The Chesapeake Bay Program’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) is administered by the CRC and funded through a cooperative agreement with the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) Partnership – currently spanning the period 2016-2022. The CRC has had a long-standing role of administering all activities of STAC, an active committee with 38 members from academic and scientific institutions around the watershed.

For any inquiries, or to be added to STAC’s Interested Parties list, contact STAC Coordinator, Annabelle Harvey.

STAC April Update

STAC held its first meeting of 2021 virtually on March 23-24th. Materials from the meeting can be found on the STAC March Meeting Webpage.

STAC approved 5 proposals for the FY21 workshop cycle and provided suggestions to proposers for workshop planning. The membership reviewed upcoming vacancies and were notified of changes to membership nomination and approval processes. STAC Staff and the Executive Board will focus on applying principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice throughout guidance documents, which includes membership processes. Following, STAC heard from the DEIJ Action Team for updates on the draft implementation plan and working options for the Community Advisory Board. STAC members were asked to provide comments on the plan and consider applications of these plans for STAC. Steering Committee co-chairs of the SAV Satellite Monitoring workshop gave an overview of the findings and next steps out of the recently released STAC report. STAC was asked for feedback on the Climate Change and Resiliency Cohort science needs and were reminded of the use of the Science Needs Database.

The meeting’s second day was dedicated to reviewing the STAC effort titled Comprehensive Evaluation of System Response (CESR). Through facilitated discussions, workgroup breakouts, and cross-workgroup breakouts, members review cross-cutting themes, recommendations, and next-steps. The CESR objectives are to identify gaps and uncertainties in system response —physical, chemical, biological, and socioeconomic — that impact efforts designed to attain the 2025 TMDL and WQS. All STAC members are split into one of three workgroups—watershed, estuarine, and living resources. Each will work within their groups and across groups to recommend research strategies that improve understanding of system response to support informed decision making to attain WQS and decision making under uncertainty. STAC aims to have a final report by December 2021.

FY2021 STAC Workshop Approved Proposals

STAC approved the follow five workshops for funding in FY21 (June 1, 2021- May 31, 2022)

  1. Improve the Understanding and Coordination of Science Activities for PFAS in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (State of the Science Workshop)
  2. Evaluating a Systems Approach to BMP Crediting (Programmatic Workshop)
  3. Improving modeling and mitigation strategies for poultry ammonia emissions across the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (Programmatic and State of the Science Workshop)
  4. Rising Watershed and Bay Water Temperatures—Ecological Implications and Management Responses (Programmatic Workshop)
  5. Advancing Monitoring Approaches to Enhance Tidal Chesapeake Bay Habitat Assessment including Water Quality Standards for Chesapeake Bay Dissolved Oxygen, Water Clarity/SAV and Chlorophyll a Criteria (Programmatic)

FY2020 STAC Workshops:

The following three workshops remain for FY2020. All are in the process of planning but received extensions due to COVID.

  1. Understanding Genetics for Successful Conservation and Restoration of Resilient Chesapeake Bay Brook Trout Populations (Received extension on funding use until December 2021 due to COVID)
  2. Overcoming the Hurdle: Addressing BMP Implementation Through a Social Science Lens
  3. Assessing the Water Quality, Habitat, and Social Benefits to Green Riprap (Received extension on funding use until December 2021 due to COVID)

Information regarding past workshops, including agendas, presentations, and reports (as they become available) can be found on the workshop homepage.

STAC Mini-Workshop Series: COVID Impacts on Bay Restoration Efforts

The impacts of COVID-19 have played out in many ways across the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. To better understand these impacts, STAC has brainstormed potential impacts during its meeting, then reached out to Bay Program committee and partners for what impacts they are seeing.

Based on the feedback from these discussions, we are developing 3 “mini workshops” to more closely examine the below topics. Each workshop would be approximately 2 hours long, with short presentations to set the stage and provide available data, then a discussion with targeted questions. Dates are not yet set but will likely be in late April-early May.

Topics: What are we seeing? Gaps in understanding? Management Implications?

  • Nutrients
  • Fisheries
  • Funding– In collaboration with the Local Government Advisory Committee and the Local Government Workgroup

STAC Reports

STAC recently released the following report:

  1. Exploring Satellite Image Integration for the Chesapeake Bay SAV Monitoring Program: This report summarizes the proceedings, findings, and recommendations of a FY2019 workshop. The workshop convened technical and management personnel to consider pathways to achieve the aforementioned goals. Acquiring CSI at no cost is an option under the NextView License agreement between the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and Maxar (previously DigitalGlobe, Inc). The NextView License was developed by the NGA to accommodate United States Government (USG) agencies, contractors, partners, and other entities that require CSI to support USG interests. The basic premise of the agreement is that any federal agency that requires satellite imagery from contracted commercial sources can request and obtain said imagery at no cost to the local agency. As 2017 updates to the Water Resource Development Act, which amends Section 117 of the Clean Water Act, called for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out an annual SAV survey in Chesapeake Bay. This makes it theoretically feasible for the EPA to now request and obtain the high-resolution CSI necessary for the annual SAV assessment.