IAN Seminar Series

The overall health of Chesapeake Bay improved in 2014, with significantly improving trends in both total nitrogen and total phosphorus in the Bay. Overall, the tidal waters of the Chesapeake scored a C (50%), which was up from the previous year’s score of 45% (also a C). The 2014 overall score of 50%, a C, is considered moderate health. The improvement in the overall score is due to improved nutrient scores (lower amounts of nutrients in the water column) and improved aquatic grasses scores. While not part of the overall grade, fisheries indicators and a climate change resilience index were also part of the 2014 Chesapeake Bay report card. Methods and results of these indicators, as well as the new report card website, will be reviewed during this presentation.  

As the Chesapeake Bay Program begins a multi-year effort to increase data available for tracking Bay restoration progress by incorporating citizen science into the CBP monitoring network, this presentation highlights Virginia’s example of a similar effort on a state level. In 2003, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality developed a quality assurance program that uses a tiered approach to allow the agency to use non-agency data to assess water quality while meeting both agency and volunteer group needs. The presentation also includes an introduction to two successful statewide volunteer monitoring programs in Virginia: the River Trends program of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and the Virginia Save Our Streams program of the Izaak Walton League of America.

Anne presents an overview of citizen science and crowdsourcing in federal agencies. The Commons Lab Inventory, led by the Anne, is a collection of federally supported citizen science and crowdsourcing projects. She also presents her work on STIP's Serious Games, in which she supports the activities to the Federal Gaming Guild (FGG), and how she is writing a report on serious games for publication this summer.

Olivia will show how the Chesapeake Bay Program's decision support tools are used to develop local TMDLs and TMDL implementation plans. These decision support tools include CAST and BayFAST and the state-specific tools of MAST (Maryland) and VAST (Virginia). She will show examples of how the tools may be used to demonstrate the ability to comply with permit requirements related to nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment loads as well as demonstrate costs associated with plans. 

More than half of the people in the world are nourished by crops grown with synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizers.  However, more than a billion people are still undernourished, and global population will increase by 2-3 billion by 2050, which means that demand for N fertilizers is likely to grow.  Unfortunately, unintended adverse environmental and human health consequences of reactive N escaping agricultural fields are occurring as groundwater contamination, eutrophication of freshwater and estuarine ecosystems, atmospheric pollutants related to nitrogen oxides and ammonia gas emissions, and accumulation of the potent greenhouse gas and stratospheric ozone depleting substance, nitrous oxide.   An alternative to increasing fertilizer-N use proportionately to the increase in food demand is to improve nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in agriculture.  I will present preliminary results from an analysis of trends in NUE from 1961 to 2011 for 129 countries, demonstrating the importance of both crop mix and policy.  In

Dr. Raymond Najjar, from the Department of Meteorology at the Pennsylvania State University, presents research on climate change and how it will affect Bay restoration.

A recent assessment of stream habitat conditions was used to construct a model f brook trout distributions throughout their native range in the Chesapeake Bay. Our approach uses very large datasets and machine learning statistics to quantify conditions at the stream segment level (64,000 stream segments) and accumulated conditions at the watershed scale. Through this assessment we are able to quantify current conditions, likely historic conditions in the absence of stress, and stream-to-stream level measures of stress associated with mining, agriculture, and urbanization. Model results are then integrated into a web-based GIS modeling tool that can be used for interactive visualization, conservation prioritization, and quantitative scenario analysis. When coupled with climate change predictions and large river species models, the brook trout will provide a powerful means for optimizing restoration actions that will produce measurable benefits to stream habitats and fish populations throughout the bay watershe

The Delmarva/Choptank River Complex, which includes the Choptank and Little Choptank Rivers, is located on Maryland's Eastern Shore. This area is a treasured part of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, representing critical habitat for spawning striped bass and river herring, as well as historically abundant oyster reefs. Residents of the watershed, including many families who have lived there for multiple generations, have traditionally been employed in agriculture or commercial fishing. But time are changing in the region. Continued human population growth and land development threaten key habitats for fish and aquatic resources. The historical loss of wetlands in the upper Choptank River subwatershed is estimated to be 47,400 acres, approximately 11% of the total watershed area. Climate change and sea level rise, combined with land subsidence, further threaten losses of nearshore marshes and coastal environments. While the rivers and Bay have supported major annual seafood harvests in previous years, fishery res

This talk describes how the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservations provides a common framework for designing, managing, monitoring, and learning from conservation projects and programs that have been developed and adopted by some of the world's leading conservation organizations and agencies.