An unusual sequence of weather events, including a wet spring, a hot, dry summer, and two tropical storms, caused the Chesapeake Bay’s health to decline in 2011, according to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
(Image courtesy Chesapeake EcoCheck)
Scientists gave the Bay a D+ on the latest Chesapeake Bay Report Card, an annual assessment of the health of the Bay and its tidal rivers. The score of 38 percent was the second lowest since assessments began in 1986 and down from a C- in 2010.
Only two areas – the lower western shore and the Patapsco and Back rivers – improved last year. The rest of the Bay’s segments remained the same or got worse. Scientists recorded lower scores in the Patuxent River, Rappahannock River, James River, Tangier Sound, and the upper and middle Bay.
"The spring rains and hot, dry summer followed by Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Lee led to poor health throughout Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries," said Dr. Bill Dennison of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "While we have been making considerable progress in various restoration activities, these results indicate we still need to do much more to reduce the input of nutrients and sediments from stormwater runoff into the Bay."
The Bay’s health is largely affected by weather conditions. Rainfall carries pollution from farms, cities and suburbs to storm drains, streams and eventually the Bay. Even as the government, communities and citizens work to reduce pollution, an increase in stormwater runoff can mask the effects of these improvements.
Wet weather last spring washed more nutrient pollution into the water, fueling the growth of algae blooms that blocked sunlight from reaching bay grasses. Hot, dry weather allowed these algae blooms to persist through summer, leading to low-oxygen “dead zones” in the Bay’s bottom waters. In late summer, the Bay was slammed by the effects of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, both of which worsened water clarity.
"The report card clearly indicates that the Chesapeake Bay watershed is a dynamic ecosystem subject to severe weather events," said Bay Program Director Nick DiPasquale. “The silver lining is that the Hopkins-UMCES study of 60 years of water quality data concluded that a decrease in the frequency and severity of dead zones in the Bay is the direct result of implementing measures to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. We know what works; we just need to do more of it."
The Chesapeake Bay Report Card, produced by the EcoCheck partnership, offers a timely and geographically detailed assessment of the health of the Bay’s water quality and aquatic life. Visit EcoCheck’s website for more information about the report card, including region-specific data and downloadable graphics.
Despite improvements in some key areas, the Anacostia River’s health is still in very poor condition, according to a new report card released by the Anacostia Watershed Society.
(Image courtesy Mr. T in DC/Flickr)
Stormwater runoff is the largest source of pollution to the Anacostia River, which flows to the Potomac River, one of the Chesapeake Bay’s largest tributaries. Runoff carries dirt, oil, trash, fertilizer and other pollutants from the land into the Anacostia, where they smother underwater life and make the river unsafe for fishing and swimming.
The Anacostia River report card uses data on four water quality indicators – dissolved oxygen, water clarity, fecal bacteria and chlorophyll a (algae) – to determine the river’s health. Although this year’s report card showed improvements in fecal bacteria levels, the river’s water clarity is still extremely poor due to continued sediment runoff.
New legislation just passed in Maryland to enact a stormwater fee in the state’s largest counties, combined with funding from a similar District of Columbia fee, will help implement infrastructure repairs that reduce polluted runoff to the Anacostia and other waterways.
Visit the Anacostia Watershed Society’s website for more information about the river’s health and what you can do to help restore it.
Welcome to the latest installment of the BayBlog Question of the Week! Each week, we take a question submitted on the Chesapeake Bay Program website or a frequently asked question and answer it here for all to read.
This week’s question is all about the wet weather we’ve had in the region lately: “What effect does heavy rainfall have on the Bay?”
The amount of rainfall the Chesapeake Bay region receives affects the amount of water that flows into the Bay from its rivers. This is called river flow. When we get more rain, it increases the amount of nutrient and sediment pollution that gets into local streams and rivers, and eventually the Bay.
When it rains, stormwater runs off lawns, farms, streets and parking lots, picking up pollution and carrying it into the nearest storm drain or waterway. A lot of rain can also erode stream banks, which causes more sediment to make its way to the Bay. Excess nutrients and sediments are harmful because they block sunlight from reaching bay grasses. Excess nutrients also fuel the growth of algae blooms that can lead to low oxygen levels.
But heavy rainfall can also carry with it much more visible signs of pollution: namely, trash.
The Baltimore Sun’s B’More Green Blog posted some compelling photos this morning, taken at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore by the National Aquarium. It seems that not only did all the rain likely carry a lot of nutrients and sediment into the Bay, it also "trashed" the harbor.
