This project used environmental DNA to map the distribution of brook trout in the Ausable River Watershed and understand the distribution of introduced trout species in the same waters. The environmental DNA work gave a landscape level understanding of where trout live without capturing them. Genetic material from fish and other wildlife is released through bodily fluids and is free flowing in the aquatic environment for a brief period. The material can be captured by filtering stream water and processing the samples using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) in a genetics lab to determine whether a particular fish was present or absent at the time of sampling. This cutting-edge technique gives  a snapshot in time of where fish are and is particularly useful for detecting rare species or species with small populations. Thanks to research like this in the western US, when genetic material is found at one site, one or more fish are present in the kilometer above that site. By sampling a stream at one-kilometer intervals, maps can be created of fish presence and absence across the web of streams that make up the watershed. This technical grant project awarded by Lake Champlain Basin Program in 2020, enabled Ausable River Association scientists to explore and document the spatial distribution of four different species of salmonid in the Ausable and Boquet River watersheds in New York State. Over a two year period, water was collected and filtered from a network of over 150 kilometers of river and stream and found DNA evidence of brook trout, brown trout, rainbow trout, and Atlantic salmon.

This project has merged existing basin-wide data and scientific expertise from Quebec and Vermont to quantify the inventory of different P stocks within the Missisquoi Basin’s terrestrial and aquatic compartments, applied physically based and empirical models and data to quantify the fate and transport of P across the basin, and produced a Missisquoi Bay Watershed P Mass Balance Assessment Toolkit for analysis of the P mass balance over the next 30 years under various alternative management scenarios.

This project expanded the Vermont Functioning Floodplain Initiative (FFI (https://dec.vermont.gov/rivers/ffi) to build out habitat quality components to allow for interactive
web planning for the prioritization and tracking of projects to restore instream and floodplain
habitat critical to maintaining the movement of organisms and biodiversity, especially in the
presence of a changing climate. Methods are described in the revised FFI User Manual (Schiff
et al., 2025) and are now available on the FFI web tool (https://ffi.stone-env.net/).

The City and Town of Plattsburgh teamed with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation
(VTDEC) to identify and eliminate wastewater discharges into Plattsburgh’s stormwater drainage systems
to improve water quality in the Saranac River and Cumberland Bay of Lake Champlain. The City
contracted with Stone Environmental (Stone) to conduct the discharge assessment.

Stone Environmental, Inc. (Stone) designed, constructed, and monitored four media filters to remove phosphorus (P) from the outflow of the Dorset Park stormwater pond in South Burlington, Vermont. This successful practice demonstration should encourage and inform the development of additional P filter retrofits to stormwater ponds in the Lake Champlain Basin.