Headwaters & Urban Hydrology
How have landscape change and a shifting climate degraded small headwater streams, and how can they be protected and restored to support ecological function and downstream benefits?
We seek to answer this through long-term monitoring of streams on and bordering Indigenous Nation homelands, asking whether these systems show threshold responses to compounding stressors and whether degradation signatures in the data can guide protection across watersheds.
Funding; NYS DEC
2024 - 2027
How have urbanization and climate change affected urban streams, and how can green infrastructure and water system reinvestment restore stream function and reduce flooding?
From the Onondaga Creek watershed, spanning rural headwaters to urban Syracuse and Onondaga Nation lands, to streams near new data center development bordering the Tonawanda Seneca Nation in western New York, we study hydrologic and water-quality impacts through community gatherings, long-term monitoring, data synthesis, and modeling — paired with a historical eco-hydrologic analysis of the region's growth since the 1700s against treaty obligations, asking for whom its re-emergence as a "climate haven" has truly been one.
Funding: NYS DEC
2024 - 2027