The EPA has officially dubbed Baltimore’s Inner Harbor as “impaired” by trash. The Anacostia River watershed in Washington, D.C., has a similar, if not more severe, issue. The Anacostia recently became the first interstate river to have a Clean Water Act “trash pollution diet” imposed on it.
If there's one good thing about all this rain, it's that seeing all the trash it carries into our local waterways reminds us to try and minimize the trash we use in our day-to-day routines. After all, do you want to be swimming with a bunch of old coffee cups -- or eating seafood that has been doing the same?
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake Bay? Ask us and we might choose your question for the next Question of the Week! You can also ask us a question via Twitter by sending a reply to @chesbayprogram! Be sure to follow us there for all the latest in Bay news and events.
We've received a lot of questions lately about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and if it will affect the Chesapeake Bay. The general scientific consensus right now is that it is unlikely that oil from the Gulf will reach the Chesapeake Bay, but experts continue to monitor the situation to stay ahead of any changes in the oil's projected path.
A few Bay Program partners have posted information about the oil spill in relation to the Chesapeake Bay:
Additionally, scientists and experts from many Bay Program partners are lending their time and expertise to the response effort in the Gulf region. Some examples include:
Here's a sampling of some recent news articles and blog entries about the oil spill and the Bay:
For more information about the Gulf oil spill, visit the following websites:
We'll update this blog entry with any additional information about the Gulf oil spill and its potential effect on the Bay.
The health of the Chesapeake Bay improved last year to its highest level since 2002, according to the latest annual report card released by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), which gave the Bay a health grade of C.
The 2009 report card notes improved conditions in eight regions of the Bay and continued degraded conditions in two regions. Grades for 14 individual regions were averaged together for an overall Bay health grade of C.
The highest-ranked region for the third year in a row was a B-minus on the upper western shore of Maryland, which includes the Bush and Gunpowder rivers. The lowest-ranked region was the Patapsco and Back rivers, which received an F.
Scientists attribute the health improvements to last year’s unique regional rainfall patterns, continued efforts to reduce nutrient pollution, and the gradual rebound in Bay health since historically poor conditions observed in 2003.
“Despite the record high rainfall in parts of Maryland and Virginia, the mainstem of the Chesapeake Bay improved last year,” said UMCES researcher and project leader Dr. William Dennison. “Normally, more precipitation means poorer Bay health. But last year, the Bay benefited from below average rainfall throughout Pennsylvania which appears to have reduced the amount of pollutants reaching the open waters of the mainstem Bay.”
Over the report card's 24-year history, Bay health was rated at its highest in 1993 with a score of 57, and it lowest in 2003 with a score of 35. The 2009 rating of 46 falls in the top 25 percentile.
An encouraging sign in the Bay’s health has been an improvement in water clarity over the past two to three years. There was a 12 percent increase in water clarity in 2009. The most dramatic improvements were in the middle regions of the Bay, including the Bay’s mainstem and the Choptank, Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. However, the reporting regions with chronically poor water clarity – the Patapsco and Back rivers, Maryland’s lower western shore, and the York and Elizabeth rivers – still had muddy, turbid water.
The Chesapeake Bay Report Card is an annual analysis conducted through the EcoCheck partnership between UMCES and the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office using data collected by Bay Program partners.
For more information about the 2009 Chesapeake Bay Report Card, including maps, charts and data, visit the Chesapeake Eco-Check website.
The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) has released the 2009 Bay Barometer, which shows that the Bay continues to be degraded and illustrates a clear need to continue to accelerate restoration efforts across the region. The science behind the Bay Barometer indicates that the Bay remains in poor condition, receiving an overall average health score of 45 percent, with 100 percent representing a fully restored ecosystem. It also states that the CBP partnership has implemented 64 percent of the needed actions to reduce pollution, restore habitats, manage fisheries, protect watersheds and foster stewardship.
At a more detailed level, the Bay Barometer presents some slight improvements for specific health indicators such as water clarity, deep-water habitat, blue crabs and bay grasses. While these upticks are important, they must be considered in the context of the Bay health overall. Water quality, for example, is only at 24 percent of its goals. The Bay’s poor condition is not surprising given that it will take time for the Bay’s water quality and living resources to respond to ongoing restoration efforts. Bay Barometer also shows that much more progress is needed to reduce nonpoint source pollution from agricultural, suburban and urban runoff.
The CBP’s Bay Barometer: A Health and Restoration Assessment of the Chesapeake Bay and Watershed in 2009 is the science-based annual review of the progress of the CBP partners toward achieving Bay health goals and implementing the needed restoration measures to fully restore the Bay ecosystem. It provides overall scores for both health and restoration efforts as well as scores for individual indicators of the Bay’s condition. In addition to the 12-page Bay Barometer executive summary, a full set of data, charts, graphs and videos about each indicator can be found in our online Bay Barometer section.
