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Farming programs key to reducing nutrients in Chesapeake
Budgets slashed for many Bay-related programs
Extra efforts to control nutrients could pay off in trade program
The Chesapeake Bay management and scientific communities are struggling over a fundamental question: Is it more important to know more about the effects of management actions to control pollution in the watershed, or the effects of that pollution once it reaches the Bay?
The Bay Program is considering a transfer of $1 million from monitoring programs in the Chesapeake and its tidal tributaries to monitoring efforts targeting rivers and streams in the watershed.
Overall, the EPA and the states spend about $4.3 million annually on Bay-related monitoring, of which $900,000 is spent in the watershed.
No one disputes that more monitoring is needed in upstream areas, but scientists are concerned that cuts in Bay monitoring will in some cases end valuable, long-running data sets.
"The idea of getting more into the watershed, I'm for that," said Bill Dennison, of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, who heads a Bay Program committee that oversees tidal monitoring. "But we've got to recognize the continuity-we can't give up 25 years of good data."
But many senior agency officials say re-prioritizing where monitoring dollars are spent is essential as they are under pressure to focus on-the-ground nutrient control actions where they will do the most good, determine whether they are effective, and show they ultimately are producing results in the Bay.
For instance, officials believe they need to be better positioned to show in-stream results from programs such as the 2008 Farm Bill, which is providing $188 million over four years specifically for nutrient reduction efforts in the Bay watershed. The first portion of that money is going to farmers this year, so there's a need to get monitoring in place soon.
"We need to be prepared to say, 'here are the results'," said Carlton Haywood, a scientist with the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, who chairs the Bay Program's Monitoring and Analysis Subcommittee. "That's why there is some urgency, I want to see a decision made this year."
Denice Wardrop, a Penn State scientist, said monitoring programs need to be more responsive to management needs. "This is a wake-up call for the monitoring community that the status quo is not working," she said. Wardrop, along with Kirk Havens of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, both members of the Bay Program Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee, developed a process that can be used to review whether various monitoring programs are meeting management needs.
Monitoring programs need to be able to adapt to provide managers with information about what actions work-and don't-so they can adjust their programs and policies, Wardrop said. "We have a premier monitoring program, but no monitoring program could address all of the needs," she said. "What we are trying to do is match up the monitoring to the priorities and goals of the Bay Program."
But many scientists were caught off guard when a monitoring realignment proposal from the Bay Program recently emerged that slated a number of programs for cuts, or elimination.
In a letter to the Bay Program, John Wells, director of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, noted that objections came from "some of our most distinguished scholars who have literally spent their entire careers conducting practical research on the Bay."
Wells and Boesch said the original proposals would have had "deleterious consequences."
As a result of the outcry, the Bay Program is planning a six-month "monitoring realignment" review of existing programs and information gaps. One hope is to erase the historical barrier between tidal monitoring-which dates to the origin of the Bay Program in the mid 1980s-and nontidal monitoring, which has become more important to gauge the effectiveness of nutrient reduction efforts. Theoretically, such a program would track the effect of management actions from their origin in the watershed, to their impact in the deepest parts of the Bay.
Scott Phillips, Chesapeake Bay coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey, said the need for such continuity is illustrated in the Bay Program's recently released Bay Barometer, which showed that states have achieved 50 percent of their goals to implement nutrient control practices, yet the Bay meets only 20 percent of its dissolved oxygen and clarity goals. "The monitoring and associated assessment of the information need to better explain why we have not seen more improvements," he said.
Many worry the changes will result in data losses that have unforeseen impacts. Peyton Robertson, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay Office, noted that several years ago, zooplankton monitoring was eliminated. Zooplankton are microscopic animals that form an important link in the Bay food web; they graze on phytoplanton, and in turn are eaten by fish.
Now, scientists trying to develop ecosystem models of the Bay, which ultimately could be used to better predict how different management actions would affect fish, are missing key information.
"Phytoplankton monitoring was maintained, but we were missing the next link up in the food chain," Robertson said. "We're missing fairly critical information for models." Now, phytoplankton monitoring may be on the chopping block as well.
While the Bay is considered one of the best-monitored water bodies in the world, it still yields surprises. When the Bay Program started a shallow water monitoring program in tidal areas several years ago-now proposed for cutbacks-it revealed surprising low levels of dissolved oxygen in many places. "That's where a lot of the fish live," said Bruce Michael, who oversees tidal monitoring programs for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Previously, low dissolved oxygen levels were thought to be an issue primarily for the deepest part of the Bay.
Of particular concern to many scientists is the loss of monitoring from sites where data stretch back two decades or more. "The longer record you have, the easier it is to detect smaller trends," Michael said.
For instance, scientists recently identified a long-term-and largely unexplained-trend toward worsening water clarity in the Bay. Only with two decades of data did that trend become apparent.
Part of the issue goes beyond the Bay Program to the fact that the often-mundane job of taking and analyzing samples, Michael said, "is not necessarily sexy." As a result, it often seems expendable.
Besides water quality, other areas suffering from a lack of data such as fisheries, habitat and stream health. Many restoration programs are focused more on planting trees or building oyster reefs than follow-up monitoring to understand why projects succeeded or failed. "We're good at doing the restoration, and not as good at the monitoring," Dennison said.
Some well-funded programs such as Farm Bill conservation programs prohibit the use of money for monitoring. Agencies often have guidelines that restrict, if not prohibit, many monitoring activities.
Over the next six months, scientists and managers hope to identify potential new sources of funding, or opportunities to merge some programs or enlist new partners. For instance, Dennison said, it may be possible to build partnerships with riverkeepers of other organizations to gather information.
While that process may lead to better decisions, it won't be a panacea, Dennison cautioned. "We're eventually going to get down to winners and losers."
