Student Diana Walden participated in an Integrative Assessment
of Biological and Physical Attributes of the Eightmile River, a
part of Wild and Scenic River Study. Diana conducted fish habitat assessment and physical habitat modeling and participated
in integrative analysis of ecological health of the Eightmile River. The data collected with this and other projects of
NEIHP serves as a basis for a regional analysis of hydromprphological
patterns found in Northeastern streams in Diana's Master Thesis.
The New England Regional Water Program also sponsored Diana's attendance and poster presentation at the 2007 CSREES National Water Conference.
Graduate Student Roland Deblois continued the work on the Eightmile
River obtaining data for computation of physical habitat model and gaining experience in GIS analysis.
Graduate Student at the University of Connecticut, Robbette Schmidt analyzed the
physical habitat data from Fenton, Eightmile, Pomperaug Rivers (in Connecticut) and
Souhegan River (New Hampshire) for validation of in-stream habitat models. Robbette gained extensive expertise in river surveying, hydrodynamic modeling and statistical analysis.
In addition,
a graduate level MesoHABsim summer course
was offered at the University of Massachusetts.
MesoHABsim
is a recently developed habitat modeling approach used by the NEIHP program. The
purpose of this course was to teach the basics of data collection techniques within
the MesoHABSIM framework, data processing with MesoHABSIM software and the creation
of GIS habitat models.