chesapeakewatershed
Idaho engineer to bring fresh eyes to Maryland's Chesapeake Bay research.
Peter Goodwin has spent much of his career engineering ways to restore salmon populations in dammed Pacific Northwest rivers or analyzing the downstream effects of water supply management decisions in drought-stressed California.
Peter Goodwin has spent much of his career engineering ways to restore salmon populations in dammed Pacific Northwest rivers or analyzing the downstream effects of water supply management decisions in drought-stressed California.
The closest the University of Idaho professor has come to studying the Chesapeake Bay was on the opposite site of the Delmarva Peninsula, exploring how to restore Delaware Bay marshes disrupted by man-made dikes and ditches.
Starting on Monday, however, the nation’s largest estuary will be his focus. Goodwin will take over the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, home to the preeminent research on the state’s most significant natural resource. He will replace the current president, Donald Boesch, who has led the center since 1990.
The leadership transition comes as environmentalists hope the bay has turned a corner in reversing decades of pollution and over-harvesting of crabs and oysters, and that a more hands-off approach by regulators doesn’t stall progress. Both Boesch and Goodwin acknowledge the job is as much political as it is scientific.
“I know I’m going to be on a very steep learning curve,” Goodwin said. “Specifically relative to the Chesapeake Bay, I know actually very little about that, but what I do bring is extensive experience from other systems in the U.S. and around the world.”
University System of Maryland officials say they see that unfamiliarity as a strength.
“It wasn’t my first impression this was the perfect fit — you don’t think of Idaho, since it’s not coastal, as having the same kind of emphasis we have had at UMCES on the bay,” said Robert Caret, the university system’s chancellor. “He just had a broad background that encompassed everything we were looking for.”
That included a global perspective, leadership skills and scientific curiosity, Caret said.
UMCES, nearly a century old, is actually composed of four research centers around the state, with 100 faculty members and about 85 graduate students.
Its Horn Point Laboratory in Cambridge and Chesapeake Biological Laboratory on Solomons Island are home to the institution’s well known research on fisheries, water quality and the chemistry and biology of estuarine ecosystems. The Appalachian Laboratory in Frostburg adds investigations into management of terrestrial wildlife, forests and agriculture, and the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology in Baltimore explores microbiology, molecular biology and biotechnology.
Goodwin’s background leans toward engineering — specifically, a field known as ecohydraulics. The term, coined in the late 1980s, combines the study of aquatic animals and plants with analysis of the waters they’re swimming and floating in. The work informs operation, construction and even removal of dams and man-made reservoirs.
Goodwin has been a leading voice applying the discipline to debates mostly in the western U.S. He served as lead scientist for a group overseeing management of the water supply that comes through the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta, an estuary in northern California that is tapped to fill pipes and irrigation ditches in homes and farms across the state. Some of his other projects have explored flood prevention, sediment control and fishery management in places such as Idaho’s Red River, the Columbia River in Oregon and the Tijuana estuary in Southern California.
While those waterways may differ from the Chesapeake ecologically, they share similar challenges — they are a long way from becoming truly restored, and restoration efforts are complicated by politics. Goodwin’s understanding of such thorny debates means he won’t be in altogether unfamiliar terrain when he arrives in Maryland, Boesch said.
“He’s very practically minded,” Boesch said of his successor. “He’s not inexperienced and naive.”
Boesch said he plans to stay on the center’s faculty into 2018, introducing Goodwin to the major players and policy debates in Annapolis. After that, he plans to write one or more books intended for a general audience about the ecology of the Chesapeake and the Gulf of Mexico.
Boesch will be handing over a position that influences a broad range of state programs and policies. He serves or has served on state committees that oversee management of the bay’s oyster and crab populations, preparations for climate change, prevention of harmful algal blooms in waterways and responses to invasion by species like snakehead fish. He also held positions on advisory panels outside Maryland, including a federal commission created by the Obama administration to prevent or lessen the damage of oil spills.
Goodwin said he admires the way Boesch has maintained his identity as an impartial scientist while educating and advising politicians. He described himself as embracing a similar philosophy — one in which a scientist’s role is as an “honest broker” who doesn’t shy away from sharing controversial research but also doesn’t tell policymakers what to do with the information.
“Scientists are trained not to believe in anything — they're trained to question things,” Goodwin said. “It’s important to understand where science stops and where the decisions are made.”
Goodwin was attracted to UMCES because its independence and organization are unusual among similar research efforts around the country. Many centers are housed within larger universities, or are staffed by researchers spread across multiple departments or institutions. The distinction helps give UMCES a level of authority and credibility in policy debates that it might not otherwise have, Goodwin said.
“You’ve got an entire independent institution set up to design the science to inform policy and management actions,” he said. “Having that core focal expertise to build on is pretty unique. I’ve not seen that in any of the other large ecosystem restoration projects around the country.”
Boesch said he’s confident things won’t change under Goodwin given the priority the university system’s regents gave to finding a successor.
“Without hesitation, they said, ‘Let’s move forward and get a new president,’” Boesch said. “I think that’s a good sign.”
If anything, university system officials appear interested in strengthening the institution. Caret said he hopes to see Goodwin broaden the funding sources UMCES taps for its research so it’s less susceptible to state and federal funding cuts.
“I’m really coming in here to learn — to understand what the issues are and perhaps give independent, outside perspective,” he said.
While Boesch acknowledged Goodwin’s background might make his appointment seem unorthodox, he said he trusts his successor’s experience will help him navigate the institution forward.
”The times change and you need fresh perspective and a new generation of leaders,” Boesch said.
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VA gubernatorial hopefuls vow to stay course on Bay cleanup.
Speaking at a candidates’ forum in Richmond Wednesday, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, and Republican Ed Gillespie each pledged to strike a balance between growing the state’s economy and protecting its natural resources; but they differed on the specifics.
