In June, the Chesapeake Bay Program's Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team (“Fisheries GIT”) held their biannual meeting at UMCES' Horn Point Lab in Cambridge, Maryland. The meeting focused on the outlook for blue crabs this season, fish and habitat research progress updates, and new opportunities related to oyster restoration. The Fisheries GIT is a group of federal [...]
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 [...]
In July, CRC welcomed a new STAC Staff member, Meg Cole. Meg joined the Chesapeake Research Consortium as STAC Staff in July of 2019 after graduating from Towson University with a M.S. in Environmental Science. Meg is excited to be working within the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership and in support of evidence-based decision-making. When she is [...]
Climate change and the Spread of Diseases in the Bay Rita Colwell. Credit: University of Maryland College Park Scientists have long predicted that warmer temperatures caused by climate change will create optimal conditions for disease-causing bacteria to spread, even in the Chesapeake Bay. Long-time University of Maryland researcher and Johns Hopkins lecturer Rita [...]
Rachel on a boat. Credit: Rachel Dixon Rachel Dixon, long-time coordinator for the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) recently left CRC to pursue a PhD at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). "My time at CRC and STAC encouraged me to remain within the region in some capacity, so thankfully I can keep [...]
ODU's Science Pubs Bring Research to the Masses What better way to make science accessible than by talking about it over a beer? Researchers from Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk have been giving informal talks at breweries across the region for 4 years now, covering everything from climate change to mental health. "A curious [...]
Penn State Researchers Find Central Pennsylvania Farmland Resilient to Erosion Central Pennsylvania farmland may not erode as quickly as expected due to geology and land-use history, according to Penn State researchers. “Land-use history and the underlying geology go hand-in-hand,” said Perri Silverhart, a master’s student in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State. “The places [...]
Shale Network Workshop at Penn State The Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania is famous for its large quantities of shale gas reserves. Fracking of these reserves has led to water quality impacts, endangering human health. To better understand the risks, scientists want more data on water quality from across the region. Picture from the 2019 [...]
Understanding the Dynamics of the Chesapeake Bay's Dead Zone It seems like everyone this year is talking about the record rainfall and enormous dead zone predicted in the Chesapeake Bay. The story has been all over the news (e.g., The Bay Journal, Baltimore Sun, and ScienceDaily, to name a few). Jeremy Testa holding a sediment [...]
Harnessing the Power of Citizen Scientists The SERC team deploying tiles into the San Francisco Bay in 2016. Credit: SERC/Marine Invasions Lab Imagine working on a small team of field researchers and having to process 100,000 images. What used to take years and tons of funding to accomplish can now be done quickly [...]
