When the Fairmount Water Works was built in the early 19th century to provide clean drinking water to Philadelphia, it was a feat of modern engineering. Steam engines and a dam across the Schuylkill River powered water wheels large enough to pump millions of gallons a day uphill to a reservoir atop nearby Fair Mount.
MoreBekah Carminati spent her childhood making mud pies and inspecting insects in her backyard in Montgomery County. When she grew up, she took up landscaping as a way to channel her love for craft and nature. But there was a problem. The company she worked for insisted on applying black dyed mulch, planting annuals and
MoreFrom April 26 to April 29, Philadelphia and its adjacent counties will be competing against cities around the world to recruit the greatest number of people to find the most species in their regions. Using the iNaturalist app as a tool, the City Nature Challenge encourages us to explore and document the biodiversity right where
MoreBy Noah Raven and Francis Raven We filled our backpacks with over a dozen trees: chestnut oaks, black cherries and red mulberries, as well as two shovels, a pair of clippers, two pairs of gloves and several wooden stakes to label each of the seedlings. Our goal was to plant them in a degraded area
MoreA keen observer can sometimes hear a “boom” over the row houses on summer evenings in Philadelphia. The sound marks a male common nighthawk defending his territory, flexing his wings as he dives. The insect-eating birds nest on flat, gravelly surfaces. These can be bare patches of ground in a forest, but they can also
MoreUpdate: Would you like to weigh in on the EPA’s proposed dissolved oxygen standards in the Delaware River? The public can provide comments about the proposed regulation changes through the EPA website no later than February 20, 2024. By Meg McGuire and Katherine Rapin In December 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made a bold
MoreI am standing in the Meadows, at the southwest corner of FDR Park, in a 33-acre mud pit roughly the size of eleven city blocks. Where once stood a mature woodland, now stands a vast strip of nothing—with an unimpeded view of I-95. The pit is prickled with hundreds of almost indiscernible, twiggy saplings. I
MoreNestled into the vast urban sprawl of Northeast Philadelphia sits the 1,600-acre historic green oasis known as Pennypack Park. Take a walk through the komorebi — the Japanese word for the dappled light created by sunshine filtering through trees — and you will find a hillside nook enclosed by deer fencing and tall tulip poplar
MoreI am desperate for American chestnut trees to make a comeback, even though I know that it’s not happening anytime soon. I long to see our woods as they were 150 years ago. The forager in me misses the chestnuts I never got to gather from the forest floor. As Jessie Buckner writes in her
MoreBy Meg McGuire and Katherine Rapin In December 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made a bold move for the Delaware River, proposing to raise the water quality standards in the estuary for the first time since the Clean Water Act of 1972. This upgrade would increase requirements for dissolved oxygen levels among the foundational
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