VA gubernatorial hopefuls vow to stay course on Bay cleanup
Northam, Gillespie both pledge to fight for Chesapeake funding, seem to differ little on pipelines, sea-level rise
By Whitney Pipkin on September 07, 2017
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Democrat Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, left, and Republican Ed Gillespie appeared at a Clean Water Forum in Richmond to share their views on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup and other environmental issues. (Whitney Pipkin)Protesters against new natural gas pipelines proposed across Virginia unfurled a banner at Clean Water Forum in Richmond, where both major-party candidates spoke on environmental issues. (Whitney Pipkin)
Democrat Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, left, and Republican Ed Gillespie appeared at a Clean Water Forum in Richmond to share their views on the Chesapeake Bay cleanup and other environmental issues. (Whitney Pipkin)
Virginia’s two major gubernatorial candidates vow to stay the course on the state’s efforts to curb Chesapeake Bay pollution — even if it means dipping into the state’s coffers to replace federal funding cuts.
Speaking at a candidates’ forum in Richmond Wednesday, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, and Republican Ed Gillespie each pledged to strike a balance between growing the state’s economy and protecting its natural resources; but they differed on the specifics. Both also took remarkably similar stances on two other hot-button environmental issues — pipelines and sea level rise.
Nearly 250 people came out for the Clean Water Forum, which was co-hosted by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the James River Association. It was the first forum to focus on the candidates’ environmental views.
Northam, who grew up on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, touted his background as a self-proclaimed environmentalist who, during his time as a state senator, advocated Bay-minded policies. He supported removing phosphorous from fertilizers and ending winter crab dredging in Virginia.
“If someone is going to apply for a job, look at their record,” said Northam, who’s garnered an endorsement and $1.8 million in contributions from the Virginia League of Conservation Voters.
Gillespie, a former adviser to President George W. Bush and lobbyist for Republican causes, departed from some of the Trump administration’s environmental policies to cast himself as an advocate for local water quality during the forum.
“The Chesapeake Bay is not just a huge asset,” Gillespie said as he pledged to work toward pollution reduction goals as governor. “From my perspective, God has entrusted us with this beauty as a gem and a resource, to be good stewards of it. It would be a priority for me…to do everything we can to ensure that we continue to meet those goals.”
The gubernatorial race in Virginia has garnered national attention as a referendum on the Trump administration and a bellwether for 2018 congressional midterm elections. National groups on both sides of the political aisle have begun pouring money into the campaigns, with the conservative Koch brothers backing Gillespie and billionaire climate change activist Tom Steyer supporting Northam.
The Trump administration has proposed deep cuts to many environmental programs that benefit the Bay, including eliminating the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program. Both candidates backed the state’s Chesapeake pollution reduction plan and said they would fight for federal funding to stay the course — and, if necessary, find state funds to fill in the gaps.
“We can’t go backwards. We can’t take away some of the things that we have done and risk the health of the Bay,” Northam said. “Not only is it important for our quality of life, but it’s also important for our economy.”
The two candidates didn’t debate, but appeared separately on stage to answer identical questions. Gillespie agreed in his comments that the Chesapeake cleanup is a priority worthy of both federal and state funds. He even implied he could bring his political connections, namely, his relationship with the current EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, to bear to benefit the Bay.
“We cannot zero out the Chesapeake Bay cleanup fund,” Gillespie said, “and I think bipartisan support would help.”
Given the wide gap between the two major parties, Jeff Corbin, former Bay senior adviser for the EPA in the Obama administration, said he was surprised by how similar the candidates’ stances sounded on several issues Wednesday. He wondered whether they would both be able to follow through on some of their statements given pressure from their respective parties.
“They both said they’d make the Chesapeake Bay a priority,” Corbin said after hearing both candidates speak. “To me, it comes down to: Who do the voters believe?”
Hot-button topics
A black banner held up by demonstrators outside the forum at Richmond’s National Theater, spelled in white letters the controversial topic many wanted to hear the candidates address: PIPELINES.
Moderator Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, asked each of the candidates whether they supported the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines, which would cut across communities and waterways to bring gas to more of the state. Environmentalists and property rights advocates have opposed the projects, while others say they’re crucial to Virginia’s energy portfolio.
While Gillespie has vocally supported the pipeline projects — which, he noted, should proceed with respect for the environment and personal property rights — some audience members were surprised to hear Northam come across as noncommittal on the subject.
“At the end of the day, we need to do what is safe and responsible with these pipelines,” Northam said. He added that, if the state and federal permitting agencies “do their jobs and deem (the pipelines) to be environmentally responsible and safe, I will support that. If they say they don’t like the way it’s affecting our streams and rivers, I will support that as well.”
“I was hoping he’d come out against the pipelines,” Jessica Sims, a Chesterfield County volunteer with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said of Northam. But, she said, “I find him to be great on a lot of environmental issues.”
George Smith, another climate network volunteer from Richmond, said he wanted Northam to come across stronger against new pipelines in the state, especially considering his opposition to hydraulic fracturing and offshore drilling.
As with the pipelines, neither candidate was ready to get specific when asked how the state should handle cleaning up the toxic coal-ash contaminants that have been accumulating at power plants for decades. They were on their way to being permanently stored at several plants near waterways until Gov. Terry McAuliffe pushed through a moratorium on new coal-ash storage permits and asked the companies to research alternatives.
Gillespie, who generally supports tax cuts and limiting the role of government, said he’s not necessarily opposed to offshore drilling or wind turbines off Virginia’s coast as part of an “all of the above” energy policy. But he doesn’t consider offshore oil or gas exploration to be a necessity any time soon and said he would weigh concerns raised about impacts to the state’s military bases and tourism industry, among others.