Some statistics on the health of the Bay in 2009 include:
Restoration highlights from 2009 included:
Partner restoration highlights were included in the Bay Barometer this year, summarizing efforts by the states, the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Bay Barometer also includes a “What You Can Do” section, giving suggestions to the watershed’s nearly 17 million residents for how they can do their part to aid in Bay restoration, such as not fertilizing lawns, picking up after pets, planting native trees and shrubs, and volunteering with local watershed groups.
Because of the influence of the Bay watershed’s 17 million residents, Bay Barometer includes a section that shows seven simple actions people can take to help restore the Bay and its local waterways:
For more information about the data included in Bay Barometer, view a PDF of the full report or see additional details on each indicator in our Bay Barometer section.
For the second year in a row, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) has given the Bay a C-minus on its annual Chesapeake Bay Health Report Card.
The UMCES report card is the second major assessment of the Chesapeake’s health this year, following the Bay Program’s Bay Barometer, which gave the Bay a score of 38 out of 100. Report cards have also been issued for individual Bay tributaries, including the Magothy, South, Severn and Patuxent rivers.
The C-minus grade for a second year in a row shows that the Bay’s poor conditions have not significantly changed from 2007. However, scientists are intrigued by new long-term trends showing that improving areas continue to get better while degrading areas continue to get worse.
“These diverging positive and negative trajectories in some of the Bay’s key areas show there are important ecological feedbacks that come into play once restoration efforts reach a certain level,” said UMCES Researcher and Project Leader Dr. Bill Dennison.
For example, restoration efforts on the James River in Virginia and the tributaries of Maryland’s upper western shore (including the Bush and Gunpowder rivers) appear to be having a positive influence, as water quality and the health of underwater life continue to improve. In other areas, such as Maryland’s lower western shore tributaries (including the Magothy, Severn and South rivers), nutrient and sediment pollution continue to hinder progress to improve local ecosystem health, according to Dennison.
While the Bay’s overall health earned a C-minus, the health of the 15 “reporting regions” -- individual sections of the Bay and its rivers -- assessed in the report card ranged from a B-minus for the tributaries of the upper western shore of Maryland to an F for the lower western shore tributaries.
The grades for the rest of the reporting regions are:
Visit the Chesapeake EcoCheck website for more information about the 2008 Chesapeake Bay Health Report Card.
Despite increased restoration efforts throughout the watershed, the Chesapeake’s health did not improve in 2008, according to the Bay Program’s annual report, Bay Barometer: A Health and Restoration Assessment of the Chesapeake Bay and Watershed in 2008.
Due to its polluted waters, degraded habitats and low populations of key fish and shellfish species, the Bay’s health averaged 38 percent. 100 percent represents a fully restored ecosystem.
Some statistics on the health of the Bay in 2008 include:
“While there are small successes in certain parts of the ecosystem and specific geographic areas, the sobering data in this report reflect only marginal shifts from last year’s results,” said Bay Program Director Jeffrey Lape.
Bay Barometer also reviews restoration efforts that took place across the Chesapeake’s 64,000-square-mile watershed. As of 2008, Bay Program partners had put into place 61 percent of efforts needed for a restored Bay.
One restoration goal that was met in 2008 was land preservation. Bay Program partners have exceeded their goal to permanently protect from development 7.3 million acres of land – which is 20 percent of the combined watershed land area in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia.
“Preserving more than 7 million acres of land is a tremendous success for the partners of the Chesapeake Bay Program and the citizens of the region,” said Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine, chairman of the Chesapeake Executive Council.
Other restoration highlights from 2008 included:
One of the Bay’s greatest challenges is population growth and development, which destroys forests, wetlands and other natural areas. The impacts of human activity are offsetting efforts to clean up the Bay.
Because of the influence of the Bay watershed’s 17 million residents, Bay Barometer includes a section that shows seven simple actions people can take to help restore the Bay and its local waterways:
For more information about the data included in Bay Barometer, view a PDF of the full report or see additional details on each indicator in our Bay Barometer section.
The Bay Program has released its Chesapeake Bay 2007 Health and Restoration Assessment, a four-part snapshot of health conditions and restoration efforts in the Bay and its watershed. The assessment indicates that the overall health of the Bay remained degraded in 2007. Despite the extensive actions of Bay partners to combat factors slowing restoration progress, the Bay Program is still far short of most restoration goals.
