CHESAPEAKEQUARTERLYCHESAPEAKEQUARTERLY

Stream Restoration & a Healthier Bay

MARYLAND SEA GRANT COLLEGE • VOLUME 14, NUMBER 1

Science Heads Upstream

T ypically, oceanographers look tothe sea. And they ask questionsabout how the wind, the waves,

the continents, and the atmosphere affectthe physics, chemistry, and biology of theoceans. They study temperature andsalinity, which are controlled primarily bythe interaction of the ocean, the atmos-phere, and the land. And they study sun-light, the energy source that warms thesea and drives photosynthesis, the basisfor life on this planet. As they expand our understanding ofthe sea, oceanographers strengthen ournation in many ways, enabling us todevelop the resources of our coastalwaters, to improve our forecasts ofweather patterns and storm events, andto prepare our military to operate on,under, and above the world’s oceans. Oceanographers who study theChesapeake Bay ask many of the samequestions they ask of the sea: questionsabout temperature, salinity, and light, andhow these interactions drive the Bay’secosystem. But they also ask: how doesthe land alter the Bay? How does theflow of water and earth coming off thishuge and heavily populated watershedaffect conditions in the Chesapeake? Over time this landscape changed.Much of the forestland gave way tofarmland, and much of the farmland gaveway to industrial, urban, and suburbandevelopments. In building Maryland’smodern economy, we engineered ourstreams to serve our needs. We built damsto power our mills and generate electric-ity, we drew drinking water for cities,cooling waters for power plants andindustry, and irrigation for agriculture.Into those rivers, we sent sewage fromour cities, pollutants from our industries,and runoff from farms. These effortsseemed essential for growth and develop-ment, but they altered — in ways we did

CHESAPEAKEQUARTERLYChesapeake Quarterly explores scientific, environ-mental, and cultural issues relevant to the ChesapeakeBay and its watershed. The magazine is produced andfunded by the Maryland Sea Grant College.

The Maryland Sea Grant College program is led byDirector Fredrika Moser and receives support fromthe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin is -tration and the state of Maryland. Editors, Michael W.Fincham and Jeffrey Brainard; Science Writer, DanielStrain; Production Editor and Art Director, SandyRodgers. Send items for the magazine to:

Maryland Sea Grant College 4321 Hartwick Road, Suite 300 University System of Maryland College Park, Maryland 20740 301.405.7500, fax 301.314.5780 e-mail: mdsg@mdsg.umd.edu www.mdsg.umd.edu www.chesapeakequarterly.net

contents3 When a Slow, Lazy River Is a

Cleaner River Stream restorations could remove pollutants — but how much?

12 Getting SMART about Clean Water Residents can log their stormwater improvements, helping counties.

13 To Map Streams for Restoration, First Go to the Source These scientists climbed mountains to map unknown streams.

15 Maryland’s 2015 Knauss Fellows Students are working in NOAA agencies.

Cover photo: The Chesapeake Bay region ishome to many stream restoration projects thatseek to reduce erosion and improve water qual-ity. Some have occurred in the middle of cities,like this one on Watts Branch, a tributary of theAnacostia River in Washington, D.C. In 2011,work was completed to install a series of poolsand add rock structures to slow the flow ofwater. Page 3: White Clay Creek in ruralsoutheastern Pennsylvania has been designated awild and scenic river. It is also the site of a long-term research study, conducted by the StroudWater Research Center and funded by theNational Science Foundation, about the effectsof stream restoration. PHOTOGRAPHS: DAVID HARP