The importance of protecting Navy facilities in Norfolk loomed large in both candidates’ responses to questions about sea level rise, which both said should be a priority for the next governor. Gillespie said rising seas and sinking coastal areas must be addressed to ensure that military installations, in particular, can continue operating along Virginia’s coast.
For his part, Northam noted that he introduced legislation in the state Senate that instructed universities to begin investigating sea level rise and how vulnerable regions — from the populous Hampton Roads area to rural Tangier Island — could compete for federal grants to prepare for it.
“I used to work on Tangier Island…I know what Tangier looked like in the late ’70s and what it looks like now,” said Northam, a physician who in his younger days helped to repave the airplane runway there. “If anybody out there doesn’t believe in global warming or sea level rise, they need to go out to Tangier Island and see that that island is literally sinking into the Chesapeake Bay.”
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Don’t ignore a major threat to the Chesapeake Bay.
The bay cannot afford Maryland and the rest taking their eye off the big picture, just as improvements are becoming visible.
O’Leary/The Washington Post)
By Editorial Board August 13 at 7:26 PM
JUST A few miles from the Maryland-Pennsylvania border lies the Conowingo Dam, an 88-year-old power station stopping the massive Susquehanna River, which is the source of much of the fresh water flowing into the Chesapeake Bay. Since bay cleanup began, states in the Chesapeake watershed have relied on the dam to limit the flow of sediment and phosphorous further downstream, and the plan was to continue doing so for decades to come. But the dam’s sediment pools are full, long before the cleanup plan projected them to be. Now Maryland, where the dam is located, and Pennsylvania, which is responsible for much of the pollution in the Susquehanna, have to decide what, if anything, to do about it.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced last week that the state would conduct some limited dredging behind the dam, testing the feasibility of doing so on a larger scale and determining whether there could be some use for the material recovered. But Chesapeake environmental advocates are wary, concerned that diverting focus and resources to dredging behind the dam might undermine more important environmental initiatives, such as stopping pollution from entering the Susquehanna and other rivers in the first place. That is an argument for proceeding with care, not refusing to attend to the dam.
The bay faces three major threats — nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment. The first two pollutants are nutrients that feed algal blooms, which eat up oxygen that other species require. Sediment, meanwhile, clouds the water and smothers plants and animals on the bay floor.
Of those, there is widespread recognition that nutrient pollution is the bay’s biggest problem, which is why the environmentalists emphasize programs that prevent polluted runoff from flowing into local waterways. Though unpopular, these are the sorts of initiatives that will do the heavy lifting to restore the bay. Watershed states, particularly Pennsylvania, have a lot more to do on nutrient runoff; the cleanup program’s 2025 goal for limiting nitrogen pollution already appears to be out of reach.
Meanwhile, the upfront costs for dredging behind the dam could be huge — hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. Exelon, the power station’s operator, might pick up part of the tab, but that is not clear. Benjamin H. Grumbles, Maryland’s environment secretary, said that part of the cost might be defrayed if some economic use could be found for the dredged sentiment. That could include building new habitats, shoring up land against sea-level rise, even using it in construction or to fertilize land.
Mr. Grumbles insists that doing too little behind the dam will make it much harder to reach the bay’s phosphorus and sediment goals, and that dealing with the dam does not have to come at the cost of other important pollution control programs. The governor should proceed only on that basis. The bay is healthier than it has been in decades, in large part because watershed states have invested billions in a strong, well-designed cleanup effort. The bay cannot afford Maryland and the rest taking their eye off the big picture, just as improvements are becoming visible.
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Bay health gained slightly in 2016, assessment finds.
The Chesapeake Bay’s ecological health improved slightly last year, according to a new assessment, with three of the estuary’s key fish populations in their best shape in decades.
Improvements in crab, fish abundance noted in UM report card
May 08, 2017
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The Chesapeake Bay’s ecological health improved slightly last year, according to a new assessment, with three of the estuary’s key fish populations in their best shape in decades.
For the fifth straight year, the Bay’s condition in 2016 earned a C grade on the annual report card produced by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The overall score — combining measures of water quality, habitat and fish abundance — ticked upward to 54 percent, a 1 percent gain over 2015.
While not a huge improvement, the score is the second highest the Bay has earned since the annual assessments began in 1986, with only 2002 rating slightly higher. The scientist overseeing the report card said he takes heart from that, and the fact that the Bay’s health has held steady in recent years despite many pressures on it, both natural and man-made.
“I’m more optimistic than I’ve been in a long time,” said Bill Dennison, vice president for science applications at UMCES. “This seems to be sustained.”
The improvement seen by the UM scientists agrees with a report card issued earlier this year by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The Annapolis-based environmental group upgraded its assessment of the estuary’s health from a D to a C-minus. And, the annual Bay Barometer released by the state-federal Bay Program partnership also found many key indicators ticking upward, though it did not give an overall grade.
Bay health has tended to vary with the weather, and water quality, in particular, fares better in drought years. Less precipitation washes less nitrogen and phosphorus off the land that feed algae blooms and lowers the dissolved oxygen in the water that fish need to breathe.
But Dennison said he’s seeing evidence that the Bay’s water quality is holding its own, even in years when precipitation approaches normal. He suggested that’s likely the result of Baywide efforts to reduce nutrient and sediment pollution.
“It’s not just a blip from a drought year and then it comes crashing down,” he said. “We’ve had average runoff the last few years, and it’s steadily gotten better.”
Bay grass abundance has improved, and the oxygen-starved “dead zone” that forms every summer in the deepest part of the estuary has shrunk in recent years, Dennison noted.
The UMCES assessment rated fisheries health at 90 percent last year, up from 73 percent in 2015 and the highest score ever. That grade represents an average assessment of abundance for three key species — striped bass, blue crabs and Bay anchovies.
