Research in the Mohawk River Watershed

The 2009 New York Ocean and Great Lakes Ecosystem Council report “Our Waters, Our Communities, Our Futures recommended an ecosystem-based management approach to watershed planning as the way to sustainably manage the relationship between natural resources and human activities. In response, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) began a focused effort to conserve, preserve, and restore the environmental quality of the Mohawk River with the creation of the Mohawk River Basin Program and development of the Mohawk River Basin Action Agenda

While the Action Agenda serves as a management tool for the watershed, information gaps exist which potentially limit achievement of goals and objectives. To address these gaps, in March of 2014 DEC's Mohawk River Basin Program and its partners at Union College, Cornell University’s Water Resources Institute, and the United States Geological Survey hosted a day-long workshop to bring together experts from academia, state, local and federal government, non-profit, and other private organizations and tasked them with identifying research needs to address data gaps that hindered implementation of the goals and objectives of the Action Agenda.

The results of this day-long workshop were compiled into the Mohawk River Basin Program Research Priorities 2014-2016 which serves as a complimentary document to the Mohawk River Basin Action Agenda  and directs future research.