April 2015

Volume 14, Number 1

not fully understand — how the waterruns off of the land and into our Bay. As the flow off the land changed, theBay changed. Sea grasses and shad andoysters, once abundant, declined, whileother plants and animals, some of theminvasives, became plentiful. Algae andplankton proliferated, and dead zones ofno oxygen made annual appearances inthe Bay’s mainstem and its major rivers. Now, oceanographers and estuarinescientists are examining how we mightre-engineer our rivers and streams inways that enable us to maintain a strongeconomy and achieve a sustainable ecol-ogy for the Chesapeake Bay. They arelooking farther upestuary, probing intothe “subestuaries” of our rivers, includingthe Potomac, the Choptank, andMaryland’s largest, wholly own, PatuxentRiver. And they ask the tough question:What are the consequences of how ourstreams and rivers connect the land tothe Bay and to the ocean? This issue of Chesapeake Quarterlytakes a look at the relatively new scienceof stream restoration. We are highlightingthe new generation of estuarine scientistswho are teaming up with hydrologistsand geomorphologists, scientists whospecialize in tracing the small waterwaysthat flow downstream from the land tothe sea. They are designing and debatingstrategies for retaining rainwater on theland, for slowing river flow, for replenish-ing groundwater, and for reducing theurban, suburban, and agricultural runoffof sediments and nutrients into ourwaterways. These strategies, researchershope, could contribute to much-neededprogress toward improving water qualityin the streams and rivers that flow off ourland into the Chesapeake Bay. — Fredrika Moser Director, Maryland Sea Grant

Volume 14, Number 1 • 3

Scientists and engineers saymuch remains to be learnedabout how well restored streamshelp to improve water quality.

WHEN A SLOW,LAZY RIVER IS ACLEANER RIVER

Y ou can walk just a few steps off Route 2, away from thecars steadily rumbling by the busy Severna ParkMarketplace shopping center, and enter a peaceful-look-

ing landscape. Tucked away in this suburban corner of AnneArundel County, a stream meanders through a series of widepools. A pair of Canada geese are sunning themselves as a blueheron flaps overhead. But the stream didn’t always look that way.In 2012, it received the riverine equivalent of an extrememakeover. North Cypress Branch had been identified by the countygovernment as one of Anne Arundel’s most degraded streams.Stormwater that drained into it had eaten away at its channel,leaving bare banks and exposing the roots of nearby trees. The makeover began when contractors arrived to cut downtrees along the stream, a sight which troubled some neighbors.After the tree cutters left, the bulldozers came next, maneuveringin and around the narrow channel. Contractors worked tochange the stream channel so that it would function differently.Workers widened it to 50 yards in places and carved out a seriesof shallow, landscaped pools spaced along gentle contours stretch-ing a half-mile. The project, completed in 2013, cost $1.7 million. The point of this work was to slow the flow of water thatsped through North Cypress Branch during and after storms.That could help reduce erosion and remove some of the pollu-tants carried downstream to the Magothy River and, eventually,the mainstem of the Chesapeake Bay. In the estuary, the pollu-tants — excess sediments and nitrogen and phosphorus — com-

Jeffrey Brainard

4 • Chesapeake Quarterly

bine to degrade water quality, reduce therange of underwater grasses to shallowwaters, and in deeper waters create deadzones of no oxygen that stress fishpopulations . One of those watching the NorthCypress restoration work was SolangeFiloso. She is a watershed scientist at theChesapeake Biological Lab, part ofUniversity of Maryland Center for Envi -ronmental Science (UMCES), who stud-ies stream restoration, currently a much-debated topic in the multi-state masterplan for improving water quality in theChesa peake Bay. Filoso has been monitor-ing the water-quality effects of the NorthCypress project for the county. Her moni-toring began too recently to reportresults, but she says her findings suggestthat other stream restorations may offeronly modest reductions in the flow ofnitrogen downstream. Restorations may,however, provide other benefits. Lessons learned from one stream canbe applied in others. Governments aroundthe region are considering stream restora-tion as a way to comply with federal reg-ulations calling for reduced pollution inthe Chesapeake. But to what extent stream restorationcan improve water quality is a questionthat Filoso and a number of other scien-tists are working to quantify. The scienceof stream restoration is fairly young, onlyabout two decades old. As research hasbegun to provide answers, new questionshave arisen. To Filoso, what’s clear today is that aproject like North Cypress turns a streaminto something else. “Streams are beingmodified, sometimes dramatically, to thepoint that they are functioning as combi-nations of streams and wetlands,” she says.Removing trees along stream channels,for example, may change how organicmatter and nutrients are processed in thestream. “There are pros, cons, and trade-offs in restoration,” Filoso says. “We stillneed to fully understand them.”