Of the key indicators of Bay health, the assessment shows that:
The reasons for the continued poor health of the Bay are described in Chapter Two: Factors Impacting Bay and Watershed Health. The Chesapeake is affected by multiple factors -- ranging from population growth to agricultural runoff to climate variability -- that challenge the ecosystem's recovery.
If current development trends continue:
Chapter Three: Restoration Efforts highlights Bay Program partners' progress toward reducing pollution, restoring habitats, managing fisheries, protecting watersheds and fostering stewardship.
Bay Program partners continued to make progress toward goals to open fish passage, restore forest buffers and preserve land in 2007.
At the December 2007 Chesapeake Executive Council meeting, each Bay jurisdiction chose to “champion” issues vital to restore their streams, rivers and Bay waters. “Champion” issues include enhancing agricultural conservation practices, engaging local governments in upstream communities and “greening” urban areas through improved stormwater controls. The outcomes of these projects and programs are intended to be models for restoration that can be used in other areas of the watershed.
New to the assessment this year is a chapter on the health of the Bay watershed's extensive network of freshwater streams and rivers. The presence and diversity of snails, mussels, insects and other freshwater benthic macroinvertebrate communities are good indicators of stream health because of their limited mobility and known responses to environmental stressors. As a result, these communities are often used as indicators of the general health of freshwater streams and rivers.
Separately, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science(UMCES) has released its 2007 Chesapeake Bay Health Report Card, a geographically based assessment of the health of the Bay examining conditions in 2007. The UMCES Report Card shows that 2007 ecological conditions in the Bay were slightly better than the previous year, but far below what is needed for a healthy Bay.
The Chesapeake Bay 2006 Health and Restoration Assessment reports show that the Bay's overall health remains degraded, despite significant advances in restoration efforts by Bay Program partners through newly focused programs, legislation and/or funding.
“While much has been accomplished, there is still much work left to be done,” said Jeff Lape , director of the Bay Program Office. “Restoring the Chesapeake Bay cannot be done with government support alone. It is up to every citizen living in the Bay watershed to become a steward of our nation's largest and most cherished estuary.”
The annual Health and Restoration Assessment reports give watershed residents a clear and concise synopsis of Bay health and on-the-ground restoration efforts in key areas including:
Read or download the full report.
Bay-wide acreage of underwater bay grasses (SAV) decreased by 25 percent in 2006, dropping to 59,090 acres from 78,263 acres in 2005, according to data from scientists with the Bay Program. This loss marks the first setback for SAV after two consecutive years of moderate gains and the lowest total SAV acreage figure since 1989.
Bay grass acreage is broken down into three zones: Upper, middle and lower Bay.
Scientists are attributing acreage declines in the upper and middle Bay to:
The lower Bay is still experiencing the effects of a large eelgrass dieback that took place in late summer 2005 after a period of record high temperatures. Many of the areas affected by the dieback in 2005 did not produce grass at all in 2006, while the remaining SAV beds observed were very thin.
SAV losses in the lower Bay could be particularly hard on blue crabs, which use grass beds as nursery areas where they hide from predators until they grow large enough to migrate up the Bay and its tributaries. This additional habitat loss, among other factors, could contribute to the extended period of low blue crab abundance currently observed in the Bay.
Although SAV acreage decreased bay-wide, there were some bright spots in bay grass restoration in 2006.
Large, dense beds on the Susquehanna Flats area remained healthy and vibrant despite the deluge of sediment following the June rain event.
Widgeon grass spread throughout the lower Rappahannock River.
Hydrilla continued to do well in the Mattaponi, Pamunkey, Chickahominy and upper James rivers.
SAV beds remained very dense in the tidal freshwater areas of the Potomac from Broad Creek down to Aquia Creek.
Researchers on the St. Mary's River also witnessed healthy SAV populations.
SAV is critical to the Bay's ecosystem because the grasses provide habitat for fish and shellfish, help reduce shoreline erosion, absorb excess nutrients and trap sediment. SAV once covered an estimated 200,000 acres along the shallows and shorelines of the Bay.
Bay grasses can only grow if water is clear enough for sunlight to reach its underwater leaves. Since water clarity is reduced by excess nutrients and sediment from the land, the Bay Program looks at annual bay-wide SAV survey results as an indication of the Bay's response to pollution control efforts. Based on long-term trends, significant progress is still needed before the Bay is clean enough for SAV to recover to historic levels.
The health and density of bay grasses is just one indicator of the overall health of the Bay. The Bay Program's 2006 Chesapeake Bay Health and Restoration Assessment, which provides the most current scientific data and tracks restoration progress, is currently in production and will be made public on April 18.
