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

Scope and Purpose

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

Enhance Chesapeake Bay science and capacity by facilitating 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 (CBP) Goal Implementation Teams (GITs).

Function of STAR within the Chesapeake Bay Program Framework:

The STAR team coordinates monitoring, modeling, and analysis across the CBP to help decision makers progress toward the Goals and Outcomes of the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement (hereafter, Watershed Agreement). STAR has evolved from having a water quality emphasis to encompass a more ecosystem-based science mission approach, as required by the Watershed Agreement through supporting the GITs in identifying, organizing, and addressing their science needs. The STAR Team serves the CBP through the following major functions:

  • Manage and coordinate the Strategic Science and Research Framework (SSRF) to identify, track, and address the CBP science needs for the Watershed Agreement.
  • Interact with GITs to coordinate science partnerships and identify new opportunities to address science needs in SSRF and science capacity for Watershed Agreement outcomes.
  • Manage CBP-funded monitoring networks and collaborate with monitoring organizations to utilize and enhance additional networks to address the outcomes in the Watershed Agreement.
  • Ensure data comparability, completeness, and integrity.
  • Update, and deliver, the status and trends (indicators) of ecosystem conditions.
  • Contribute to explaining ecosystem condition and change.
  • Conduct modeling to improve water-quality decision-making and better understand and predict ecosystem response.
  • Coordinate science support of climate change activities.
  • Enhance information management, access, and GIS support.
  • Produce synthesis products and reports to better communicate scientific results and aid in science informed management decisions.

Please refer to the STAR Scope and Purpose document for more information.


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This quarterly newsletter provides a summary of recent news and progress updates from STAR and its workgroups.

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Archive of previous STAR newsletters

Projects and Resources

Better Targeting CBP Resources to Achieve Multiple Outcomes: Approach and Tools

The USGS has initiated an effort to take a more comprehensive approach for targeting resources, working with several partners including the USEPA (CBP office, Office of Research and Development, and Region 3) and the Chesapeake Conservancy. The objective is to develop a strategic, science-based approach to better target federal and state resources to the places, and towards the types of activities, that accelerate progress for multiple outcomes. The proposed approach is organized around several topics (figure 1), which include many outcomes in the Chesapeake Watershed Agreement: (1) accelerate water-quality improvements, (2) coordinate habitat restoration, (3) expand land-conservation efforts, and (4) increase benefits to people, with all considering climate resiliency.

Access the DRAFT tool hub here.

Improving CBP Monitoring Networks

An overview was provided to the Principal Staff Committee (PSC) at their March 2, 2021 meeting about the status of, and potential reductions to, the current Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) monitoring networks. The CBP monitoring programs presented included the nontidal nutrient and sediment network, tidal water-quality monitoring network, submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), tidal benthic monitoring network, and Citizen Science monitoring. The reduction of stations and data in the CBP monitoring networks is mostly due to inflation in the cost of monitoring over the past 5 years, while funding for the networks has been held constant. The Scientific Technical Assessment and Reporting Team (STAR) listed the condition of the networks as “fair” during August 2020 SRS quarterly review to the Management Board. The PSC recognizes that monitoring is foundational to the CBP’s ability to assess progress toward its goals and outcomes and utilizing adaptive-management principles. In response to the status report, they requested information be provided on what is needed to improve the CBP monitoring networks, including: (1) an overview of current status and threats to the networks, and (2) what is needed to address the monitoring networks capacity shortfalls.

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. All science needs are available on the CBP Science Needs Database.

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.

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Publications

Enhancing the Chesapeake Bay Program Monitoring Networks: A Report to the Principals’ Staff Committee

In March 2021, the Principals’ Staff Committee (PSC) requested a study and recommendations on how to improve Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) monitoring networks. The monitoring networks include (1) CBP core networks supported primarily by EPA Chesapeake Bay Program funding, and (2) partnership networks supported by multiple federal and state agencies. The monitoring review was guided by leadership from the CBP Scientific, Technical Assessment and Reporting (STAR) team, the CBPO Monitoring Team, with input from the CBP Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) leadership.

The report is organized into 4 major sections:
• Section 1: Chesapeake Bay Program Network Portfolios. Provides a summary of the existing CBP core networks (most with a focus on water quality) with recommendations and potential investments to address development, maintenance and improvement of these networks.
• Section 2: Chesapeake Bay Agreement Goals and Outcomes Monitoring Needs. Summarizes the partner-led monitoring and broader needs of the 10 goals and associated outcomes in the 2014 Watershed Agreement.
• Section 3: Partnership Opportunities to Enhance Chesapeake Bay Program Monitoring. Provides potential approaches for partners to collaborate on addressing the vast number of monitoring data needs to support decision-making requirements of the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership.
• Section 4: Principals’ Staff Committee Charge to the Monitoring Review Team and Foundational Assessment Results. Provides an overview of methodology used to conduct the monitoring program assessment for the Principal’s Staff Committee request and details of input from the collective monitoring representatives to inform the information in the previous sections of the report.

Key Findings
1) Monitoring is critical to assess progress towards meeting goals and outcomes of
the 2014 Watershed Agreement.
2) Monitoring is insufficient for many CBP outcomes.
3) Opportunities for enhancing the networks exist but funding is a challenge.

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Methods and Quality Assurance for Chesapeake Bay Water Quality Monitoring Programs

The purpose of this document is to provide field and laboratory methods and associated quality control requirements for use in Chesapeake Bay water quality monitoring programs, which will result in the generation of known and comparable data quality. State agency staff or subcontractors will conduct field measurements and collect and analyze water and sediment samples for specific physical, chemical and biological parameters according to the procedures in this document.