Maryland’s Degraded Streams

Maryland has a lot of freshwater, non-tidal streams and rivers — more than

19,000 miles. And many streams inMaryland, and throughout the Chesa -peake watershed, are in bad shape. TheMaryland Department of the Environ -ment issues a biennial report about thestate’s waterways and their compliancewith federal water-quality regulations. In2014 the department estimated thatabout half of the state’s stream and rivermiles violated at least one of the water-quality standards — for example, to sup-port healthy populations of fish and otheraquatic life. Many of the streams not meetingstandards are located in built-up areas:metropolitan Baltimore, Washington,D.C., and other populated, urban areas ofthe Chesapeake watershed. Major culpritsaffecting stream water quality include thehouses, malls, roads, and parking lots of

modern life. Theirhard surfaces preventrainwater from perco-lating into theground. Instead, thebuildings and concretefunnel stormwaterthrough drainagepipes and ditches andthen into streams.

Much of thisrunoff is laden withsediments, nitrogen,and phosphorus froma variety of sources inthe Chesapeake’sdrainage area, orwatershed. Leakingsewer systems releasenitrogen and phos-phorus, for example;clearing land for park-ing lots sends sedi-ments downstream. Aswater rushes throughnetworks of streams,the runoff eats away atstream channels andbanks, washing moresediments and nutri-ents downstream.Some stream ecolo-gists use the term

“hot, fast, and dirty” to describe not someoff-color movie but the conditions ofmany Maryland streams after summerthunderstorms. Improving this water quality is onereason that the Chesapeake Baywatershed has hosted the highest con-centration of stream restoration projectsin the nation. According to a 2005 studymore than 4,700 projects cost $400million from 1990 to 2003. Marylandalone had more than 2,300 suchprojects . Now Maryland officials are planning

more of these projects to help complywith mandatory federal targets for waterquality that took effect in 2010. Thesetargets are called the Total MaximumDaily Loads or TMDLs. To meet thoserequirements, Maryland counties pro-

Rushing stormwater had eroded a stream called Milkhouse Runin Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park, exposing a sewer pipe andcarrying soil downstream (above). In 2011, engineers reworked thestream channel, installing shallow pools, weirs, and native vegetation toslow water flow and reduce erosion (below). This type of restorationdesign is called a regenerative stormwater conveyance. PHOTOGRAPHS,

BIOHABITATS INC.

posed restoring some 410 miles ofstreams by 2025, in plans they submittedto the Chesapeake Bay Program. That isfar more than any other of the six statesin the Bay’s watershed that are workingto meet the TMDLs. Those 410 miles ofstream restoration projects representtwo-thirds of the total mileage of such

projects planned in the entire watershed.The point of these projects is to try toconvert these beat-up streams into assetsto help the Bay.

