Investigating Tan Brook

Dr Christine Hatch of UMass will talk about her investigations of Tan Brook

Tan Brook is a little-known stream that flows right through the center of Amherst. Like many small streams in places with numerous humans and lots of paved roads to get around on, Tan Brook was perhaps an inconvenience, crisscrossing the paths we wanted to travel, making places wet that we wanted dry.  Over time, it was pushed aside to put a road here, a school there; or buried completely under an apartment building, a house, or a parking lot. As we traveled and lived over it, we forgot about it. Tan Brook was removed from surface maps, since it didn’t flow on the surface much anymore.

We talked to the neighbors, who are passionate advocates for the remaining natural stretches of Tan Brook, flawed and messy as it is. These neighbors have not forgotten Tan Brook. Their combined observations of many decades painted a rich picture of the ebbs and flows of the brook, its wildlife and the neighborhood through which it runs.

Christine Hatch is research-extension liaison for the Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, and extension associate professor of Water Resources and Climate Change in the Geosciences Department at University of Massachusetts Amherst.