USC Buffer Team

The goal of the USC Buffer Team is to promote the restoration and long-term functionality of riparian areas for water and habitat quality. These goals are achieved through innovative programming. The team is dedicated  to ensuring practice functionality through education, outreach, and technical assistance.

Data collection to better understand buffer functionality is also a priority as is proving technical support of buffer issues to USC members.  We strive to engage partners and utilize partnerships to leverage additional work to promote the mission of the USC.

Buffer Team Goals

  • Continue to seek out and secure funding for stream corridor rehabilitation and prescribed grazing projects that include riparian buffers.
  • Increase capacity to plan and coordinate riparian buffer projects within the USC geographical area.
  • Collaborate with conservation partners to fill gaps within their programs to implement buffers.
  • Support partners in their initiatives to implement riparian buffers.
  • Lead a robust education and outreach agenda regarding water quality and the function of riparian areas.

Targeted 2024 Projects

Our goals are to sustain and bolster the buffer steward program with the intent of getting more maintenance done on newer projects. We’d like to obtain larger stock for projects so we can get some visible shade on streams faster. Since there are some new faces, we’re hoping to collaborate with partners on trainings for new and existing buffer team staff. Look out for Water Quality Symposium forestry track courses, a Plant Materials Center training in May, and the Pennsylvania Buffer Summit in June. Lastly, we are going to continue building staff capacity throughout the watershed.

Buffers may be anything or everything that protects the stream and helps improve water quality in some way.  It can range from narrow strip of grassy vegetation along the stream bank that may or may not include forest vegetation to a fully forested area with all vegetation stratum accounted for.

A Healthy Buffer

A healthy vegetated buffer helps improve stream health and water quality by filtering and slowing pollution runoff, preventing soil erosion, providing upland habitat, contributing essential nutrients to the food chain, providing woody debris for in-stream habitat, and shading the stream to keep water temperatures down.  Buffers also help absorb flood waters to protect human life and property.

A healthy buffer has many different species of native trees, shrubs and grasses with minimal encroachment and human disturbance.  Varying buffer widths correspond to different purposes in support of human needs and the ecosystem, but in general, the wider the better.

While buffer benefits are numerous, here are a few targeted benefits courtesy of our partners at Chesapeake Riparian Forest Buffer Network:

Cleaner Streams with Better Water Quality:

Forest buffers protect streams and local drinking water supplies by helping to intercept and process excess nutrients, sediments, and pathogens from entering them. Scientific studies show that 100 feet of streamside forest will adequately protect the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of most streams. However, narrower buffers are also beneficial for improving water quality.

Healthier Stream Ecosystems Better Able to Process Pollution:

Forest buffers restore the natural in-stream conditions of temperature, oxygen, and food (algae, leaf litter) and stabilize and widen stream channels. The widening of channels creates more habitat and a better-functioning, healthier ecosystem per unit length of streambed. Studies have shown that streams bordered by forest are up to 2-8 times more effective than those with grass borders in processing important substances, like excess nitrogen.

Better Habitat for Aquatic Life:

“Trout Grow on Trees™” because forest buffers help increase the diversity and abundance of fish food – i.e, aquatic macroinvertebrates or “macros” – both directly by shedding leaves into streams for macros to feed upon, and indirectly by providing optimum light and temperature conditions for growing the preferred algae of macros. Streamside forests also create cooler, clearer, wider, more stable streams favored by native species of fish like brook trout while providing important habitat for birds, like wood ducks.

Enhanced Property Values, Benefits to Farms, Property Protection and Reduction of Flooding:

Forest buffers can provide important economic benefits for farms, such as improved herd health and valuable assistance for alternate water, fencing and crossing. Forest buffers can enhance property values, prevent erosion and property loss from sloughing banks, regulate base flow of water to streams, and provide woody debris and wider stream channels for reducing downstream flooding.

Improved Recreation and Human Health Benefits:

Forest buffers enhance recreational opportunities, including fishing, bird watching, hunting, hiking, and exploration with children and grandchildren.

Visit NYS Department of Environmental Conservation’s webpage on Riparian Buffers for additional information

Visit our Stroud Training page for videos and resources from our Spring 2020 Buffer Training Webinar.

View our quick video on How to Plant Trees and Shrubs

View a video by Tioga SWCD about a great USC Buffer Project

Cultivating Riparian          Buffer Team Flyer:
Forests Booklet:
USC Buffer Team Flyer        Cultivating Riparian Forests

Useful Links:

DEC’s Trees for Tributaries Program: https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/77710.html (The USC coordinates the Trees for Tributaries Program throughout the watershed, see our pamphlet here What is Required to Implement a Buffer?).

New York Heritage Program Statewide Riparian Opportunity Assessment: http://www.nynhp.org/treesfortribsny

Cows and Fish, Alberta Riparian Habitat Management Society, for a lot of great information about buffers: http://cowsandfish.org/

Finger Lakes Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management (PRISM): http://fingerlakesinvasives.org/

Riparian Buffer Priority Areas:

Chenango Upper and Middle Priority Areas – poster and watershed maps

Butternut Creek Priority Areas – watershed map

Resources for the Trees for Tribs Program:

Trees for Tribs Project Application

Trees for Tribs Calendar Checklist

Buffer Team Events

Buffer Team News

Cover Photo: Chesapeake Bay Program