Estimating the Reductions

So does improving a stream in Baltimoreor Howard County or Pennsylvania help

to improve water quality in the Bay? Andif so by how much? In 2011, the Chesapeake Bay Programasked an advisory panel to address thosequestions by reviewing the latest availablescience. The panel included state andlocal environmental officials, restorationcontractors, and academic scientists.Knowing the answer could allow the Bayprogram managers to estimate withgreater accuracy the contribution thateach mile of restored stream makestoward meeting the TMDL targets. The panel offered some answers in a151-page report that received approvalfrom the Chesapeake Bay Program inSeptember 2014. The report highlightedthe challenges of stream restoration butalso described new studies that the panelsaid provided encouraging signs thatrestoration could make a meaningfulimpact on water quality. Evidence fromMaryland and southeast Pennsylvaniaindicated that erosion of stream channelsloaded more than 10 times the amount ofnutrients and sediments into the streamwater than was estimated only a decadeago. That suggested, the panel said, thatstream restoration projects that reducederosion could improve water quality morethan was previously thought. The report offered a set of methodsfor figuring how much reduction innutrients and sediments could be chalkedup to stream restoration projects. Thesemethods represent the first such method-ology approved in the United States toinform a set of TMDL targets. Countiesmay now use the methods to documentthat stream restoration projects are help-ing them to meet their TMDL targets. But improvements in water qualityshouldn’t be the only goal of streamrestoration projects, the panel added. Itsaid these projects should also improvethe biological quality of stream habitats,which is measured through indicators likethe presence of certain species of fish andaquatic insects. Accomplishing both of those goals isa challenge because “major scientific gapsstill exist to our understanding of urbanand non-urban stream restoration,” the

Volume 14, Number 1 • 5

A construction crew uses heavy equipment in the channel of Jennifer Branch, BaltimoreCounty, to rework its shape and function (photograph). Rushing stormwater can erode unrestoredstream channels until they become narrow and deep (top illustration). Some stream restorationswiden stream channels to make them shallower (bottom illustration) to slow stream flow and reduceerosion . These changes also create more contact between the stream water and groundwater, whichincreases the removal of nitrogen. PHOTOGRAPH, BIOHABITATS INC.; ILLUSTRATION, SOLANGE FILOSO, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE (UMCES)

Single thread channel Single thread channel

groundwater groundwater

PRE-RESTORATION

Wetland-channel

POST-RESTORATION

groundwater groundwater

panel acknowledged. One such gap is thateffects on water quality vary according tothe restoration designs and methods cho-sen and a stream’s location and size. Toaccount for these differences, the panel’smethods of estimating results includedseveral stream-engineering techniques andoffered ways to adjust the estimates toreflect conditions in individual streams.

Slower Currents Are Key

Broadly, the engineering techniques stud-ied by the panel are variations on a singletheme: they slow down the stream’s flow.This reduces the energy of the water andits tendency to eat away at stream chan-nels. A slower current, combined withother features of a stream restorationproject, can help to remove excessnitrogen from the water and trap sedi-ments. Putting the brakes on sedimentsalso helps to restrain the downstreamflow of phosphorus, which can attach tosediments . One method for slowing down thewater and protecting channels uses “nat-ural channel design.” This type of designtransforms an eroded stream channel —which can look like a straight, box-shaped chute — into something that

looks more natural: a stream dotted withrocks, boulders, and meandering curves.The channel’s path is broken up by weirs,lines of stones called cross-vanes, and treetrunks. Baltimore City and Baltimore Countyhave carried out several of these projectsat sites like Stony Run, which windsthrough Roland Park to the InnerHarbor. In 2010, the city completed a$10-million project to restore the streamand improve sewer and stormwater sys-tems around it. The stream is now part ofa park and trail system. Despite the popularity of these proj-

ects, there is a long-running debate aboutwhether this approach, sometimesdescribed as “armoring” the stream chan-nel, reliably reduces erosion and by howmuch. The inventor and chief proponent ofthis approach, Dave Rosgen, a charis-matic stream restoration consultant work-ing in the western United States, devel-oped a method of estimating erosionrates. His approach compares the streamwith others that have similar characteris-tics like width, depth, and shape — andthat have documented rates of erosion. Peter Wilcock, now head of watershed

