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 [...]
Scientists and managers have long thought that disease spreads from oyster aquaculture to wild populations. New research, however, has shown that aquaculture operations can actually limit the spread of diseases like dermo. The team, including Tal Ben-Horin of the University of Rhode Island (URI), Colleen Burge of University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Ryan Carnegie of [...]
Scientists across the Bay have long speculated that oysters improve water quality, leading managers to restore oyster reefs as a best management practice. Researchers Lisa Kellogg and Mark Brush at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) and Jeff Cornwell of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) have developed a web-based, interactive computer [...]
Researchers from University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) joined researchers from Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and University of Florida to study crab population migrations across the east coast. Scientists have generally understood that crabs spawn in Virginia's salty waters and then make their way north to Maryland. Since their movement is determined by weather, [...]
Despite having been banned for for decades, many toxic chemicals still show up in the Back River in Baltimore County. That is why the county and the U.S. Department of the Interior recently funded a team from University of Maryland Baltimore County and USGS to determine where the pollutants are coming from. The team at UMBC tackling this challenge [...]
Although diversity has been a priority at Chesapeake Bay institutions for many years, the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) recently committed to a Diversity Directive to further promote increased diversity throughout the CBP community. In 2016, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay released the results of its first-ever diversity profile after surveying approximately 750 people who work with or for the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) [...]
Environmentalists and watermen have come together to reach a broad set of recommendations for restoring oysters in the Choptank and Little Choptank rivers. OysterFutures, led by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and funded by National Science Foundation, is a research project aimed at achieving thriving oyster populations. Watermen and environmentalists have long [...]
A team led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and Marine Global Earth Observatory (MarineGEO), and including participants from Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), University of Maryland (UMD), Old Dominion University (ODU) George Mason University (GMU), and several other institutions conducted a large initiative to document the biodiversity of the Chesapeake Bay on July [...]
Researchers from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) gave the Chesapeake Bay an overall grade of "C" in their annual report card. Although the "C" grade has remained constant since 2012, this is the first year that scientists have seen a statistically significant positive trend. Alexandra Fries, a senior science communicator at UMCES, told [...]
SERC Biological Technician Gabriella Marafino collecting a water sample for eDNA analysis. Credit: SERC. Two types of river herring, alewife and blueback herring, used to be abundant in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay . These days, however, herring are threatened by habitat loss, overfishing, and dams that block the route to their spawning locations. [...]
