Risks to Coastal Habitats

Scientists provide resources that review algal toxin data, explore links between avian mortality and toxin exposure, and identify future research needs to predict algal toxin health hazards and risks for birds and other wildlife in the Chesapeake Bay.

Borehole extensometers are instruments that monitor land subsidence caused by aquifer compaction. They provide precise, high-resolution measurements of changes in aquifer-system thickness. These changes in aquifer-system thickness contribute to vertical land motion (VLM) across the Virginia Coastal Plain, and are driven primarily by groundwater level decline due to human water usage. The Virginia...

Chesapeake Bay region has the highest rate of relative sea-level rise on the Atlantic Coast of the United States, and data indicate that vertical land motion in the form of subsidence has been responsible for more than half the relative sea-level rise measured in the Chesapeake Bay region. The Chesapeake Bay Vertical Land Motion Project is a cooperative effort between the USGS and our many...

Issue: The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) needs to accelerate progress on multiple outcomes to meet deadlines in the Chesapeake Watershed Agreement. The CBP partnership spends about $1.2B annually on activities toward achieving the Watershed Agreement, with a focus on water-quality improvement. Recent funding increases, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, provide additional opportunities to...

Issue: The federal government will work together to implement the Chesapeake Executive Council Directive No. 21-1 Collective Action for Climate Change, recognizing that urgent attention is needed to confront the challenges that a changing climate poses to the Chesapeake Bay region. The Directive emphasizes the importance of the “…resiliency of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, including its living...

Issue: Chesapeake Bay region has the highest rate of relative sea-level rise on the Atlantic Coast of the United States. Scientists use the term relative sea-level rise to describe the change in ocean height relative to changes in land elevation. Data indicate that vertical land motion in the form of subsidence has been responsible for more than half the relative sea-level rise measured in the...

Issue: Wetlands are important for removing nitrogen from rivers entering the Chesapeake Bay. More information is needed on how much nitrogen wetlands can remove.

In the Chesapeake Bay area, the Virginia and West Virginia Water Science Center is partnering with over a dozen organizations in a pilot project this fall, resulting in the establishment of a baseline reference for an ongoing effort in monitoring coastal subsidence.

Estuarine processes, hazards, and ecosystems describes several interdisciplinary projects that aim to quantify and understand estuarine processes through observations and numerical modeling. Both the spatial and temporal scales of these mechanisms are important, and therefore require modern instrumentation and state-of-the-art hydrodynamic models. These projects are led from the U.S. Geological...

A list of Chesapeake Bay Program videos highlighting USGS Chesapeake Bay Activities.

A synthesis published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment addresses what is known about the ecosystem consequences of freshwater tides extending upstream into formerly nontidal rivers. The USGS and its partners, with support from the Climate and Land Use Change Mission Area, published an article that summarizes the known effects of sea-level rise pushing freshwater tides upstream into...

The purpose of the Designing Sustainable Coastal Habitats workshop and the approach the workshop steering committee used to bring together scientists, habitat restoration partners, and policy makers to address three goals.