Chesapeake Bay Activities Newsletter July-September 2023
The USGS provides research and monitoring to better understand and restore the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. Our technical reports and journal articles, which we translate into science summaries, provide the findings used by federal, state, and local decisionmakers to inform restoration and conservation decisions. Here are some recent highlights.
USGS Chesapeake Accomplishments and Highlights for 2023
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) works with Federal, State, and academic science partners to conduct monitoring and research in the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, the Nation’s largest estuary. The USGS interacts through the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) partnership to apply science to inform restoration and conservation decisions.
The Chesapeake Bay Land Change Model (CBLCM): Simulating future land use scenarios and potential impacts on water quality
The Chesapeake Bay Land Change Model (CBLCM) is an open-source pseudo-cellular automata land change model tailored for loose coupling with watershed models. The CBLCM simulates infill development, residential and commercial development, natural land and agricultural land conversion, and growth served by sewer or septic wastewater treatment. The CBLCM is unique among land change models by simulatin
PFAS in US Tapwater Interactive Dashboard
Drinking-water quality and potential exposures to per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) at the point-of-use (tapwater) are a rising concern in the United States (US).
Floodplains provide millions of dollars in benefits every year to people in the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River watersheds
Issue: Floodplains provide important services to people by retaining sediments, nutrients, and floodwaters, thereby improving water quality and reducing flooding impacts. Having information on how the monetary benefit that floodplains provide varies across the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River watersheds helps resource managers describe the benefits that floodplains provide in their current state and assess tradeoffs associated with development pressures and conservation priorities.
Mapping stream and floodplain geomorphometry with the Floodplain and Channel Evaluation Tool
Broad-scale mapping of stream channel and floodplain geomorphic metrics is critical to improve the understanding of geomorphic change, biogeochemical processes, riverine habitat quality, and opportunities for management intervention. The Floodplain and Channel Evaluation Tool (FACET) was developed to provide an open-source tool for automated processing of digital elevation models (DEMs) to generat
USGS Publications Summarize Water-Quality Trends and Drivers in Urban Streams After 10 Years of Monitoring in Fairfax County, Virginia
Issue: Degraded water quality and ecology in urban streams has been widely documented, but explanations of changing conditions over time are often unavailable. A 15-year collaborative urban stream monitoring effort between the Fairfax County Stormwater Planning Division and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is ongoing and has begun to shed light on this complex issue. In a new USGS report by Webber and others (2023), monitoring data collected from 2007 through 2018 were used to identify drivers of changing water quality and ecology in Fairfax County streams. This report characterized the use and evaluated the effects of stormwater management practices in Fairfax County. The report by Webber and others (2023) builds on a USGS report by Porter and others (2020) that described patterns and trends in Fairfax County stream conditions after ten years of monitoring. Findings from these reports provide insights for managing urban streams and will continue to be evaluated in future years through a continued Fairfax County-USGS partnership.