The Scientific, Technical Assessment & Reporting (STAR) team works to coordinate the monitoring, modeling and analysis needed to explain and communicate the health of and changes in the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.

Upcoming Meetings

September 24, 2020
10:00 am - 12:30 pm

Scientific, Technical Assessment and Reporting (STAR) Team Meeting September 2020

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October 22, 2020
9:30 am - 12:30 pm

Joint C/S/STAR SRS dry-runs Quarterly Progress Meeting (SRS) October 2020

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Scope and Purpose

The Scientific, Technical Assessment & Reporting (STAR) Team Purpose:

Increase collaboration among science providers to provide monitoring, modeling, and analysis needed to update, explain, and communicate ecosystem condition and change to support the Chesapeake Bay Program Goal Teams.

Function of STAR within the Chesapeake Bay Program Framework:

The new Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement signed on June 16, 2014 will require additional monitoring, modeling, and analysis to help decision makers effectively achieve goals and associated outcomes. CBP science activities are coordinated through the STAR Team. Over the past several years, STAR had a heavy emphasis on water-quality activities as the partners implemented the Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). To address the needs of the Watershed Agreement, STAR is evolving to have more of an ecosystem-based science mission.  The STAR Team serves the CBP as a science callaboration effort to include the following major functions:

  • Manage CBP-funded monitoring networks and coordinate with additional science providers to utilize expand networks to address the new Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement.
  • Ensure information quality, management, and access.
  • Update, and deliver, the status and trends (indicators) of ecosystem conditions.
  • Explain ecosystem condition and change.
  • Expand modeling to better understand and predict ecosystem response.
  • Coordinate climate change activities.
  • Synthesize and communicate results to support the CBP decision framework being used by the Goal Teams to develop and implement management strategies for the New Agreement

Please refer to report entitled, Enhancing Science Collaboration to Support the New Chesapeake Bay Agreement from January 2015.

 

STAR also hosts the IAN Seminar Series:

The goal of the IAN seminar series is to provide concise, thought-provoking ideas relating to Chesapeake Bay science and management. Short presentations (15 minutes maximum length) are immediately followed by a lunchtime discussion of the topics raised by the presenter. The discussion is summarized and is posted along with a pdf version of the seminar slides. The seminars are captured on video and posted under a Creative Commons license so they can be freely shared.

Projects and Resources

Building Environmental Intelligence (BEI) (formerly BASIN)

Building Environmental Intelligence (BEI) -- formerly BASIN -- is an effort to develop new approaches to expand and sustain of the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) monitoring activities to meet the needs of the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. It is a three-part effort by the Chesapeake Bay Partnership’s Scientific, Technical, Assessment and Reporting (STAR) Team experts to discover new, smarter approaches for both sustaining and expanding the Bay Program’s vast water quality monitoring networks. More information is availble through this link: https://www.chesapeakebay.net/who/group/building_and_sustaining_integrated_networks_basin

Strategic Science and Research Framework

The GITs, STAR and STAC have worked together to develop an approach that will identify, and help prioritize, both short- and longer-term science needs. The approach will result in a Strategic Science and Research Framework that will be an on-going, repeatable process that supports the SRS decision framework. The results will be used to help focus existing science resources, and leverage the research enterprise, to more effectively provide science to advance Chesapeake restoration and conservation efforts and decision making. 

Chesapeake Bay Dissolved Oxygen Profiling

Water quality impairment in the Chesapeake Bay, caused primarily by excessive long-term nutrient input from runoff and groundwater, is characterized by extreme seasonal hypoxia, particularly in the bottom layers of the deeper mainstem (although it is often present elsewhere).  In addition to obvious negative impacts on ecosystems where it occurs, hypoxia represents the integrated effect of watershed-wide nutrient pollution, and monitoring the size and location of the hypoxic regions is important to assessing Chesapeake Bay health and restoration progress.  

