Fact Sheet - Maryland
Excerpt From Introduction
The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP), a multiagency restoration effort, has set a goal of reducing controllable nutrients entering the Chesapeake Bay by 40 percent by the year 2000. The reduction is expected to improve dissolved-oxygen levels in the Bay. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Ecosystem Program is coordinating USGS and other agencies' studies to understand the response of water quality and living resources in the Bay and its watershed to nutrient reduction and natural variability. The USGS is analyzing trends, identifying nutrient-source areas, addressing nutrient traveltimes in ground water, determining the relation of nutrients to fish health, and documenting the long-term change of the ecosystem. Since 1985, the USGS has provided water-quality information and analyzed the amounts of nutrients and sediments entering the Bay (fig. 1). An analysis of the data collected from rivers in the Bay watershed from 1985 to 1997 shows that although the amounts of nutrients and sediments delivered to the Bay may have increased, the concentrations of nutrients and sediments in many rivers are decreasing or remain the same.
