Significant progress has been made toward restoring Chesapeake Bay water quality and living resources. This progress includes the achievement of the 2025 goals for nitrogen and phosphorus pollutant load reductions collectively from hundreds of Chesapeake Bay watershed municipal and industrial wastewater treatment facilities a decade early. In addition, trends in recent years suggest that the summertime anoxic volume (i.e., dead zone) is decreasing and submerged aquatic vegetation has shown signs of recovering. However, restoration efforts face significant challenges as we enter the third decade of the 21st century. Perhaps the most daunting future challenge is maintaining progress in the face of a changing natural and human environment. Globally influenced changes in regional weather patterns and sea level rise are affecting temperature, watershed dynamics, groundwater processes, estuarine hydrodynamics, biogeochemistry, and ecology. In addition, increasing human population in the watershed continue to influence stressors that will interact with the effects of climate change and sea level rise. Moreover, there is a pressing need to consider the effects that changing environmental conditions have on higher trophic levels and ecosystem services which, until recently have received considerably less attention than submerged aquatic vegetation and benthic filter feeders.
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Annapolis, Maryland and online
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