sciences at Utah State University, was aprofessor at the Johns Hopkins Universityuntil 2014, and he takes issue with howRosgen’s approach has been applied inMaryland. For example, he says, it tendsto identify streams as rapidly erodingbecause they have tall, bare banks. Someof these streams are indeed eroding, butothers stopped eroding years ago andhave remained stable since. “Bank erosionis too complex, too episodic, and con-trolled by too many factors to predict itsrate based on the presence of bare banks,”Wilcock says. He says that to reliably measure ero-sion rates and pick which streams needrestoration most, a different approach isrequired: you have to examine historicaldata. Old aerial photographs and land sur-veys can show observable signs of erosionover time. In its final report, the advisorypanel on stream restoration endorsedusing Rosgen’s methods as one way toestimate sediment reductions. But thegroup also recommended using Wilcock’sapproach for confirming those estimates. Once such restoration projects arecompleted, though, there’s a lack of evi-dence about their effects, wrote RebeccaLave, a geographer at Indiana Universitywho analyzed Rosgen’s methods in anarticle in the Journal of the American WaterResources Association. Funding for moni-toring has been poor, she says, so “we inthe stream restoration world are currentlyin the untenable position of spendingmore than a billion dollars of taxpayermoney a year on restoration projects withno real idea of whether or not they aresucceeding.”

Removing the Nitrogen

Another kind of stream restoration designalso slows the flow: it spreads it out. Thisapproach creates a wider, shallower streamchannel, like the one created at NorthCypress Branch. When it rains and theflow rises higher in the channel, morewater can move into adjacent side chan-nels and wetlands. The purpose of this widening andspreading is not only to reduce erosionbut also help cleanse the stream of excess

6 • Chesapeake Quarterly

Volunteers plant trees beside Tuscarora Creek in Frederick County in 2009. Healthystreams are commonly surrounded by forested areas called riparian zones, and many restorationprojects work to establish such zones. Planting trees and other vegetation improves the stream’s waterquality. The plants reduce excess sediments and nutrients flowing from the stream’s upland drainagearea into the stream channel. PHOTOGRAPH, CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION

nitrogen. Increasing contactbetween the stream’s water and theland in and around the channelcan, under certain circumstances,increase an important biologicalactivity called denitrification. In this process, bacteria converta molecule called nitrate (or NO3

–,because it has one nitrogen atomand three of oxygen) into nitrogengas (N2 ). Once created, the nitro-gen gas escapes from the streaminto the atmosphere, reducingnitrogen levels in the stream andimproving water quality. In a way,these streams are acting like nature’skidneys. But scientists have also discov-

ered that it can be a challenge tomeasure how much nitrogen isremoved, and under what condi-tions — information that couldinform our understanding of streamrestoration’s usefulness as a tool inthe Bay cleanup effort. One scientist who has worked

to find answers for those questionsis Sujay Kaushal, an aquatic ecolo-gist at the University of Marylandat College Park. Kaushal served on theChesapeake Bay Program’s advisorypanel on stream restoration. For morethan a decade, he and his colleagues havestudied a series of urban streams in andaround Baltimore, in the watersheds ofthe Patapsco and Gunpowder rivers,partly with funding from Maryland SeaGrant. Some of this ongoing researchexamined Minebank Run, a tributary ofGunpowder River that BaltimoreCounty restored between 1999 and2005. Kaushal and his colleagues have useda variety of techniques to measure theamount of nitrogen that is removedfrom restored streams. One involvedmeasuring how much nitrogen flowedinto a stream reach (the length of thestream being studied) and how muchflowed out. A reduction in nitrogenflowing out would be evidence for deni-trification. However, that type of “massbalance” study can yield variable results

depending on how the estimates aremade, Kaushal says. The scientists used other, complemen-tary methods like studying rates of deni-trification in the stream channel. Tomeasure that, the researchers have used aspecial kind of nitrogen that they couldtrack. They injected nitrate containing arare natural form of nitrogen (N15) intothe stream’s surface water and in thegroundwater beneath. This nitrate func-tioned as a tracer, allowing scientists tomonitor its fate much the way a detectivecan follow a suspect’s car by watching itslicense plate. A reduction in the amountof this tracer would provide evidence ofdenitrification at those locations. Theresearchers found that up to 40 percentof the tagged nitrate was converted tonitrogen gas along some reaches. Kaushal and his colleagues found thatdenitrification rates were relatively highin areas of the stream channel, called the“hyporheic zones,” where stream water

could easily mix with ground-water and where denitrifyingbacteria reside. (See illustration,p. 9.)

