Mission
The primary goal of the Chesapeake Bay Virginia Reserve's Stewardship Program is responsible management of natural resources using the best available information for maintaining, protecting and restoring the diverse habitats and associated flora and fauna found within Reserve boundaries located in the York River subestuary. Invasive species, problematic native species, land-use changes and longer-term climate changes are all examples of stressors that pose threats to Chesapeake Bay Reserve ecosystems. In order to contribute to coastal stewardship at a variety of geographic and ecosystem scales, the CBNERRVA Stewardship program pursues a variety of approaches including:
Continual updating and implementation of Reserve component specific Natural Resource Management Plans (for the Reserve’s four components located along the York River Subestuary);
- Developing in-house research, monitoring and restoration programs led by Resrve stewardship and senior staff that address stewardship and resource management needs;
- Encouraging and supporting research and monitoring by individual investigators or groups with emphasis on projects which address Reserve resource management strategies and priorities;
- Clearly identifying public use sites and appropriate public activities at each Reserve component as well as monitoring and evaluating visitor use to minimize user conflicts and impacts to natural resources;
- Supporting land conservation efforts through the development and implementation of a Reserve Boundary Protection and Land Acquisition Plan.
Priority Areas
Water Quality
Water quality degradation of marine and estuarine environments is of global concern and the Chesapeake Bay and specifically the York River sub-estuary is no exception. A growing population along with associated land use changes are primary factors causing water quality and habitat degradation in the Bay’s watershed and tributaries. Critical management issues and threats to the York River System include 1) excess sediments which result in degraded habitat, reduced water clarity, and serve to transport toxic materials, pathogens and nutrients to water resources; and 2) excess nutrients, both nitrogen and phosphorus, that stimulate algal blooms and lead to oxygen deprived waters. Stewardship staff have assisted the Reserve Research Program in implementing internally and externally funded research programs that focus on shallow water habitats and the watershed processes that directly relate to coastal water quality impacts.
The shallow waters of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries are home to at least 16 species of underwater grasses, also termed SAV, which serve as critical habitat to commercially and ecologically important nekton. As with other important cited estuarine habitats, underwater grasses have declined precipitously from historical abundances. Results from Reserve-led research programs have directly supported SAV restoration initiatives in Chesapeake Bay and nutrient management strategies for tributaries in Chesapeake Bay. More specifically, long-term datasets from Goodwin Island (located the mouth of the York River) have shown that eelgrass may be growing at or near it’s physiological tolerance and the combined effects of short-term exposures to very high summer temperatures, compounded by reduced oxygen and light conditions, may lead to long-term declines of this species from this system.
Ecological Change - Changes in Biological Communities
Nationwide, invasive species have been identified as the second highest threat to biological diversity, second only to loss of species and habitat from development and urban sprawl. A principal goal of the Reserve’s Stewardship Program is to prevent or control the establishment of aggressive invasive species (primarily Phragmites austraulis) in high-quality natural communities. Although eradication may not a practical option for some invasive species already well-established at Reserve components (such as Phragmites austraulis at our Goodwin Island component), minimizing the spread of established invasives and preventing new invasive species from becoming established within Reserve components is a viable objective. Using information from Reserve-component management plans and drawing on the expertise of state (e.g., VaDCR), federal (e.g., USF&WS), and working groups (e.g., Virginia Phragmites Working Group and Virginia Invasive Species Control Council), Chesapeake Bay Virginia Reserve has begun to develop and implement a Reserve-wide Invasive Species Control Plan. The plan will ultimately identify a wide range of actions and strategies required to achieve the goals of prevention, research, control, and management of each invasive species.
Reserve stewardship staff will continue to design monitoring programs to estimate and track native animal populations and impacts in order to guide management actions. Currently, there are two such programs which have been identified as high priority over the next five-year time frame. The Reserve plans to investigate and potentially implement a control strategy of raccoon populations associated with diamond-back terrapin and shorebirds nesting predation at the Goodwin and Catlett Islands. Stewardship staff also plans to monitor for Southern pine bark beetle outbreaks within the maritime forest habitats of Goodwin and Catlett Islands and coordinate with appropriate state agencies to develop strategies should an outbreak occur.
