The Bay Watershed
The Chesapeake Bay watershed stretches across more than 64,000 square miles, encompassing parts of six states — Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia — and the entire District of Columbia.
Threading through the Chesapeake watershed are more than 100,000 streams and rivers — called tributaries — that eventually flow into the Bay. Everyone in the Bay watershed lives within a few minutes of one of these streams and rivers, which are like pipelines from our communities to the Bay.
A watershed is an area of land that drains to a particular river, lake, bay or other body of water. We all live in a watershed: some are large (like the Chesapeake), while others are small (like your local stream or creek).
The Bay has been changing continuously for thousands of years. Some changes are abrupt, while others take place over such a long period of time that we can only see them by looking back into geologic history.
An estuary is a partially enclosed body of water where fresh water from rivers and streams mixes with salt water from the ocean. Estuaries are among the most productive environments on earth.
The waters of the Chesapeake contain organic and inorganic materials, including dissolved gases, nutrients, inorganic salts, trace elements, heavy metals and potentially toxic chemicals.
As one organisms eats another, a food chain is formed. Each step along a food chain is known as a trophic level, and every organism can be categorized by trophic, or feeding, level.