UpStream News: What Really Protects Water?

From the fields and forests, in the streams and rivers, Stroud Water Research Center’s team is fully engaged this summer. Take a break and a few minutes to see what we’ve been up to.

The next time you are outdoors exploring our world, maybe you’ll find one of these stories creeping back into your mind. What will you explore this month?

The Farming Practices That Matter Most for Water
As conversations about regenerative and organic agriculture continue to grow, so does interest in a fundamental question: Which farming practices best protect our streams? Following our participation in Rodale Institute’s Organic Field Day in July, we’re revisiting a story about a long-running collaboration exploring how agricultural management influences water quality.

The story is especially timely alongside the publication of a new peer-reviewed review, co-authored by Stroud Center scientists, that synthesizes decades of research on how organic and conventional farming systems affect surface water quality. Together, they underscore an important takeaway: protecting water quality depends not simply on whether a farm is organic or conventional, but on the management practices used in the field.

Read “Organic No-Till: Searching for the Holy Grail in Agriculture.”

Read the peer-reviewed paper “Surface Water Quality Impacts From Organic Versus Conventional Agricultural Systems.”