Until recently, a routine and comprehensive monitoring program for emergent wetlands had been lacking and the Reserve has relied on the outcome of individual studies. In 2007, however, Chesapeake Bay Virginia Reserve was selected to as one of five reserves nationally to establish themselves as restoration reference sites by collecting information on salt marsh vegetation, ground water, and soil properties. The data collected from Reserve reference sites will not only be used as a baseline to help understand future habitat changes at these Reserve components, but will be used to evaluate restoration success on nearby Restoration Projects funded with Estuarine Restoration Act Funds.
Habitat Alteration
The Chesapeake Bay and its tidal rivers encompass a diverse range of habitats with each being important to the general health of the Bay ecosystem. Critical Bay estuarine habitats include riparian forests, emergent tidal wetlands, seagrass beds, aquatic or oyster reefs, shallow waters (depth to 3 m or 10 ft) and open waters beyond the nearshore region. Ecological services provided by these habitats include shoreline stabilization, hydrologic functions (e.g., flood protection, streamflow regulation), water quality remediation, airborne pollutant removal and habitat community functions (e.g., biodiversity, productivity/carbon sequestration, detritus export/storage, refuge and forage). Due to regional growth and development, direct harvesting and natural causes, there has been a continued degradation, fragmentation and loss of critical estuarine habitats. Along with the degradation or loss of these habitats, the natural interactions, or connectivity, between these ecosystems may be diminished, or in some cases, entirely eliminated.
Two areas of interest that directly impact stewardship related activities within the Reserve and Chesapeake Bay region include (1) impacts of shoreline management strategies on riparian, intertidal and near-shore habitats, and (2) impacts of episodic storm events and climate/sea level rise on critical coastal habitats
Tidal emergent wetlands are vulnerable to the effects of relatively high rates of sea level rise, erosion, and the potential for saltwater intrusion. Tidal marshes must have the ability to accrete vertically (e.g., sediment deposition and root mass accumulation) or transgress inland in order reduce continued stress from increased flooding and eventual die-off. Unfortunately, due to the desire to enhance viewshed and protect their properties from increased erosion and flooding rates, riparian property owners are expected to continue riparian and shoreline modifications resulting in additional loss or degradation of nearshore habitat and associated ecosystem services. The permitted hardening of over 730 km (450 mi) of shoreline in Maryland and Virginia since 1993 illustrates the magnitude of impacts on fringing wetlands within Chesapeake Bay watershed through conventional shoreline protection measures. The CBNERRVA Stewardship program has examined and will continue to assess the value of ecological services (e.g. erosion protection, nekton habitat value) of a variety of natural fringing wetlands and man-made shoreline protection structures through comprehensive literature reviews and selected field sampling projects to directly support better informed shoreline and water body management decisions.
The pathways that Chesapeake Bay ecosystems will follow in light of climate-change and longer-term natural “stressors” are even more difficult to predict. Increasing evidence suggests that many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems do not respond to acute or chronic disturbances in a simple manner, instead, controlling variables may have threshold values that when exceeded result in rather dramatic and potentially catastrophic shifts. Efforts by Chesapeake Bay Virginia Reserve with the assistance of other partner NOAA programs will help answer these questions by providing the spatial framework and training required to establish Reserve components as “sentinel sites” or ecosystem based monitoring sites to assess and predict ecosystem change. Although the procedures and guidance for establishing a Reserve as a sentinel site have not formally been established, CBNERRVA stewardship staff have started to build out Reserve components with some of the proposed core elements of a sentinel site to examine issues of shoreline erosion and habitat loss at our Goodwin Islands component (located at the York River mouth) and marsh subsidence and salinity intrusion at our Sweet Hall marsh component (a site transitioning from tidal freshwater to oligohaline). Some of these proposed elements include long-term vegetation transects, ground-water wells, surface elevation tables (SETs), and a vertical control network. Reserve staff will use these long-term ecosystem-based monitoring sites to examine questions related to large-scale episodic events (e.g., storms), inter-annual variations in hydrologic budgets (e.g., droughts), and climate-driven changes (e.g., sea level rise, salinity intrusion, temperature) on specific Reserve habitats.
