Factors Affecting Water Quality

Issue The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) partnership is striving to improve water-quality conditions in the Bay and its tidal waters. The partnership needs to understand water-quality conditions in different tributaries to help assess the influence of nutrient-reduction practices and progress toward attaining water-quality standards.

Issue: Atmospheric deposition is one of the principal sources of nitrogen to the Chesapeake watershed with implications for patterns of nutrient loading, anoxia, and eutrophication in the Bay.

Scientists determined the risk factors associated with smallmouth bass melanistic skin lesions on smallmouth bass in the Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers, in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. A new virus, which appears to be a member of an emerging viral family, the Adomaviridae, was identified in the lesions. Questions remain about the full characterization of the virus and the role of environmental...

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.

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...

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...

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).

Largest projected reductions associated with decreasing agricultural fertilizer application

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...

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.

By Kay Briggs and Vivian Nolan

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.