Other important species, such as oysters and American shad, remain in doubt, Dennison acknowledged. But he said that the three species rated by UMCES are important indicators of overall fish health in the Bay. Two are pillars of the commercial fishing industry, while the third, tiny anchovies, serve as food for all of the larger species in the estuary.
Water quality earned mixed scores last. Dissolved oxygen and phosphorus improved, while nitrogen pollution worsened, and the abundance of bottom-dwelling worms and other marine life declined some.
And while the “dead zone” in the Bay may have shrunk, dissolved oxygen levels in its tidal tributaries remains a concern.
“We still have big problems in (places such as) the upper Choptank, the upper Chester,” Dennison said. “In that shallow water at night, it (dissolved oxygen) just plummets.”
Another problem has cleared up some, literally, though no one knows exactly why. Water clarity, which had been in a long-term decline, has improved noticeably in the last couple years. Clearer water has been most pronounced in the central region of the Bay, Dennison said, including tributaries such as the Choptank and Severn rivers.
“I’ve been poking around the Choptank since 1987, and I’ve never seen it like that,” he noted.
“We still don’t understand why,” he added, calling it an “enigma” that scientists are still trying to unravel.
Dennison also said he was heartened by the improvements seen in some of the Chesapeake’s most distressed tributaries. The Patapsco and Back rivers by Baltimore, which got an F grade as recently as 2014, saw the biggest gain, earning a D grade for 2016.
The Elizabeth River in Norfolk had also been among the Bay’s sickest rivers, but conditions there rated a D last year as well. Rivers on the Lower Western Shore of Maryland earned a D-plus for 2016, but are showing signs of improvement, according to the report cards. Of the other rivers that have long been in poor condition, only the Patuxent in Maryland and York in Virginia showed no gains last year.
But Dennison said that from what he’s seen, he is confident that if the Bay cleanup continues on its present course, even the Chesapeake’s least healthy tributaries will get better.
“We’re going to get out of the Ds, he predicted. But with only a C grade so far, the Bay still has a long way to go to be considered fully restored, he said, and climate change is not going to make it any easier to get there.
“Maybe the patient has gotten out of the intensive care unit,” he said, “but we still need to keep the monitors in place.”
For details of this and earlier report cards, go here.
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Climate change, development loom on Nanticoke’s horizon.
The Nanticoke River is beautiful to look at now, but scientists and conservationists worry that trouble may be just beneath the surface, or around the bend.
Subtle changes in nutrient levels, vegetation lurking beneath river’s sublime beauty
By Rona Kobell on February 21, 2017
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Owens Branch, a small tributary of the Nanticoke River, was part of a Nature Conservancy property near Riverton before it was transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (Dave Harp)Winter snow settles on the marshes of the Upper Nanticoke. (Dave Harp)
Owens Branch, a small tributary of the Nanticoke River, was part of a Nature Conservancy property near Riverton before it was transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (Dave Harp)
Sometimes, rivers shout their troubles. They catch fire. Or change color. Other times, they whisper, degrading slowly over time. And some cry for help in a voice so small that passersby can’t hear them at all; only those who know them well recognize the signs.
The Nanticoke River falls into the third category: Beautiful to look at now, but scientists and conservationists worry that trouble may be just beneath the surface, or around the bend.
On a frigid December morning, the 8-mile stretch from Riverton in Maryland to Phillip’s Landing in Delaware looked much as it may have when John Smith mapped these waters more than 400 years ago. Eagles and turkey vultures soared overhead. For miles, the view is more woods, few bulkheads and none of the housing developments that dot other places. Free of dams, the river remains an excellent shad spawning habitat. It still has a yellow perch fishery. It’s the only Maryland river to maintain a century-old private leasing system for raising oysters. It even has sturgeon again, an ancient species once thought to be gone from the state.
But those who keep close watch are noticing some worrisome signs for one of the Bay’s least disturbed tributaries. Nitrogen loads are increasing. The poultry industry is booming in the upper half of the river in Delaware. Also of concern is housing and commercial growth in Delaware, where stretches of unspoiled shoreline are at risk because the state does little to regulate waterfront development.
“The Nanticoke is a pretty amazing place. It’s not like the rest of the Eastern Shore,” said William Dennison, a vice president at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, who has overseen a series of annual report cards assessing the river’s ecological health. “But when I paddle on the Nanticoke, I think of what I can’t see, and there are a lot of things that bother me about it.”
In 2010, Dennison’s group gave the Nanticoke a B-minus on its first report card from the University of Maryland, and the river has largely maintained that grade — admittedly, nothing to brag about on a child’s report card, but better than the Cs and Ds given to many other Bay tributaries.
Still, Dennison is not sure the river can maintain even such a mediocre health rating.
Among his chief worries is the impact climate change is already having on the marshes around the river’s mouth, at Fishing Bay and along the nearby Blackwater River in low-lying Dorchester County. Rising sea level is eating away at those marshes, which when healthy, trap pollution and create habitat for fish and crabs. Warmer temperatures are also frying the marsh vegetation, which had already been damaged by invasive nutria, Dennison said. He called the situation a “rotting carpet,” but said it’s rotting from the inside, so it’s not always noticeable to the paddlers who ply the river as they follow the Captain John Smith National Historic Trail.
Also not noticeable: increasing levels of nitrogen, which the U.S. Geological Survey and the Nanticoke Watershed Alliance have been measuring for the last several years. Levels of phosphorus and nitrate have been on the rise in parts of the Nanticoke — as well as some other Eastern Shore rivers — since 2005, according to the USGS.
Too much nitrogen and phosphorus in the water from fertilizer, wastewater and urban runoff leads to algae blooms, which block light and prevents key grasses from growing. When the blooms die and decay, the process robs the water of dissolved oxygen essential for aquatic life and can shut down productive fisheries. Agriculture is the largest polluter of the Chesapeake — and the Nanticoke — where about three-fourths of the pollution load comes from farms.
