The Stream and Wetland Assessment Management Park (SWAMP) is a research and teaching facility on a restored section of the Sandy Creek stream and floodplain near Duke University’s West Campus.
SWAMP serves as an outdoor classroom and field laboratory for students and researchers and provides a site for research on biological diversity, hydrology, mosquito control, invasive plant species and other environmental concerns. Signs along the trail and boardwalks into the site inform the public about the project and the role of wetlands in promoting water quality.
Welcome to SWAMP
SWAMP, located at the Duke Forest in Durham, North Carolina, is a restored urban stream and wetland complex dedicated to teaching, research and sustaining ecosystem service and function on the landscape.
Reclaiming Duke’s SWAMP
Sixteen years after the restoration of Upper Sandy Creek began, hundreds of species, some rare, now call the once-heavily eroded and degraded stream home, and nitrogen pollution flowing off Duke’s campus into downstream waters has been slashed by 75%.
Visit SWAMP
The Stream and Wetland Assessment Management Park is open for public visits and is accessible most daylight hours via the Al Buehler Cross Country Trail, a gravel running and walking course maintained and operated by the Office of Duke Forest at Duke University.
SWAMP can be approached on the Al Buehler Trail (orange on the map) approximately one-tenth of a mile southeast of the Washington Duke Inn. Note that the parking lot indicated on the map is no longer open to the public.
Numbered signs will direct you to the SWAMP sites along the path. The sites are also accessible via the exercise loop (purple on the map) located along NC751 between Wrightwood Avenue and Pinecrest Road.
There are boardwalks, overlooks, and educational signs along the trail and adjacent exercise loop. SWAMP is listed as a birding hotspot on the citizen science website eBird.org.
Visitors to SWAMP and the Al Buehler Cross Country Trail must remain on the path at all times.
In advance of your visit, you can print a SWAMP map brochure (suitable for two-sided printing as a bi-fold) and a checklist of bird species seen at SWAMP (suitable for two-sided printing as a tri-fold). For additional information, contact the Duke University Wetland Center office at (919) 613-8009.
WEBINAR: Integrated Stream And Wetland Restoration: A Watershed Approach To Improved Water Quality On The Landscape
A webinar in for videos by Curtis J. Richardson presented to the Association of State Wetland Managers on July 25, 2017. The lecture begins at 7:30 of Video 1.