Session Lead: Sarah McDonald (U.S. Geological Survey, Chesapeake Bay Program Office)

Co-Lead(s): Katie Walker (Chesapeake Conservancy)

Session Format: Oral Presentations

Session Description: 

Climate change and population growth present challenges in managing and protecting large aquatic ecosystems such as the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. Landscape conditions can ameliorate or exacerbate these challenges. Understanding the configuration of land use and its history at a fine scale, particularly in relation to streams and shallow estuarine habitats, is fundamental for targeting restoration and conservation efforts to protect them from degradation. This session will explore high-resolution land use and land monitoring products and their applications to conservation and restoration of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. The data and models discussed in this session will focus on management applications to improve water quality and living resources.

Assessing the landscape and landscape trends relative to the stream network improves our ability to manage and restore the landscape. One-meter Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), among other data, are used to derive fine-scale connectivity metrics of the landscape to the stream network. This better informs the expected impacts of land uses on water quality and aquatic life. Understanding the configuration of the landscape within riparian zones can better inform restoration efforts by identifying plantable areas nearest to streams, where trees can uptake nutrients, stabilize banks, and provide shade to cool streams, which is necessary for keystone species like brook trout. In addition, coastal wetlands, essential for a variety of waterfowl, are being squeezed between threats from the combination of sea-level rise coupled with upland development adjacent to marshes. Projects and topics discussed in this session include the Chesapeake Bay Program’s 1-meter Land Use/Land Cover database, urban growth modelling via the U.S. Geological Survey’s Chesapeake Bay Land Change Model (CBLCM), and landscape configuration within variable-width riparian zones, landscape connectivity, and coastal habitats. These works have been used by partners at federal, state, and local levels to identify management needs and to develop legislation. A variety of use cases of these data will be explored, including riparian forest buffer monitoring and riparian tree planting opportunities led by the U.S. Forest Service, the Maryland Forest Technical Study commissioned by the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology, green infrastructure assessments for Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, and a Chesapeake-wide watershed assessment to monitor watershed health and to identify at-risk or vulnerable watersheds led by the Chesapeake Bay Program and U.S. Geological Survey.

Presentations (abstracts):

  1. Peter Claggett, Sarah McDonald: Mapping high-resolution land use/land cover in the Chesapeake Bay watershed
  2. Sarah McDonald: Understanding Land Use Change in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
  3. Katie Walker: Supporting Data-Driven Conservation Management
  4. Michelle Katoski, Matthew Baker: Characterizing woodland structure using high-resolution spatial datasets
  5. Andrew Sekellick, Matthew Cashman, Gina Lee, Kelly Maloney, Leah Staub, Michelle Katoski: An assessment of stream physical habitat conditions in unmonitored locations of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed
  6. Hannah Nisonson: Pilot Framework for Fish Habitat Assessments Across Tidal and Non Tidal Waters in the Patuxent River Basin