Much of the nitrogen increase seen in the Nanticoke is a kind of delayed reaction, according to Scott Phillips, a USGS hydrologist. Nutrients in fertilizer that farmers over-applied to fields years — and even decades ago — soaked deep into the soil, and those pollutants are only now reaching the river via slow-moving groundwater, he explained.
“That is one of the major factors we’re up against,” he said.
While farmers and environmental officials can’t do much about the nitrogen already in the groundwater, they can stop adding to the problem by curtailing the over-application of fertilizer and taking more steps to prevent nutrients from washing off fields when it rains.
The Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load, a pollution diet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imposed in 2010, requires reductions in nutrients entering the Bay from all of its tributaries. For more than a decade, Maryland farmers have had to file nutrient management plans that prescribe limits on how much nitrogen and phosphorus they can apply to fertilize. The state is also phasing in a regulation that would bar spreading phosphorus-rich animal manure on fields already saturated with the nutrient.
Phillips said the steps are positive, but because of the lag time in how slowly ground water moves, results aren’t going to be immediate. And it’s far from clear that the efforts made to date are enough. Farmers in both Maryland and Delaware are supposed to be limiting their use of fertilizer, but officials check only a fraction of the farms in both states on an annual basis to see if their nutrient management plans are being followed. And many runoff-reducing practices are not required, so without adequate funding, farmers can’t afford to put them in.
“The idea is, ratchet down the nutrients, and we should get back to a restored Bay,” said Tom Parham, director of tidewater ecosystem assessment for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. But, he acknowledged, that’s easier said than done. So far, the water is not necessarily responding.
It’s Dennison’s experiences with another Shore river, the Choptank, that feed his worry about the Nanticoke. In 1987, when he began work as a graduate student at the Horn Point laboratory on the Choptank, skipjacks still dredged for oysters there. Dennison recalled snorkeling in the river’s lush grass beds and swimming along its banks. But 2003 brought the wettest year on record for Maryland, including Tropical Storm Isabel and the second-worst blizzard in state history. Those storms sent large plumes of sediment into the river, leading to a decline that has taken more than a decade to turn around.
Land use plays a big role in water quality, and by that yardstick, the Nanticoke remains relatively healthy, with 41 percent of its watershed in farming, 34 percent in forest and 11 percent in wetlands, according to the Nanticoke Watershed Alliance’s 2012 report. Just 7 percent of the land has been developed, though that’s up from 2 percent two decades ago.
Much of the watershed has been permanently shielded from development through the efforts of state and federal governments and of nonprofits such as the Conservation Fund and the Nature Conservancy.
Some protected parcels include habitat for the Delmarva fox squirrel. Once at risk of extinction, it has since recovered and in 2015 was removed from the endangered species list.
To date, the Nature Conservancy has preserved 25,000 acres and still owns 13,000 acres, having transferred the rest to state or federal entities. It’s working with the U.S. Navy to preserve the land under its Chesapeake Test Range, 2,700 square miles of restricted airspace over the Bay and Delmarva where the military tests radar and planes.
In part because of these efforts, visitors to the Nanticoke are none the wiser about the terrestrial threats to its future, or the problems in the water on which they paddle. But Judith Stribling, an ecology professor at Salisbury University and past president of Friends of the Nanticoke River, spends a lot of time on the river. She can see the changes, in the data and on the ground, and broods about what’s coming, particularly in Delaware.
“How do you worry about a person’s health? You look at them, you see them gaining weight, not exercising, you get worried, before you even check their blood pressure,” she said. “You look at development, impervious surface, exploitation. And then your confirmation — the blood pressure check — is the water quality data.”
Most of the watershed’s growth has come on the Delaware end of the river, which includes the towns of Laurel, Seaford and Bridgeville as well as Sussex County. Laurel’s population was less than 4,000 in 2014; the town’s comprehensive plan, now 5 years old, projected growth to 10,000 people “within the next two to three decades.”
Bryan Ashby, a program manager with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said the Laurel sewage plant will have to upgrade if that growth comes.
“If they happen to get that,” Ashby said of Laurel’s projected population, “it will become a stress.”
Bridgeville has an old sewage treatment facility and is under an EPA mandate to modernize it. The Seaford plant, he said, has been upgraded and can accommodate growth.
Poultry growth is also a concern. In 2014, Delaware ranked seventh in the nation for poultry production, with 1.7 billion pounds of meat chickens, according to the Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc. Sussex County produced the most poultry meat of all the counties nationwide in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent farm census in 2012.
Both Maryland and Delaware have seen changes in the scale of poultry operations. Where farms once had land and two or three houses, many now have no land and more houses — some more than a dozen, for thousands of chickens apiece. Those farmers pay someone to haul the manure, but often, it lands on fields nearby and can affect the water quality.
Another driver for Sussex County’s expanding poultry industry in the future is the relocation of a processing plant to Harbeson from Cordova MD. Ashby said he expects interest in poultry growing to increase.
The Delaware official said the state’s required nutrient management plans are the backbone of any animal feeding operation, and that any fertilizer applied from animal waste must be able to be absorbed by the crop.
But for longtime Nanticoke advocates, those reassurances are not enough.
“It’s an important river, and it’s largely been passed by, thank God,” said Joe Fehrer of The Nature Conservancy. “People tend to move straight through on their way between Baltimore and Ocean City.
“The Nanticoke has kind of been holding steady,” he added, but warned, “It wouldn’t take much to tip it one way or the other.”
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Bay grass restoration threatened by warming, scientists say.
The Bay region is unlikely to meet its underwater grass restoration goals unless it clears up the Chesapeake’s water beyond what is now targeted, scientists warned in a recent journal article.
