Factors Affecting Water Quality
Factors Affecting Water Quality
As the States implement practices to reduce nutrient and sediment to improve water quality, they want to understand the success of their efforts. The USGS conducts studies on the relation among land change, management practices, and changes in nutrients and sediment. The findings are used to help assess progress toward the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) water-quality goal and make needed adjustments
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Fact Sheet Summarizes Nutrient Trends and Drivers in the Chesapeake Watershed
Issue: Trends in nitrogen and phosphorus, and the complex factors affecting their change, provide important insights into the effectiveness of efforts to reduce nutrients from reaching the tidal waters of the Bay. The nutrient reductions are needed to improve water-quality conditions in the tidal waters for fisheries and submerged aquatic vegetation.
New Review of Sediment Science Informs Choices of Management Actions in the Chesapeake
Issue: The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) is pursuing restoration efforts to improve habitats and associated water quality for fisheries, both in the watershed and estuary. Excess sediment decreases light in tidal waters for submerged aquatic vegetation, harms oysters, carries contaminants, and impairs stream health throughout the watershed. The CBP is implementing management actions and policies...
Water Quality Monitoring to Inform Conservation Management, Fishing Creek, Clinton County, Pennsylvania
USGS conducted synoptic sampling of major-ion chemistry and the nitrogen and oxygen isotopic composition of nitrate in Fishing Creek during base flow to evaluate the occurrence and distribution of nutrients and to characterize biogeochemical processes.
New Synthesis Describes Current Understanding of Factors Driving Nutrient Trends in Streams of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
Issue: Excessive nitrogen and phosphorus in Chesapeake Bay since the 1950s have contributed to low dissolved oxygen leading to fish kills, and poor water clarity and associated loss of submerged aquatic vegetation. The Chesapeake Bay Program partnership has been working to improve aquatic conditions in the Bay and its tidal tributaries, and streams in the watershed, by reducing inputs of nutrients...
USGS leads STAC report on water clarity changes over the past 30 years in Chesapeake Bay
Water clarity is widely recognized as an important indicator of the health and trophic state of aquatic ecosystems and is a key management target given the limit it imposes on the growth of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV).
Targeted management of a small number of catchments may help reduce nitrogen loading to Chesapeake Bay
Largest projected reductions associated with decreasing agricultural fertilizer application
New Insights on using Green Stormwater Infrastructure to Reduce Suburban Runoff
The Issue with Runoff Across the United States, suburban development is replacing agricultural and forested lands. In urban and suburban areas, large amounts of stormwater runoff are generated from rooftops and roadways during rain events. Runoff is quickly piped to streams and rivers, leading to flash flooding, stream bank erosion, and damages to stream health. Reducing nutrients, sediment, and...
Improving Our Understanding and Helping with Water Quality Improvements
Understanding trends in stream chemistry is critical to watershed management and often complicated by multiple contaminant sources and landscape conditions changing over varying time scales.
“Who Done it”? Environmental DNA (eDNA) for Determining Fecal Contamination Source
By Kay Briggs and Vivian Nolan
Tripod-palooza—USGS Collaborates with Federal, State, and Academic Partners to Support Coastal Resiliency in the Wider Chesapeake Bay Area
In the Chesapeake Bay area, the Virginia and West Virginia Water Science Center is partnering with over a dozen organizations in a pilot project this fall, resulting in the establishment of a baseline reference for an ongoing effort in monitoring coastal subsidence.
