UMass Lowell Expands Environmental Science Program With New Merrimack River Field Station

UMass Lowell has added a new field research station along the Merrimack River, expanding the amount of hands-on fieldwork students in its environmental science program can conduct studying river water quality and post-industrial watershed restoration.

The station, funded through a combination of state capital funds and a private donation from a regional foundation, gives students year-round access to water sampling equipment and expanded lab space directly on the riverbank, replacing a much smaller and aging field site that had been in use for more than two decades.

"Being on the water is not an add-on to what we teach here, it's the core of the program," said the chair of UMass Lowell's environmental, earth, and atmospheric sciences department. "Every student in our program spends real time collecting their own data on the Merrimack, and the old site was becoming a genuine limitation on how much of that we could do."

The university's environmental science program has grown steadily in recent years as interest in post-industrial river restoration work has increased among students pursuing careers in environmental policy and conservation, particularly given Lowell's history as a mill city grappling with legacy industrial contamination. Faculty said the new field station will allow the program to run two full research sections simultaneously rather than rotating single groups through limited site access.

UMass Lowell, a public research university with an enrollment of roughly 18,000 students, has built a growing reputation for its environmental science offerings, drawing partly on its location directly along the Merrimack River.