Bay grass restoration threatened by warming, scientists say
Greater cleanup seen necessary to keep eelgrass from succumbing to heat, murky water
By Karl Blankenship on February 14, 2017
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The Bay region is unlikely to meet its underwater grass restoration goals unless it clears up the Chesapeake’s water beyond what is now targeted, scientists warned in a recent journal article.
If more action is not taken, they warn that eelgrass — the primary underwater grass species found in high-salinity portions of the Bay — may face a “catastrophic” decline in the Chesapeake because of a combination of warming temperatures and murky water.
As a consequence, they predict populations of blue crabs and many other fish will also decline as areas with once-lush grass beds convert to muddy bottoms. They project that the resulting economic impacts from that loss of habitat could reach $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion annually.
Nor is it just a problem for the future, the scientists said in a paper published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Climate Change Biology. Over the last half-century, eelgrass has been eliminated from nearly half the area it once occupied in the Bay. It rebounded slightly in the late 1980s, but since 1991 — a period when grass beds have come back in many other areas — eelgrass acreage has declined 29 percent.
“It is happening now, and it is happening rapidly,” warned Jonathan Lefcheck, a post-doctoral researcher at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and lead author of the paper.
Underwater grass beds are one of the most critical habitats found in the Bay. They provide shelter for juvenile crabs and fish, as well as food for waterfowl. They also protect shorelines from the erosive force of waves, and help filter sediment and nutrients out of the water.
Like all plants, underwater grasses need sunlight to survive. In the wake of Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972, grass beds suffered dramatic declines as the Bay filled with sediment and nutrient-fueled algae blooms, hitting a low point of 38,0000 acres in 1983.
Since then, they have made a comeback in many places, reaching 92,315 acres throughout the Chesapeake and its tidal rivers in 2015, the most recent year for which data is available. That’s about half of the Baywide goal of 185,000 acres, which is based on observations made in the decades prior to Agnes.
Eelgrass, though, has declined. That’s a concern because unlike low salinity area of the Bay that can support multiple species, eelgrass is the only seagrass that can survive in much of the lower Chesapeake. In most high salinity areas of the Bay, there is nothing that can take its place. The paper pins eelgrass loss on two factors: loss of water clarity and warming water temperatures.
In many of the eelgrass-dominated areas, water clarity has generally worsened since 1997, the paper said. Eelgrass was once commonly found at depths of more than 1 meter, but murkier water means plants no longer get enough sunlight to survive at such depths.
Meanwhile, gradually warming water temperatures are adding stress to the plants, which are near the southern edge of their range in the Bay. Eelgrass does not tolerate hot temperatures and suffered sharp diebacks after hot summers in 2005 and 2010.
In effect, scientists say, poor water clarity is squeezing eelgrass into shallower areas, but those are also warmer.
Further, there is not enough shallow water habitat available to restore historic levels of underwater grass in high salinity areas where eelgrass is the dominant — and typically only — species, said David Wilcox, a data analyst at VIMS who was a co-author of the paper.
“Unless we get the deep beds back, it would be hard to drive that up,” he said. “It is hard to imagine getting that deeper grass without the clarity that would support that.”
Scientists say they expect further decreases if past trends continue.
The paper said that the impact of warming temperatures alone in the next 30 years would lead to a further 38 percent decline in eelgrass cover. Similarly, if water clarity trends in the Lower Bay remain unchanged, , eelgrass would decline 84 percent. If both trends continue, 95 percent of eelgrass beds would be lost in the Chesapeake in 30 years, the paper said.
Such a loss would reverberate throughout the ecosystem, as there is no other species that would fill the void, resulting in declines of blue crabs, silver perch and a host of other species highly dependent on grass beds in the lower Bay.
“If you’re a guy who wants to take his son fishing on the weekend, you can expect a lot fewer fish out there,” Lefcheck said. “The eelgrass habitat is going away, so all these critters are going to have no place to live.”
Scientists also worry that a catastrophic loss may not be decades away. Eelgrass suffered huge diebacks after previous hot summers: 55 percent after 2005 and 41 percent after 2010.
In both cases, the beds rebounded, but scientists said that likely would not be the case if there are two consecutive hot years — the odds of which increase as average temperatures continue to rise.
The reason eelgrass might die back permanently with a prolonged hot spell stems from the method by which it reproduces. It has root-like structures called rhizomes, which produce new shoots that spread over the bottom, but if the plant is killed in late summer, when water temperatures are at their warmest, the rhizomes die, too.
Eelgrass beds also produce seeds in the spring, which can still produce a recovery the following year even if the plants die during the summer. But if a plant-killing heat spell hits for a second year in a row, neither the seeds nor the rhizomes would be available to spur a comeback in the third year.
In fact, that appears to be what happened at an eelgrass restoration site in the Piankatank River during two consecutive hot growing seasons in the early 1990s, said Bob Orth, a longtime underwater grass researcher at VIMS and co-author of the paper.
“Because there were no seeds, in that third year there were no plants left in the Piankatank,” Orth said, noting that the eelgrass has been largely absent from the river since. “We had an open window into what could happen if we had significant Baywide heat events back-to-back.”
The paper has significant implications for Bay cleanup efforts. Chesapeake Bay water clarity standards are designed to return underwater grass abundances similar to those observed the mid-1900s throughout the Bay. Meeting those clarity requirements requires nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment reductions to ensure that enough light reaches grasses to allow their return.
But, scientists say, those clarity goals never accounted for the impact of warming temperatures on eelgrass.
Eelgrass can withstand “moderate increases in temperature,” the paper said, but only if water was clearer than in the past, so plants would not have to work as hard to get energy from the sun — thereby offsetting some of the stress on the plant caused by the heat.
