Chesapeake Bay Reserve, Maryland

Chesapeake Bay Reserve, Maryland

Monitoring

System Wide Monitoring Program
System Wide Monitoring Program measure changes in estuarine waters to understand how human activities and natural events can affect coastal resources. It provides valuable data on the short-term variability and long term changes in estuaries to researchers, natural resource managers, land managers and other coastal decision makers.

Parameters measured using YSI 6600 continuous dataloggers are temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, water level and pH. Sampling for nutrients and chlorophyll is being added in 2003.

To view the data collected in Maryland, go to www.eyesonthebay.net.
To view data collected at all National Estuarine Research Reserves, go to http://cdmo.baruch.sc.edu.

Tidal and Non-tidal Water Quality Monitoring
Volunteers, interns and Chesapeake Bay-Maryland Reserve staff conduct spatially intensive, discrete, water quality monitoring at various tidal sites throughout the reserve, which complements our SWMP effort. Monitoring is currently done at both the Jug Bay and Otter Point Creek components with plans to expand the effort to Monie Bay.

Additionally, a non-tidal water quality monitoring program is being piloted at Otter Point Creek Pending the results of this effort, additional non-tidal sampling will be developed for the Jug Bay and Monie Bay reserve components as needed.

Habitat Monitoring
Reserve staff are focusing habitat monitoring efforts on critical habitats such as submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV). Annual groundtruthing of SAV beds, to include species composition, percent cover and distribution, is being done throughout the components.

An effort at Otter Point Creek to track the invasion and colonization of non-native SAV species, Hydrilla verticillata and Myriophyllum spicatum is underway. Researchers at Jug Bay have been tracking the loss and recovery of an emergent aquatic vegetation (EAV) species, Zizania aquatica, which was declining due to grazing by resident Canada geese.

Sediment monitoring is also being done to track rates of accretion and depletion and to track changes in sediment nutrient concentrations over time.