Progress Toward the Restoration of Chesapeake Bay in Time and Space

Description

Three decades of monitoring in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries have allowed for an examination of the spatial and temporal patterns of water quality change in response to watershed restoration activities. This review of past monitoring data has revealed clear signs of successful water quality remediation in some Chesapeake regions. But in seaward estuarine reaches, recovery from eutrophication appears to be season- and region-specific, where the late growing season period in high-salinity waters, which is most vulnerable to nutrient limitation and oxygen replenishment, appear to have recovered first. These findings suggest a refinement of our existing conceptual models of the eutrophication process in Chesapeake Bay, where time of year and proximity to nutrient sources are important to understanding spatial and temporal variation in recovery.

An Executive Summary of this report is also available.