Workshop Publications

The Chesapeake 2000 agreement establishes a clear management objective “By 2004 assess the effects of different population levels of filter feeders such as menhaden, oysters and clams on Bay water quality and habitat.” (Section 1.4.1) The overall purpose of the workshop was to better determine if the Chesapeake Bay community can fully address this commitment by the desired date. A two-day workshop brought together resource managers and scientists to fully explore the feasibility of using existing ecosystem process (EPM) and/or individually based models (IBM) to address this and other commitments related to filter feeders. The principal topic of this workshop was to characterize the primary filter feeders of the Bay both past and present. The meeting objective was to identify the existing models available to assess the impacts of those primary filter feeds on the Bay’s water quality and habitat. Particular attention was focused on oysters and menhaden as potential management options for nutrient/sediment removal; however, other filter feeders such as zooplankton and epibenthic fauna were also explored. In order to address the commitments, a modeling framework was developed that includes both water quality and ecosystem processes for assessing ecosystems that contain primary filter feeders.