Conformance with these procedures provides a solid foundation for a wide variety of scientific and management investigations, e.g., attainment of water quality standards, characterization of the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, evaluation of long-term trends, effectiveness of management actions, ecosystem processes and water quality model development and calibration.

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Watershed Agreement

Workgroups and Action Teams

Members

Bill Dennison (Chair), University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Address:
P.O. BOX 775
Cambridge, Maryland 21613

Email:  dennison@umces.edu
Phone:  (410) 221-2004
Ken Hyer (Chair), Associate Chesapeake Bay Coordinator, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  kenhyer@usgs.gov
Kim Van Meter (Vice Chair), Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)
Address:
302 Walker Building
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania 16802

Email:  vanmeterKVM@psu.edu
Phone:  814-400-1552
Breck Sullivan (Coordinator), Scientific, Technical Assessment & Reporting Coordinator, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  bsullivan@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-5788
Alex Gunnerson (Staffer), Scientific, Technical Assessment, and Reporting Team Staffer, Chesapeake Research Consortium
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  agunnerson@chesapeakebay.net
August Goldfischer (Staffer), Scientific, Technical Assessment and Reporting (STAR) Staffer, Chesapeake Research Consortium
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  agoldfischer@chesapeakebay.net
Lewis Linker, Modeling Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  linker.lewis@epa.gov
Phone:  (410) 267-5741
Gary Shenk, Hydrologist, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  gshenk@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 507-2681
John Wolf, GIS Team Lead, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  jwolf@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-5739
Bruce Vogt, Ecosystem Science Manager, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Address:
200 Harry S. Truman Parkway Suite 460
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  Bruce.Vogt@noaa.gov
Phone:  (410) 267-5655
Angie Wei, Geospatial Analyst, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  zwei@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-5735
Sophie Waterman, Healthy Watersheds Goal Implementation Team Staffer, Chesapeake Research Consortium
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  swaterman@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-5704
Kathy Boomer, Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research
Address:
8198 New Bridge Road


Email:  kboomer@foundationfar.org
Amy Handen, Local Implementation Programs Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  handen.amy@epa.gov
Phone:  (410) 267-5793
Katlyn Fuentes, Habitat Goal Implementation Team Staffer, Chesapeake Research Consortium
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  fuentesk@chesapeake.org
Sean Corson, NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office
Address:
200 Harry S. Truman Parkway
Suite 460
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  sean.corson@noaa.gov
Rebecca Murphy, Water Quality Analyst, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  rmurphy@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-9837
Peter Claggett, Research Geographer, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  pclagget@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-5771
Qian Zhang, Data Analyst, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  qzhang@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-5794
Labeeb Ahmed, Geographer, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  lahmed@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-5715
Laura Cattell Noll, Local Government Advisory Committee Coordinator, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
Address:
841 Flory Mill Rd
Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17601

Email:  lnoll@allianceforthebay.org
Phone:  (443) 949-0575
Lee McDonnell, Branch Chief, Science, Analysis and Implementation Branch; Acting Deputy Director, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21403

Email:  mcdonnell.lee@epa.gov
Phone:  (410) 267-5731
Katheryn Barnhart, Indicators Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  barnhart.katheryn@epa.gov
Phone:  (410) 267-9856
Kristin Saunders, Cross Program Coordinator, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  ksaunders@umces.edu
Phone:  (410) 267-5711
Greg Allen, Environmental Scientist, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  allen.greg@epa.gov
Phone:  (410) 267-5746
Peter Tango, Monitoring Coordinator, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  ptango@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-9875
Jeremy Hanson, Coordinator, Water Quality Goal Implementation Team, Chesapeake Research Consortium
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  hansonj@chesapeake.org
Phone:  (410) 267-5753
Julie Mawhorter, U.S. Forest Service (USFS)
Address:
151 Grey Towers Dr.
Milford, Pennsylvania 18337

Email:  julie.mawhorter@usda.gov
Phone:  (570) 296-9626
Chris Guy, Habitat Goal Implementation Team Coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  chris_guy@fws.gov
Jackie Pickford, Water Quality Goal Implementation Team Staffer, Chesapeake Research Consortium
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  pickford.jacqueline@epa.gov
Britt Slattery, Fostering Chesapeake Stewardship Goal Implementation Team Coordinator, National Park Service (NPS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  Britt_Slattery@nps.gov
Marisa Baldine, Outreach Specialist, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  mbaldine@chesapeakebay.net
Denice Wardrop, Chesapeake Research Consortium
Address:
645 Contees Wharf Rd
Edgewater, Maryland 21037

Email:  CRC-Director@Chesapeake.org
Durga Ghosh, Quality Assurance Coordinator, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  dghosh@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-5750
Julie Reichert-Nguyen, Climate Resiliency Workgroup Coordinator, NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office
Address:
200 Harry S Truman Parkway Suite 460
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  julie.reichert-nguyen@noaa.gov
Mike Mallonee, Water Quality Data Manager, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  mmallone@chesapeakebay.net
Phone:  (410) 267-5785
Kim Van Meter, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)
Address:
302 Walker Building
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania 16802

Email:  vanmeterKVM@psu.edu
Phone:  814-400-1552
Ken Hyer, Associate Chesapeake Bay Coordinator, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Address:
1750 Forest Drive Suite 130
Annapolis, Maryland 21401

Email:  kenhyer@usgs.gov