Extension Highlights

Going with the Flow

Dr Piotr Parasiewicz works with NEIHP trainees gathering stream data.
Photo: Nancy Palmieri

To follow Piotr Parasiewicz into the icy waters of the Mill River on an early spring afternoon is to get to know a stream in an entirely new way - as a living thing, perhaps, with a personality defined by words like "riffle" and "ruffle."

"Every river has face, a personality, a pulse," notes Parasiewicz who heads UMass Amherst's Northeast Instream Habitat Program, a new multidisciplinary research initiative aimed at assessing river habitats and predicting how those habitats will be impacted by changes in stream flow.

"We always walk the stream before we start taking measurements," he notes. "It is a process of learning to see. Things change dramatically as you walk. Your perspective changes."

At the same time, however, Parasiewicz insists that any unit of moving water can be described in fairly precise terms - terms that call on a vocabulary and grammar standardized largely by Parasiewicz himself. Using the latest in GIS mapping, specially equipped palmtop computers and am array of measuring devices, NEIHP trainees work their way up (or down) a stream collecting data on depth and velocity as well as on the shape and composition of the stream bed and banks. They can cover up to mile a day.

NEIHP trainees survey a stream
with Dr Piotr Parasiewicz.
Photo: Nancy Palmieri

This data then drives the computerized Mesohabitat Simulation Model designed by Parasiewicz to predict the impact of various changes, such as dam removal. He began developing the model as director of the Instream Habitat Program at Cornell, and brought it to UMass Amherst in 2002. A native of Poland, he earned his PhD at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Vienna.

A riffle incidentally is a reach with moderate current velocity, some surface turbulence and high gradient. A ruffle is somewhat less so . . .