Collaboration with Marist College
Environmental Science & Policy students use the Village and flooding along the Landsman Kill as a real-world research topic.
Marist students produce a flyer for residents
Check out the pamphlet, which is designed to offer recommendations on flood prevention methods you can take on your own property. Whether you live along the Landsman Kill or have a spot on your property that often seems to be wet, here are tips for which plant species and why!
It all began with Hurricane Irene and the intense flooding we saw on the Landsman Kill and Crystal Lake. With climate change, we are now seeing more frequent intense weather which results in flooding in our Village. The problem of how to get ahead of flooding by opening valves on the Asher Dam became the premise of a collaboration with Marist Environmental Science and Policy students.
Dr. Richard Feldman, PhD, is a professor of Environmental Science & Policy at Marist College. Each Spring semester, he and his graduating seniors use our Village’s flooding challenges as their opportunity for applied research. Starting in Fall 2021, Professor Richard Algozzine joined in, bringing his Computer Science seniors into the project.
Opening the valves at the Asher Dam to preemptively release water is a manual process. Pictured here are Mayor Bassett and Trustee Lewit opening the two gushing valves.
A Predictive System
The students are developing a very high tech, algorithmic approach (creating a predictive flood-watch model, complete with a sensor upstream behind the Highway Garage).
Professor Algozzine’s Computer Science students are developing a browser-based dashboard to display data collected by the sensor. We hope the tracking system will eventually push notifications to the Village, alerting us when to open the valves at the Asher Dam in an effort to minimize upstream flooding.
Click here to see the browser-based Asher Dam Alert System. Please keep in mind that this is a prototype developed by the Marist students and is still a work in progress.
Pictured at left, the sensor installed in Spring 2021 in the Landsman Kill behind the Village Highway Garage.
A More Resilient Landsman Kill
Marist students are getting their hands dirty to plant a riparian buffer along the Landsman—a nature-based solution to flooding that is supported through the DEC’s Trees for Tribs program. The CSC Task Force worked with these Marist students at the May 2, 2021 planting. (The planting was originally scheduled for May 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) We will continue to care for the saplings in their tubes for five years, according to the maintenance plan.
A huge thank you goes out to the Village Highway & Maintenance Department who prepared the site, and to Meg Crawford, Chair of the Village Tree Commission who reviewed the planting plan.
See more on our original post about this event:
Research Reports
Explore the Marist students’ reports:
Spring 2023 report
Oh, and did we mention that there’s a beaver who also has its own nature-based solutions for the Landsman Kill…?