Session Lead: Raleigh Hood (UMCES)

Co-Lead(s): DG Webster, Gary Shenk, Patrick Bitterman, Victoria Coles, Peter Claggett, Frederick Ducca, Sevgi Erdogan, Theodore Lim

Session Format: Oral presentations

Session Description: 

The grand challenges confronting management and decision making in Chesapeake Bay airshed, watershed and estuary result from the interaction of humans with their environment. Commercial and recreational fisheries, air quality, agricultural and energy production practices, population growth, and land use change all impact the function of the land and water systems that together comprise the Chesapeake Bay socio-environmental system. In turn, the health and quality of the environment affect humans and decision-making at multiple spatial and temporal scales – from individuals up through the state and federal levels, today and decades into the future. Models – from the conceptual to the mathematical – are representations of how we understand this critical nexus of interacting issues. Yet, coupling social, economic, policy and governance models with environmental models to assess the impact of strategic management and policy actions remains challenging. This session invites research relevant to conceptual, theoretical or numerical models of socio-environmental systems or that identifies gaps and challenges hindering the integration of social and environmental models, to better understand their combined impact.

Presentations (abstracts):

  1. D.G. Webster: Media Representations of Risks and and Co-benefits of Water Quality Governance in the Chesapeake Watershed
  2. Patrick Bitterman, Jason Yoo: Spatial Insights into Water Governance Challenges in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed: Mismatch, Inequality, and Path Dependency
  3. Jason Yoo, Patrick Bitterman: Generating Artificial WIPs Using Machine Learning Methods to Explore Management Responses to Land Use Scenarios
  4. Michele Romolini, Alexa Siglar, Paul  T. Leisnham, Amanda Rockler: Agricultural Water Management in a Changing Mid-Atlantic: Stakeholder Experiences and Attitudes Towards Alternative Water Sources, Weather Variability, and Related Factors
  5. Sean Emmons, Taylor Woods, Kelly Maloney: Prioritizing Stream Health Alongside Social Equity in the Chesapeake Bay
  6. Allison Reilly, Jerin Tasnim, Birthe Kjellerup, Rachel Goldstein, Margaret Walls, Penny Liao, Emily Speierman, Oberholtzer, Celso Ferreira, Andrew Lazur, DeLima, Cameron Smith: Septic to Sewer? Justice-focused strategies for addressing coastal septic failures under sea-level rise and increased flooding
  7. Alicia Lawson, Patrick Bitterman: Rising Tides, Sinking Heritage: A GIS-Based Analysis of Sea-Level Rise Impacts on Chesapeake Archaeological Sites
  8. Michelle Katoski, Peter Claggett, Sarah McDonald: Implications of using high resolution data for forecasting land use change
  9. Vishwa Shah, Lalit Pal, Mahabub Arefin Chowdhury, Siddharth Saksena, Stanley Grant: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Integrated Hydrologic and Water Quality Models for predicting WQQ in Occoquan Watershed
  10. Shantanu V. Bhide, Stanley B. Grant, Ahmed Monofy, Hannah Whitley, Megan Rippy, Shalini Misra, Sujay Kaushal, Todd Schenk, Peter Vikesland, Vishwa Shah, Idowu Kayode Okeshola, Sydney Turner: Addressing the sodium surge: An interactive model to inform management decisions in the Occoquan Reservoir
  11. Cameron Smith, Alan Leslie, Benjamin Beale, Kelly Nichols, Shannon Dill, Sarah Hirsh, Jeff Semler, Andrew Kness, Emily Healey, Jack Keane, Marina Costa, Julie Yang, Raul Cruz-Cano, Rachel Goldstein, Andrew Lazur: The Presence of Total Coliforms and E. coli In Maryland Farm Private Drinking Water Wells
  12. Joseph Delesantro, Thomas Butler: Estimating and projecting crop yields to inform watershed nutrient modeling
  13. Jonathan Craig, Patricia Delgado, Stephen MacAvoy, Barbara Balestra: Microplastic and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Concentrations in Patuxent River Watershed (Jug Bay Region), Maryland