The Tan Brook Freshwater Sustainability project promotes research and scholarship in freshwater sustainability through a student‐focused effort to understand the social, ecological, or historical characteristics of the Tan Brook (the UMass campus stream). The overall goal of the project is to develop a resource that supports research and teaching by faculty and students from multiple disciplines, and to make a positive impact on the surrounding communities. By aggregating previous research and teaching efforts and generating new basic data about the Tan Brook and its watershed, this project provides a foundation for future research and coordinated teaching efforts across campus that explore novel concepts and cut across disciplines. The project is designed to increase awareness about the environmental condition of the Tan Brook and help direct future conservation and restoration activities. The current contributors to the project include a diverse set of stakeholders from academia, local government, and business, and the core group of collaborators have backgrounds in ecology, landscape architecture, environmental history, and sustainability.
Current State of the Tan Brook Watershed
3,190,839 square meters or 1.232 square miles
45.5% of the watershed is covered in an impervious surface such as asphalt or concrete
83% of the total watershed is developed
73% of the stream is piped underground
Of the buried sections, 68.73% of the land within 200 ft is developed.