The EPA announced on December 12th, 2018 that Dana Aunkst will serve as the next Director of the Chesapeake Bay Program. Some of the responsibilities of the office include meeting restoration goals for the Chesapeake watershed and developing strategies for connecting partners in Bay states. Aunkst previously worked at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection starting in [...]
Investigators at CBPO Analyze Thirty Years of Water Quality Attainment Data Seven authors working with the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership have recently published two papers describing their analysis of three decades of water quality criteria attainment data in the Chesapeake Bay. The authors -- Qian Zhang (EPA-CBPO/UMCES), Rebecca R. Murphy (EPA-CBPO/UMCES), Richard Tian (EPA-CBPO), Melinda K. Forsyth [...]
At the end of 2018, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed an Executive Order that will increase the state's resiliency to sea level rise and flooding. Executive Order Twenty Four specifically identifies the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), recommending that the Secretary of Natural Resources and newly-designated Chief Resilience Officer and current Secretary of Natural Resources, Matt Strickler [...]
Carl Cerco to Present at VIMS Seminar Series Carl Cerco, retired Research Hydrologist from the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, will give a seminar on Friday, March 22nd titled, "Ecosystem Modeking and Management in the Chesapeake Bay - A Thirty-Five Year Partnership." Details: Friday March 22nd, 3pm in VIMS' McHugh Auditorium, Watermen's Hall, Gloucester [...]
A team of researchers set out to understand the decline of soft-shell and razor clams in the Chesapeake Bay that has been ongoing since the 1970s. Scientists believe the decline could be due to habitat loss, predators, disease, recruitment, and environmental changes. A team of researchers looked at all of these factors by surveying the Chesapeake [...]
Two new books bring together than 40 years of expertise on Chesapeake Bay Ecologist Vic Kennedy offers baselines for abundance in Chesapeake Bay and a survey of the diamond-backed terrapin Original press release written by Amy Pelinsky for the UMCES website Once described as an immense protein factory, the Chesapeake Bay—along with its fisheries and [...]
Sea ice in the Arctic is retreating earlier each year, leaving more open water and changing the community of phytoplankton living in the water. Phytoplankton sit at the base of the food chain and are an important component of all marine ecosystems. In order to understand the changing communities of phytoplankton in the Arctic, Aimee Neeley, [...]
How do you protect a stream if you do not even know it is there? Matthew Baker of University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) is creating more accurate maps of the Chesapeake Bay watershed with non-profit partner Chesapeake Conservancy. The team was recently awarded $1.2 million from the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) to implement new stream [...]
8 Ways Nature Can Help Us Conquer Climate Change Written by Kristen Minogue for the Shorelines Blog. Original article. The United States may be officially pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement but scientists are still brainstorming ways the country could meet its original goals. They believe that Mother Nature can lend a far more powerful [...]
After writing a globally-recognized sea grass study in 2018, Jonathan Lefcheck has joined the team at the Marine Global Earth Observatory (MarineGEO), directed by Smithsonian's Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network (TMON). MarineGEO is an international and pan-institutional network, directed by the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) is both a foundational member of the network (along [...]
