Watershed Management
A watershed is the area of land which drains into a stream, river, lake, or other waterbody. The Hudson’s watershed covers nearly 13,400 square miles, an area equal in size to Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. The Mohawk River is the largest of the Hudson’s tributaries—the streams that drain from the watershed into the Hudson. The focus of our work is on the watershed of the Hudson River estuary, south of its confluence with the Mohawk—the stretch of tidal river from the federal dam in Troy to the Verrazzano Narrows.
The Hudson River Estuary Program’s watershed team and partners help communities protect and restore streams, rivers, and streamside buffers. We monitor water quality and help communities and landowners remove barriers to free-flowing streams and fish movement in the tributaries to the Hudson River estuary. We work with watershed groups, municipalities, nonprofits, landowners, and other partners to support essential watershed-based planning, stewardship, and management of local water resources. Our goal is to maintain healthy rivers and streams, while identifying and improving degraded tributaries to deliver high-quality freshwater and habitat connections to the estuary and drinking water sources.
Read our Watershed Management Fact Sheet (PDF) to learn more about how our program works.
Tools for Protecting Water Quality
- Grants for watershed planning and implementation are available from the Hudson River Estuary Program.
- Stream Buffer Protection and Restoration for Hudson River Tributaries: Our Trees for Tribs program provides free technical support and plantings to landowners interested in restoring riparian buffers (transition areas between streams and uplands). Protecting and restoring these buffer areas is vital to the health of waterways.
- Aquatic Connectivity and Barrier Removal Dams and culverts can disrupt important hydrologic processes and disconnect the aquatic habitats used by fish and other organisms. The Hudson River Estuary Program works with partners to assess and prioritize barriers for removal or mitigation to reconnect fish and wildlife habitat