The scientists also observedthat increasing connectionsbetween a stream’s flowingwater and nearby wetlands andoxbows (remnants of the origi-nal stream channel) could yieldsignificant denitrification inthose zones, reducing by up to40 percent the daily load ofnitrate in the stream.

But the effects of denitrifi-cation varied depending onlocation in the stream’s water-shed and on the restorationdesign, Kaushal adds. The varia-tion can reflect “hot spots” ofextra nitrogen entering thechannel from leaky sewage sys-tem pipes and other sources.The pipes frequently run alongstreams to skirt buildings andarrive at collection pointsdownhill. Designing projects torestore and preserve urbanstreams, he says, requires con-

sidering hot spots along the streams’entire length, which he and his colleaguescall the “urban watershed continuum.” “If you couple the stream restorationalong with sanitary infrastructure repairsbecause you’re already digging and exca-vating all that stuff, it can probably havesignificant effects,” he says. “We haveaging infrastructure not only in Baltimoreand D.C. [but in other cities, too].” Findings by Kaushal and his col-leagues about nitrogen removal withinMinebank Run influenced the report ofthe Chesapeake Bay Program’s advisorypanel on stream restoration. Their resultsinformed a method presented in thereport for estimating the amount ofnitrogen removed by restoration projectsdesigned to promote denitrification inthe hyporheic zones of streams. Using a documented nitrogen-removal rate for this calculation “is a verygood place to start,” says MargaretPalmer, who has attracted national atten-

Volume 14, Number 1 • 7

ANNE ARUNDEL0 5 10 15 MILES

KILOMETERS151050

HOWARD

CARROLLHARFORD

CECIL

KENT

LANCASTERYORK

BALTIMORE

PENNSYLVANIA

MARYLAND

BALTIMORECITY

NJ

PA

WVMD

VA

WASHINGTOND.C.

DE

Minebank Run Study AreaMAP AREA

S

N

W E

Minebank Run watershed boundary

Loch Raven

Reservoir

Minebank Run, near Towson in Baltimore County, wasthe focus of restoration work from 1999 to 2005 that modified thestream’s channel. Scientists at the University of Maryland studied theeffects of the modifications on water quality. They measured nitrogenamounts in the restored stretches of the stream using several tech-niques. The researchers found significant amounts of nitrogen wereremoved but also found that removal rates varied by location and overtime. Removal rates can also vary over wider geological regions. The“fall line” shown here marks a boundary between two such regions,the Piedmont and Coastal Plain of Maryland. MAP, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

tion as an expert on stream restoration.She is a professor at the University ofMaryland at College Park and theUniversity of Maryland Center forEnvironmental Sciences (UMCES) and isnow director of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center inAnnapolis. However, she continues, “thespatial variability in denitrification instreams is well known to be huge.”

What Goes In, What ComesOut

Palmer has worked with Solange Filosoin another part of the Chesapeake water-shed to study restored streams and theireffects on water quality. The findings ofthis research are among the reasons bothscientists voice caution about expectingrestoration projects to significantly reducenitrogen in streams.

