IAN Seminar Series

Since the early 1980s, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, with the support of the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership, and with funding from the EPA and other local, state, and federal partners, has lead an annual Bay-wide SAV monitoring effort using data interpreted from aerial imagery integrated with ground survey data. The program has evolved over the past three decades to become the most successful large-scale, consistent, long-term SAV monitoring program in the world. Because of the program’s endurance and reliability of data, SAV scientists and managers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have grown to rely on the data for a variety of purposes. With that said, the ability to identify and secure diverse and sustainable sources of long-term funding for the program have not been successful in the past several years. The program itself has become more expensive over the years as the quantity of data and level of detail, accuracy, and staff expertise have increased, while simultaneously the number and div