“We’re pretty certain that if we want eelgrass to return to its previous habitat, you are going to have to get more clarity,” Orth said. “It is a physiological fact.”
Rich Batiuk, associate director for science with the EPA’s Bay Program Office, said that before water clarity standards can be changed, scientists need to determine just how much clearer water would need to be to support the eelgrass restoration in the face of warming temperatures. Then, he said, the state-federal Bay Program partnership would have to determine whether those goals are achievable.
“We may have to rethink what is possible in a Chesapeake that is going to have warmer summers in Virginia’s portion of the Bay,” Batiuk said.
That sets up a tough choice for the region, he added, because losing eelgrass in the Lower Bay would have consequences for the entire ecosystem. For instance, juvenile crabs that find shelter in eelgrass beds later spread throughout the Chesapeake.
“One change there can reverberate around the system, not just in Virginia itself, because it is such an integrated system,” Batiuk said.
Besides Lefcheck, Wilcox and Orth, other authors on the paper include Rebecca Murphy of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and Scott Marion, of the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife.
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Bay cleanup efforts already feeling the heat from climate change.
Higher temperatures, rising sea level will make it even harder to reach 2025 goals.
Editor’s note: This article is part of a series examining issues related to the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Midpoint Assessment of Bay cleanup efforts.
Rising temperatures and sea levels, as well as increased precipitation, are all expected for the Chesapeake Bay region as the Earth’s climate changes, but no one has to wait until the end of the century to feel their impacts. For Bay cleanup efforts, the future is now.
Scientists and state and federal officials are already trying to determine the extent to which climate change will affect the region’s ability to achieve its 2025 cleanup goals.
Globally, temperatures are predicted to increase at least 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and could rise by three times that much by 2100. Sea levels during that period are expected to increase 1–4 feet, and global average precipitation is also expected to increase.
Right now, the impact of those large-scale changes on the Bay cleanup appears small, though still measurable. “We know in 2025 we’re not going to fall off the cliff,” said Lewis Linker, modeling coordinator with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Bay Program office in Annapolis. “We know December 2025 is going to look a lot like December today.”
That said, preliminary computer modeling does suggest that climate change will make the job of meeting water quality goals slightly more difficult. The estimates, which will be refined in coming months, predict that climate-related changes could increase the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus reaching the Bay in 2025 by about 2 percent above what was projected in 2010, when cleanup goals were set.
And, climate change will continue to make the job more difficult beyond that, as an upward trend in precipitation continues, storms intensify, and rising sea levels drown nutrient-absorbing tidal marshes.
Besides increasing nutrient runoff, climate change may also reduce the effectiveness of pollution control practices. More frequent intense storms could overwhelm some stormwater controls. Increasing — and more severe — droughts may reduce the effectiveness of vegetative buffers, while stream restorations might be challenged by flooding from more intense storms.
Current nutrient and sediment goals were established in 2010 when the EPA issued the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load, or pollution diet, which set nutrient and sediment caps for each state and river. The resulting pollution reductions were intended to reduce algal blooms, improve water clarity and enhance oxygen levels to sustain fish, crabs, oysters and other aquatic life.
Actions to achieve those caps were to be fully implemented by 2025. This year, the state-federal Bay Program is completing a “midpoint assessment” of the TMDL goals to determine what course corrections, if any, are needed to meet that deadline. While climate change will impact everything from forests in the Bay’s headwater streams to the makeup of fish communities in the Chesapeake itself, the assessment is focused on the changes that could impact the ability of cleanup efforts to ultimately meet the Bay’s clean water standards — things like rainfall, river flows, rising temperatures and sea level rise.
Predicting impacts a challenge
But predicting the exact impact of those changes, particularly things like rainfall and river flow, is challenging.
“Part of the problem of projecting climate into the future is that climate cycles naturally, anyway,” said Mark Bennett, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s West Virginia and Virginia Water Science Center. Regional climate drivers, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, can cause shifts in temperature and rainfall lasting a decade or so that are then reversed.
To sort short-term fluctuations from long-term trends, the Bay Program — at the advice of its Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee — is using two techniques. It is using records of rainfall and river flow, which date back almost a century, to determine long-term trends and project them to 2025. Separately, it is trying to parse out regional data from a suite of global climate models to predict changes for 2050 and thereafter.
That exercise revealed that climate change isn’t just a future problem — it’s already affecting the Bay and its watershed.
The amount of rainfall that lands on the watershed and flows into the river has a huge impact on the amount of nutrients and sediment washed off the land and, ultimately, into the Chesapeake. In making nutrient runoff estimates for the TMDL, the Bay Program used rainfall estimates from the 1990s to simulate nutrient runoff from the watershed. That baseline has been used ever since.
“All of our thinking on climate change was relatively static up to this point,” Linker said. But an examination of the long-term precipitation record shows that the region’s rainfall has been increasing over the last century. When that trend was applied to the 30-year period from the mid-1990s to the cleanup deadline, it showed that the rainfall predicted for 2025 was being underestimated by more than 3 percent.
“For the first time, our eyes are open to the kind of change that is really taking place, based on our observations,” Linker said.
Not all that rainfall makes it to the Bay, though. As temperatures warm, it has also increased evapotranspiration — the evaporation of water from the ground and transpiration of water into the air from plants. As a result, while river flows have also been increasing, they have not risen at the same rate as precipitation.
What that means for 2025 and beyond isn’t totally clear. More heat could increase the evapotranspiration, which would reduce the amount of rainfall that actually reaches a stream. On the other hand, some scientists believe that more carbon in the atmosphere will make plants more efficient and reduce transpiration — meaning more rainfall and nutrients would reach waterways.
How the tug-of-war plays out will have big impacts on whether more nutrients will be washed into the Bay.
