Publications

The 2014 Chesapeake Watershed Agreement establishes the goal to “[c]ontinually increase the knowledge and capacity of local officials on issues related to water resources and the implementation of economic and policy incentives that will support local conservation efforts.” Environmental Leadership Strategies (ELS) researched the needs of local officials and assessed the capacity of existing programs to meet these needs. In this report, ELS makes recommendations on how to support local officials to advance the Watershed Agreement's Local Leadership Outcome.

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The suite of computer modeling tools developed by the Chesapeake Bay Program divides the 64,000-square mile watershed into thousands of smaller segments, and helps us understand the impact of pollution-reducing policies and practices at the regional and local level. The most significant value of the suite of modeling tools is the ability to predict how the Chesapeake Bay will respond to future conditions such as pollutant loads, land use changes and climate change

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Recommendations of the Expert Panel to Define Removal Rates for Shoreline Management Projects (WQGIT Approved 7/13/15, WTWG Revised 6/1/17).

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Phase 6 is the newest version of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Model, now called the Chesapeake Bay Suite of Modeling Tools. Its simplified structure makes it easy to use and its data and information have been expanded and improved. But how is it different from the previous version?

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Changes in the regulatory landscape, coupled with budget-constrained environments, are driving local governments to search for new or evolving strategies and investments that deliver more value than conventional stormwater management practices.

In light of this challenge, green infrastructure (GI) is getting more attention as a stormwater management strategy. GI is described as a more holistic and multifunctional approach to stormwater management that can deliver benefits across the triple bottom line, mitigate water quality impacts, improve quality of life and enhance climate resiliency (US EPA, 2015).

The list of direct and indirect benefits arising from GI is fairly consistent across sources, but the scale and value of these benefits are not. Careful examination of peer-reviewed published literature, combined with existing guidance documents and studies, provide options for quantifying and monetizing the wide array of GI benefits. The various sources are diverse. They employ different valuation and assessment methodologies. Existing resources do not provide a unifying framework or standardization. Consequently, the methods require multi-disciplinary technical knowledge (engineering, economic and bio-physical) that stormwater managers do not generally have.

This document is intended for smaller local governments with stormwater programs that are responsible for regulatory compliance with municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) obligations (e.g., Phase 2 communities). It outlines an approach to holistically evaluate the benefits of implementing green infrastructure. The guidance places emphasis on first understanding the goal and scope for assessing benefits. It uses the goal and scope to step the user through: (1) differentiating between direct benefits and co-benefits of GI, and (2) understanding when and how these benefits need to be characterized, quantified or monetized. This document is not intended to be a “how to” measure benefits for conducting benefit-cost analysis, but rather anapproach to tailor benefits and co-benefits identification and description to inform decision making and stakeholder engagement.

The report is organized into three sections with attachments.

• The first section introduces the concept of green infrastructure and describes some of the most common GI practices.
• The second section discusses the range of benefits and co-benefits often attributed to GI.
• The third section outlines an approach to assessing the benefits.
• Finally, the attachments provide case studies that illustrate how this guidance can be used.

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The research focused on evaluating: 1) evidence of spatial and temporal structuring of forage populations and predator consumption along environmental gradients and, 2) the effects of variability in abundance of multiple forage taxa on predator consumption patterns. The project built upon previous research (Buchheister 2016). We evaluated patterns patterns of relative abundance of important invertebrate forage taxa at a highly aggregated, functional group level. Invertebrate forage groups included Macoma spp. bivalves, non-Macoma (other) bivalves, polychaetes, and small crustaceans (including amphipods and isopods). Species-level analyses focused on forage fish previously identified as important or potentially important forage taxa in Chesapeake Bay (Ihde et al. 2015), including bay anchovy, young-of-the-year (YOY) Atlantic menhaden, YOY weakfish, YOY spot, YOY Atlantic croaker, Atlantic silversides, mummichog and killifishes. The river herrings, alewife and blueback herring, were included where possible due to strong interest in their recovery in Chesapeake Bay and their historically significant abundances in the ecosystem. Our results indicate that the relative interannual abundance of many of the forage group covaried with the timing of spring time warming of the water, winter-spring flow volume, and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Annual mean per capita consumption by dominant predators – including several size-classes of striped bass, summer flounder, Atlantic croaker, weakfish, white perch and spot – did not covary with forage density in the mainstem but did show significant non-linear relationships with several key environmental variables. Multivariate diet analysis suggested the diet of several predators was influenced by environmental variables (particularly AMO) and that predator diets differed between Maryland and Virginia portions of the mainstem, however these spatial differences were subtle. Overall, we found that there is evidence to suggest that years in which winter water temperatures warm slowly are conducive to higher summertime forage abundances. We failed to find evidence that per capita consumption was linked to relative abundance of individual forage taxa, but consumption did covary with environmental conditions in complex, generally non-linear ways.

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The Chesapeake Bay Program Bay Barometer rack card is a bookmark-size summary of the Bay Barometer: Health and Restoration in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed report. It is primarily meant for educators, students and the general public.

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The Forestry Workgroup created “A Guide for Forestry Practices in Chesapeake TMDL” to help localities, conservation agencies, community groups, states, and others planning and implementing best management practices (BMPs) during the Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP) process. Forests are the best land use for protecting water quality in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and forest BMPs are some of the most cost-effective for Bay restoration. This guide will show the value of forest retention and tree plantings, convey information about the various forest BMPs in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Model, and provide examples of forest BMP scenarios in the Chesapeake Assessment Scenario Tool (CAST) to show partners what information is available, where to find it, and how to use it.

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The data in Bay Barometer reflect the Chesapeake Bay’s health over the course of many years and, in some cases, decades. The publication offers a snapshot of the best available information from 2016 and 2017 on ecological health and our efforts to protect and restore the nation’s largest estuary, as well as our progress toward achieving the goals and outcomes of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement.

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This management strategy identifies approaches for achieving the following outcome: Continually increase the capacity of forest buffers to provide water quality and habitat benefits throughout the watershed. Restore 900 miles per year of riparian forest buffer and conserve existing buffers until 70 percent of riparian areas throughout the watershed are forested.

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