Chesapeake Bay Program direct water quality monitoring has been by necessity widely spaced in time and location, with monthly or bi-monthly single fixed stations separated by several kilometers.  The need for continuous, real time, vertically sampled profiles of dissolved oxygen has been long recognized, and improvements in hypoxia modeling and sensor technology make it achievable. Recent results of Bever, et al. (2018) show that total Chesapeake Bay hypoxic volume can be estimated using a few analytically selected fixed continuous dissolved oxygen profiles.

The project is to pilot a cost effective, real-time dissolved oxygen vertical monitoring system for characterizing mainstem Chesapeake Bay hypoxia. The approach for this project is to use a lightweight, low-powered real-time inductive CTDO2  mooring with sensors at multiple vertical measurement levels. The reports provide details on the proposed tasks for this project and expected outcomes and deliverables.

Cross-Goal Team Mapping Project January 2017

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement recognizes that “to be successful in achieving its goals and outcomes, progress must be made in a strategic manner, focusing on efforts that will achieve the most cost-effective results.” It further acknowledges that using place-based approaches, where appropriate, will help produce recognizable benefits to local communities while contributing to larger ecosystem goals.

STAR, with the CBP GIS Team, is supporting  a cross-outcome mapping effort for the Goal Implementation Teams (GITs) to more effectively collaborate on inter-related outcomes,  This project is helping to identify places where the CBP can more strategically make progress toward inter-related outcomes.

Measure and Explain Water-Quality Changes

Midpoint Assessment Priority Work Plan: Measure and Explain Water Quality Changes

Lead: Scientific, Technical Analysis, and Report (STAR) Team

Full Title of Priority: Enhanced Analysis and Explanation of Water-Quality Data for the TMDL Mid-Point Assessment

The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) will enhance the analysis and explanation of monitoring information as part of the Mid-Point Assessment for the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load for Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Sediment (Bay TMDL).

American Shad Indicator Action Team

The American Shad Indicator Action Team (ASIAT) was assembled in summer 2012 as a joint effort between the Scientific and Technical Analysis and Reporting (STAR) Team and the Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team (Fisheries GIT). ASIAT’s purpose was to determine how to most accurately track the recovery progress of American Shad in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. The ASIAT met seven times from August 2012 through August 2013 to review and update the Chesapeake Bay Program’s American Shad Abundance Indicator . In that time, the team added two new data sets to the indicator and updated the abundance targets for all Virginia tributaries based on historic population data. The team also agreed to a new weighting scheme for individual tributaries to calculate the Baywide shad abundance index. ASIAT may reconvene in late 2014 or 2015 to consider adding additional data to the indicator. Until then, Chesapeake Bay Program staff are working with ASIAT members to keep the indicator web page updated with the most recent data.

Evolving the STAR Team to Meet the Watershed Agreement (2011)

The purpose of this report is to provide an implementation plan for Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) Scientific, Technical Assessment, and Reporting (STAR) team to expand its science capacity to better meet the needs of the Goal Implementation Teams (GITs). The plan provides a revised purpose and functions of STAR, based on an adaptive-management approach, and recommends actions for evolving the STAR to include a broader group of science providers and enhancing interaction with the GITs to address their science needs.

Toxic Contaminants Action Team

For many years, scientists and resource managers have recognized that exposure to toxiccontaminants can result in adverse effects on biological resources within the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. In 2010, the President’s Chesapeake Bay Executive Order (EO 13508) Strategy directed Federal agencies to prepare a report summarizing information on the extent and severity of occurrence of toxic contamination in the Bay and its watershed. In responce to the Executive Order the Toxic Contaminants Action Team was charged with the task of developing this report. Findings in this report will be used by the CBP partnership to consider whether to adopt new goals for reducing inputs of toxic contaminants entering the Bay. This report also identifies research and monitoring gaps that could be considered to improve the understanding of the extent and severity occurrence of toxic contaminants in the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. 

Monitoring Re-Alignment Action Team Reports

In 2009 the CBP Management Board accepted the principal findings of a STAC review of Chesapeake Bay Program and charged the Monitoring Re-Alignment Action Team (MRAT) to developed a report to better align monitoring activities with the Chesapeake Bay Program Partnership priorities.

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Publications

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