By TTF Intern Kieran Avis
Last month, our Delaware River Watershed Initiative (DRWI) partners from the Villanova University Urban Stormwaters Partnership (VUSP) installed a stand-alone weather station on the roof at Abington Friends School in Jenkintown, home to the headwaters of the Jenkintown Creek.
VUSP is working closely with TTF and our restoration partners including Abington Friends School and the Abington Meeting to monitor the water quality projects we will be installing along the Jenkintown Creek, funded through the Delaware River Restoration Fund of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. VUSP will design a monitoring program and install instruments within the stormwater control measures (SCMs) to measure their effectiveness and impact. Temple University is also a partner in this monitoring and modeling effort.
We created a riparian buffer along the headwaters of the Jenkintown Creek last fall. This fall, a rain garden will be installed as part of the new AFS nature playground. We have been awarded NFWF funding for additional water quality improvement features along the creek on the Meeting House. Once these additional measures are added, the VUSP will install soil measure meters, a bubbler to measure infiltration, an autosampler to collect water samples, and pore water samplers.
Dr. Andrea L. Welker P.E. leads this graduate student research team (which also includes Pau Garza) in its work as part of the Upstream Suburban Philadelphia Cluster of the DRWI funded by the William Penn Foundation. Graduate students Sarah Rife and Samantha Butwill installed the solar powered weather station to augment the information they currently collect from the flowmeter installed at the point where the Jenkintown Creek leaves the Meeting House property. The flowmeter measures depth, velocity, and the flow of the stream.
The weather station will monitor: temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind speed and wind direction, solar radiation, barometric pressure, heat index, and dew point. The station will also measure a storm duration and intensity. Along with the flow meter, this data will help monitor the inflow and outflow of this creek headwaters. You can check out this livefeed from the weather station!
VUSP will monitor two additional locations within this cluster: the east branch of the Indian Creek within the Cobbs Creek Watershed and the the headwaters of the Pennypack Creek at the College Settlement campsite within the Pennypack Watershed.
Thank you Villanova Urban Stormwater Partnership for bringing this critical monitoring and modeling effort to our work…and for bringing this exciting citizen science opportunity to Abington Friends School. As always, thank you to our Abington Friends School partners for your enthusiasm and cooperation!
