Overview |
The
Chesapeake Bay, the Nation's largest estuary, has been degraded
due to the impact of human-population increase, which has doubled
since 1950, resulting in degraded water quality, loss of habitat,
and declines in populations of biological communities. Since the
mid-1980s, the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP), a multi-agency partnership
which includes the Department of Interior (DOI), has worked to
restore the Bay ecosystem. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has
the critical role of providing unbiased scientific information
that is utilized to document and understand ecosystem change to
help assess the effectiveness of restoration strategies in the
Bay and its watershed. The USGS revised its Chesapeake Bay science
plan for 2006-2011 to address the collective needs of the CBP,
DOI, and USGS with a mission
to provide integrated science
for improved understanding and management of the Bay ecosystem.
The USGS science themes for this mission are:
Causes
and consequences of land-use change;
Impact
of climate change and associated hazards;
Factors
affecting water quality and quantity;
Ability
of habitat to support fish and bird populations; and
Synthesis
and forecasting to improve ecosystem assessment, conservation,
and restoration.
The USGS will use a combination of monitoring, modeling, research,
and assessment to (see Science Plan Table 1 for summary)
a. provide an improved understanding
of the ecosystem to better target implementation of current conservation
and restoration strategies,
b. assess ecosystem change to help
evaluate the effectiveness of management activities,
c. forecast the potential impacts of
increasing human population and climate variability, and
d. synthesize the findings and provide
implications to help policy makers and resource managers adapt improved
approaches for the conservation, restoration, and ecologically sustainable
development of the ecosystem. USGS scientists, located in science
centers throughout the Bay watershed, work with partners to conduct
investigations that are supported by multiple USGS Programs.
The
The USGS is focusing the majority of its efforts to address the
five science themes in the watershed (see
map) because
a. the majority of conservation and restoration
activities will be implemented in the watershed,
b. understanding the function of the different
hydrologic settings and habitats in the watershed in processing
nutrients and sediment will provide a more cost-effective approach
to implementing management actions, and
c. land-use change in the watershed will
continue to be the greatest stress on the health of biological communities
in the watershed and the Bay. The USGS is addressing the interaction
of the watershed and estuary by focusing on the factors affecting
water quality and habitat in the watershed and their relation to
the estuary.
![graphic representing major drainage areas in the entire Chesapeake Watershed - click to see larger view](images/regionwatershedsm.jpg) |
Regional study scales and focus
areas for the USGS Chesapeake Bay studies.
USGS conducts the majority of the science theme activities
at regional scales in the watershed, with complementary local-scale
studies in two focus areas, which include the Potomac watershed
and estuary and the mid-Delmarva Peninsula. The primary regional
scales are
a. the entire watershed,
b. the major drainage areas in
the watershed, and
c. major landscape settings.
View
the map in a larger size.
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