“It’s a horse race, but our best assessment is that precipitation is winning by a nose,” Linker said.
Right now, preliminary computer model estimates indicate that nitrogen and phosphorus runoff could increase about 2 percent. But that grows over time; by midcentury, continued increases in precipitation and stream flows would drive nutrient runoff up by more than 5 percent.
Drier summers, wetter winters
When and where rain arrives is also changing. On average, summers are getting drier and winters wetter, a trend expected to continue in the future. But precipitation increases are not spread evenly throughout the watershed. While projections to 2025 show increasing rainfall everywhere, it increases slightly more in the northern part of the watershed — the Susquehanna basin — than in areas to the south.
That is consistent with larger-scale climate model projections that generally predict the Northeast becoming wetter and the Southeast a bit drier, Bennett said. “The mid-Atlantic is kind of a hinge point,” he said.
How precipitation and river flow patterns affect Bay water quality remains to be seen, as the Chesapeake is also being altered by climate change.
Bay water temperatures, and water levels, have been rising for decades and will continue to do so. Warmer water holds less oxygen than cool water, which could make it more difficult to meet dissolved oxygen water-quality goals for the Chesapeake. But at least through 2025, that impact might be offset by rising sea levels which — at least initially — may help improve oxygen concentrations in some places. Rising water levels draw more salty ocean water farther up into the Bay and increases the exchange of Bay and ocean waters. In the short term, computer models predict that rising sea levels will improve water mixing in some of the most problematic areas of the Upper Bay, helping to break up the oxygen-starved dead zones that form on the bottom.
“In those areas, we would have a better ventilation of the bottom,” Linker said.
At the same time, rising seas will reduce oxygen levels in parts of the Lower Bay, but not by enough to keep them from meeting water quality goals.
Loss of marshes
But any water quality benefits from sea level rise are relatively short-lived, in part because they also drown tidal marshes. Marsh losses between now and 2025 are expected to be minimal, but by 2050 and especially thereafter, marsh losses are expected to be substantial. Lost with them is their ability to absorb large amounts of nutrients and to slow water flow, giving sediments a chance to settle.
Initial projections suggest that 40 percent of Bay’s tidal marshes could be lost by 2100, which would increase the amount of nitrogen reaching the Bay by about 10 percent.
In fact, scientists generally expect to see an acceleration of temperature and sea level trends as time goes by, along with potentially even greater changes in precipitation — which could also pose problems for the Bay. Also, they consider it likely that more precipitation will come in heavy downpours rather than gentle rain. Storms tend to move more sediment and phosphorus — much of which binds to sediment — than a slow, soaking rain.
Linker said some of that increased intensity is already being seen in data. As a result, the computer models predict the rate of increase for phosphorus is slightly more than that of nitrogen.
In the coming months, those estimates will be improved as models are refined and scientists analyze additional information to better estimate what impact climate change will have on Bay water quality goals.
Environmental groups are pressing for assurances that revised cleanup plans to be written in 2018 will address any nutrient increases caused by climate change. “Numerous peer-reviewed and rigorous scientific studies show that climate change-induced impacts in the Bay are already occurring and will worsen over the coming decades,” said David Flores, climate adaptation policy analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform, in a letter to the Bay Program that was signed by several other groups.
Flores added: “To our knowledge, there is no credible legal, scientific, or policy rationale” to delay taking actions to offset additional pollution stemming from climate change.
At recent meetings, state officials have said they would first like to see updated computer model projections, expected in the spring, that will reflect not only climate change, but also the impacts of more nutrients stemming from the filling of the Conowingo Dam reservoir, land use changes throughout the watershed and other factors that may affect cleanup goals.
But Bay Program participants and the environmental groups generally agree that climate change needs to be taken into account when implementing future runoff control practices by prioritizing those expected to be most effective under changing conditions.
In addition, Bay Program leaders recently adopted “guiding principles” for addressing climate change in future cleanup plans that call for states to report every two years to the EPA about how they are using new information about climate change to adjust their programs, policies and on-the-ground actions.
Impact on existing BMPs unknown
But figuring out how climate change may affect the dozens of runoff control best management practices being deployed around the Bay watershed to reduce runoff will be difficult, said Zoe Johnson, coordinator for the Bay Program Climate Resiliency Workgroup. On one hand, warming temperatures may allow farmers in northern parts of the watershed a greater chance to plant nutrient-absorbing cover crops before the first frost. On the other, warmer temperatures could make vegetated BMPs more vulnerable to drought, erosion, insect damage or disease.
“It’s easier to understand how climate can affect the pollution load than its affect on the performance of BMPs,” Johnson said.
But in general, she said, practices that slow water flow and help retain it on the landscape for longer periods of time would help. That includes things like forested stream buffers, restored wetlands or stream restoration projects that reconnect streams to floodplains. In tidal areas, she said, states may want to ensure that, where possible, upland areas provide routes for marshes to migrate as water levels rise.
For some structural BMPs, such as stormwater retention ponds, adjustments might be straightforward — new ones can be designed to handle greater, more intense storms, Johnson said. Existing ones might be enlarged, or supplemented with green infrastructure practices, such as rain gardens, which could intercept some of the additional rainfall before it reaches the detention pond.
One thing is certain: The challenge of dealing with climate impacts won’t be finished in 2025, as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, temperatures and sea levels are all predicted to continue rising for decades — and cleanup efforts will require constant adjustments.
“What good is it to meet the water quality standard for one day in 2025 only to have climate change drive you away from that standard as you move beyond that?” asked Bennett, who is also co-chair of the Bay Program Climate Resiliency Workgroup. “They really need to keep their eye further out when taking these other things into consideration.”
In perhaps a sign of things to come, the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in January reported that 2016 edged out 1998 to become the warmest year on record in its 38-year satellite temperature record.
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