SAV Mitigation and Monitoring Guidance for the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays
CompleteThis guidance, developed as a product of the SAV Workgroup’s January 2025 Mitigation and Monitoring Workshop, provides SAV mitigation and monitoring guidance to improve consistency across Bay jurisdictions and strengthen ecological outcomes—while emphasizing avoidance and minimization of SAV impacts first and foremost.
Description
SAV in the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays is a vital shallow-water habitat that supports fisheries and biodiversity, improves water quality, stabilizes shorelines, and helps store carbon. Because SAV grows in nearshore areas, it is highly vulnerable to shoreline construction, dredging, and other coastal development activities—pressures that have increased in recent years and are expected to intensify with sea level rise and continued water quality restoration-driven SAV recovery. To respond to this growing challenge, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s SAV Workgroup convened a workshop in January 2025 to develop standardized guidance for SAV mitigation and monitoring requirements. This guidance clarifies expectations for avoiding and minimizing SAV impacts first and foremost, and—when unavoidable losses occur—ensuring compensatory mitigation is meaningful, consistent across jurisdictions, and designed for the greatest chance of ecological success.