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2018 Bay Report Card
Researchers from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) gave the Chesapeake Bay an overall grade of “C” in their annual report card. Although the “C” grade has remained constant since 2012, this is the first year that scientists have seen a statistically significant positive trend. Alexandra Fries, a senior science communicator at UMCES, told...
Read MoreTracking River Herring
Two types of river herring, alewife and blueback herring, used to be abundant in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay . These days, however, herring are threatened by habitat loss, overfishing, and dams that block the route to their spawning locations. Teams from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and the Horn Point Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental...
Read MoreWelcoming Back Underwater Grasses
A landmark paper authored by a power-house of Bay scientists has rocked the Chesapeake Bay for the past two months. The paper looks at the long-term effects of nutrient reductions in the Chesapeake Bay watershed on underwater grasses, or submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV). It was published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and written by Jonathan Lefcheck,...
Read MoreOcean Deoxygenation
CRAB: Collaborative Research around the Bay In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean without oxygen has increased more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as Earth warms. To halt the decline, the world needs to...
Read MoreBay Acidification
Researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), the University of Delaware, and Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) are investigating how ocean acidification could potentially compound existing problems in the Bay. A major problem already plaguing the Bay is caused by nutrient pollution. When fertilizer run off enters the Bay, nutrients in the...
Read MoreVirus Impacting Molting Crabs
Eric Schott, a molecular biologist with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) is investigating a virus that is plaguing blue crab shedding operations around the Bay. Schott first discovered the virus, called CsRV1, 10 years ago and it has been found to be present in up to 80% of the crabs that die in shedding operations. The goal of his research is to determine if...
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