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.

STAC held its third quarterly meeting of FY2019 on December 18-19, 2019 at the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center in Grasonville, MD. Members discussed the STAC Scientific Gap Analysis effort (to be renamed) and the Watershed Workgroup presented their findings to be included in the report. STAC also heard from STAR on the Strategic Science and Research Framework science needs and provided feedback for the Chesapeake Bay Program. Presentations can be found on the meeting webpage.

STAC will hold its final quarterly meeting of FY19 on March 10-11, 2020 at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Philip Merrill Center in Annapolis, MD. More information will be made available on the March meeting webpage.

On November 12-13, 2019 STAC hosted a workshop entitled “Increasing Effectiveness and Reducing the Cost of Non-Point Source Best Management Practice (BMP) Implementation: IS Targeting the Answer?” in Fairfax, Virginia. This workshop gathered experts to inform the development of processes/approaches to identify cost effective selection and placement of BMPs that maximize nutrient reductions of limited funding in the Chesapeake Bay. The report for this workshop is under-review. Presentations can be found on the workshop webpage.

On January 23-24, 2020, STAC co-sponsored a workshop entitled “Linking Soil and Watershed Health to In-Field and Edge-of-Field Water Management” in Morgantown, West Virginia. This workshop was supported by STAC, The Nature Conservancy, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, Transforming Drainage, and The West Virginia University Institute of Water Security and Science. Experts from across the country gathered to explore linkages among water management, crop yields, soil conditions, and field hydrology. Participants identified research and information gaps, as well as opportunities to collaborate that would lead to innovative drainage management. More information can be found on the workshop webpage.

STAC has 2 remaining workshops in FY2019. More information on these workshops can be found on the workshop homepage.

1. Exploring Satellite Image Integration for the Chesapeake Bay SAV Monitoring Program

This multi-session workshop Session 1 was in November, 2019. Session 2 was in December, 2019. Session 3 is planning for February 25-26, 2020 and a final cumulative one-day workshop will convene in April in Annapolis, MD. This STAC workshop convenes technical and management personnel to review and determine the science and technology essential to integrate satellite image assessment into the Chesapeake Bay SAV Monitoring Program. Workshop participants will define the feasibility of the integration, and document costs, benefits, and any potential disadvantages of the integration. With that, the workshop aims to determine the steps, information necessary, and timeline in which to officially integrate satellite data and imagery into the SAV Monitoring Program.

2. Incorporating Freshwater Mussels in the Chesapeake Bay Partnership—March 5-6, 2020

This workshop will be convened at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Philip Merrill Center in Annapolis, MD. Participants will synthesize the current knowledge of how freshwater mussels could be best used in support of Chesapeake Bay Program Goals and Outcomes.

Now Accepting Proposals for FY2020 Workshops: The Request for Proposals (RFP) for FY2020 STAC workshops was released on December 20, 2019. The RFP announcement can be found here. Proposals are due February 10, 2020 to STAC Coordinator, Annabelle Harvey (harveya@chesapeake.org).

STAC recently released two reports. STAC publications can be found here.

1. “Establishing Multifunctional Riparian Buffers: How do we accelerate riparian buffer plantings across the Chesapeake Bay with the greatest economic, social, and environmental impacts?”

On December 20, 2019 STAC released a report titled Establishing Multifunctional Riparian Buffers that summarizes the November 2018 workshop. This workshop explored market-based approaches for multifunctional buffers to identify means of accelerating riparian buffer plantings in the Bay watershed.

2. “Integrating Science and Developing Approaches to Inform Management for Contaminants of Concern in Agricultural and Urban Settings”

On January 10, 2020 STAC released a report titled Integrating Science and Developing Approaches to Inform Management for Contaminants of Concern in Agricultural and Urban Settings that summarizes the May 2019 workshop. This workshop brought together researchers and water quality managers working in urban and agricultural settings to synthesize the current knowledge on contaminants of concern and discuss opportunities for their reduction

Several workshop steering committees are in the process of drafting activity reports and other workshop outcomes that will be distributed to the Partnership over the next few months. More information on recent workshop reports can be found on the STAC past workshop webpage.

STAC-Sponsored Climate Change Synthesis: Update

STAC released an RFP for a Climate Change Science Synthesis (SS) in March of this year. In May, STAC received 10 proposals and a subcommittee of STAC members approved funding for one proposal under the STAC/CRC budget ($125,000). The STAC SS subcommittee selected the proposal entitled “Quantifying the impacts of past and future climate and eutrophication on the dynamics of dissolved oxygen in the shallow waters of the Chesapeake Bay” (Testa, UMCES). The proposal addresses DO, a key issue/water quality criteria, living resources habitat, and the simulated distribution, timing and severity of hypoxia, which was highlighted as a priority by the STAC 2018 Climate Change 2.0 workshop.

Testa and his synthesis team have started work in analyzing shallow water monitoring data and have assembled all available continuous monitoring data at 129 stations in the Maryland and 55 stations in Virginia. They are performing the following analyses: (a) computing the power spectral density at diurnal and tidal frequencies; (b) computing the hours of oxygen depletion at each station and relating hypoxia duration to temperature, salinity, and chlorophyll-a; and (c) analyses of water level data in order to decompose the relative contribution of lunar tidal forcing, solar tidal forcing, and their interactions. This will allow the team to quantify which shallow-water stations are more vulnerable to eutrophication, warming, and sea level rise in the future.

Their next steps for winter 2020 include (a) statistical analysis (CART, GAM) to determine climate and biogeochemical controls on daily oxygen depletion metrics, (b) computing metrics of ecosystem metabolism (e.g. primary production, respiration) from each station’s oxygen time series, and (b) analysis of the oxygen predictions from a fine scale (70 m), 3D hydrodynamic-biogeochemical model in the Chester River estuary.