Delaware River Basin's
Ed. Web

Now Available!
A New Guidance Tool to Monitor and Maintain Restoration Projects

A substantial amount of funding is allocated to stream restoration work. To ensure these restoration projects are a success, monitoring and maintenance efforts are often needed beyond project implementation day.

To help with these long-term monitoring and maintenance efforts, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network is pleased to announce the release of the Adopt-A-Buffer Toolkit, Monitoring and Maintaining Restoration Projects. This 133-page manual is designed for local watershed groups, restoration practitioners, and volunteer monitors who implement stream restoration projects and who are seeking inexpensive, effective volunteer-based monitoring techniques to assess restoration projects. The Delaware Riverkeeper Network has field-tested protocols with volunteer monitors and is using this toolkit for the foundation of its own Adopt-A-Buffer Initiative to help monitor over eighty restoration projects in the Delaware Watershed.

The toolkit is packed with useful information and includes a menu of monitoring protocols to choose from based on the type of restoration project implemented and the project goals. In addition, the toolkit also includes a series of maintenance factsheets to help address common issues that can arise at restoration projects. Monitoring protocols included are a visual assessment (Restoration Project Survey), photo-monitoring, macroinvertebrate monitoring, bank pin and stream cross-section monitoring, and a wildlife survey.

For more information about this initiative or the toolkit, contact Faith Zerbe, Monitoring Coordinator for the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, at faith@delawareriverkeeper.org.

Copies of the toolkit are available for $15.00 plus shipping or as an electronic version on CD for $5.00 by calling (215) 369-1188; or download a free .pdf version of the toolkit by accessing the Delaware Riverkeeper Network monitoring link (http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/programs/monitoring.asp), scrolling down the page to "Adopt-A-Buffer Initiative" and clicking on "Adopt-A-Buffer Toolkit."

 (This information was provided to the DRBC by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.)