Chesapeake Bay Activities Newsletter January-March 2023

Improving Understanding and Coordination of Science Activities for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

Issue: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been manufactured and used in a variety of industries in the United States since the 1940s. PFAS are ubiquitous and persistent in the environment and have the potential to have adverse human and ecological health effects. The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) partnerships has concerns about how PFAS will affect the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. The CBP Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) hosted a workshop in 2022 to better understand the state of the science, improve science coordination, and propose approaches to improve our knowledge of PFAS.

Chesapeake Bay Land Use and Land Cover data is now published in additional formats

The Chesapeake Bay Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) database was developed by the University of Vermont’s Spatial Analysis Laboratory in cooperation with Chesapeake Conservancy (CC) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The high-resolution land data were developed as part of a 6-year Cooperative Agreement between Chesapeake Conservancy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and a separate Interagency Agreement between the USGS and EPA to provide geospatial support to the Chesapeake Bay Program Office. 

In 2022, the LULC data was released at county-scale through CC’s website. The USGS has recently published the data, which provides additional formats for users to retrieve the information.

Study reveals importance of groundwater for stability of freshwater fish populations and resilience to climate change

Issue: Climate change is warming streams and rivers of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and this is a critical concern for fisheries management and conservation. To address this issue, the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) recently identified four actions:
•    address the threats of climate change in all aspects of the partnership’s work;
•    prioritize communities, working lands, and most vulnerable habitats;
•    apply the best scientific, modeling, monitoring, and planning capabilities; and 
•    connect restoration outcomes with emerging opportunities.

The USGS Chesapeake Science Strategy supports CBP through research to improve understanding of climate change across the watershed, including the resiliency of headwater streams and the fisheries they support.

Avian Influenza Dynamics in the Chesapeake Bay Region

This project focuses on understanding the forces driving the risk of avian influenza transmission from wild waterfowl to domestic poultry within the Chesapeake Bay region.

USGS Collaborates on Maryland Healthy Watersheds Assessment

Issue: The Maryland Healthy Watersheds Assessment (MDHWA) establishes a framework to assess watershed health and vulnerability for Maryland waters and watersheds. The assessment is intended to inform watershed management decision-making to sustain the health of State-identified healthy watersheds, which have been defined in Maryland as the watersheds associated with its designated high-quality, Tier II waters.

USGS revises 2020 nontidal load and trend results

Issue: The USGS has revised loads and trends through 2020 from monitoring stations in the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) Nontidal Network (NTN). The original release of the results was in July 2022. During a process to implement a new software package for the next update of NTN data, the USGS discovered some questionable data values. Most of the questionable values were related to a coding transcription error that was occurring for selected values when data were pulled into files used to compute loads and trends for each NTN site, while others were related to data-reporting. The USGS has (1) corrected the data, (2) rerun all the loads and trends, and (3) updated the 2020 loads and trends.