From 2007 to 2010, Filoso, who was amember of the advisory panel on streamrestoration, monitored conditions in sixstreams in Anne Arundel County that hadbeen restored using different methods.Three of the restored stretches had beenstabilized using natural channel design.Others were in lowland stream valleysand relied on the wide channel approach.Filoso worked to determine the “mass

8 • Chesapeake Quarterly

Through Rain and Cold, the Monitoring Must Go On

W hen we hear a summerthunderstorm at night, manyof us roll over and go back

to sleep. Solange Filoso, on the otherhand, gets in her car and drives to astream. To study restored streams in AnneArundel County, Filoso went driving byday and sometimes by night, in summerand in winter. Every two weeks, in day-light, she collected water samples fromthe streams for chemical analyses. Shealso measured the speed of stream flowduring storms. “I remember being sowet once that I had to go to a store andbuy new clothes and boots. I put themon and went back out there” to thestream to finish collecting data. Long storms would send her out onnight trips to check on her automatedmonitoring machines. Each held 24bottles timed to collect samples as oftenas every 15 minutes. When longerstorms would fill up the bottles, Filosohad to retrieve them and restock themachine with empties. That meantstashing all those full, one-liter bottlesinto a backpack — “It was heavy,” shesays — and then humping the wholeload up some steep stream banks in thedark. Now Filoso gets help with luggingher monitoring gear from her scientificcolleagues. One of those helpers,Michael Williams of the University ofMaryland Center for EnvironmentalScience, is also her husband.

Intensive monitoring like this is notonly hard work, it can also be timeconsuming and expensive: it costs upto $80 per bottle to have a commerciallaboratory chemically analyze eachwater sample. “Doing good monitoringrequires investment,” Filoso says. Infact, the three years she spent monitor-ing Howard’s Branch and five otherstreams in Anne Arundel County, withfunding from the county government,was a relatively long span; often, moneyis available for no more than one yearof monitoring after a restoration iscompleted, she says.

Watershed scientist Solange Filoso is studying how stream restoration projects in AnneArundel County affect water quality. One of her study locations is Cabin Branch in Annapolis(above). In a 2013 project, workers built berms of sand and wood chips in the stream and createda network of meandering channels to slow water flow. The waterway discharges into SaltworksCreek, then to the Severn River and the Chesapeake Bay. PHOTOGRAPH, JEFFREY BRAINARD

When she started her work inMaryland’s streams, Filoso had been nostranger to flowing water. A native ofBrazil, she has done research on theAmazon, the world’s largest river, andshe hopes to apply aspects of what she’slearning about stream restoration inMaryland to a project in that country.She says some of the same issues carryover from Maryland to Brazil, wherethe clearing of forested areas hasjeopardized the quality and quantity ofwater supplies to the Brazilianpopulation . — J.B.

balance” — the amount of nitrogen flow-ing in and out — of restored streamreaches. Filoso and Palmer found that onlytwo of the six restored reaches showedstatistically significant declines in nitro-gen upstream versus downstream duringnormal water levels. And only one,Howard’s Branch, reduced the amountof nitrogen exported downstream duringstorms. The data also suggested that bigstorms tended to overwhelm the streams’ability to remove or retain nitrogenthrough natural processes. In the restoredreach of Howard’s Branch, the reductionin nitrogen occurred during storms withless than three-quarters of an inch of rain-fall. However, larger storms that dumpedmore rain had an out-sized effect:although a minority of all storms, theycontributed most of the water that moveddownstream annually. And with that waterwent most of the nitrogen exported downthe stream. At higher flows, dissolvednitrogen had less time and opportunity tocome into contact with denitrifying bac-teria, Filoso says. So what was the overall amount ofnitrogen that could be removed within arestored stream channel? Filoso and

Palmer calculated that in a best-case sce-nario, a wide, restored stream couldremove about 17 percent of all the nitro-gen moving in the water within thestream channel annually. To put thisremoval rate into a broader perspective,such a restored stream was removingabout 5 percent of all of the nitrogenloaded onto the surrounding land thatdrained into the stream. They assumedthe nitrogen came from sources likesewage-system leaks, lawn fertilizer, petwaste, and atmospheric deposition inrainwater. (Some of the nitrogendeposited in a drainage area is retainedthere and never flows into a stream.) Filoso and Palmer also studied howwell features of the restored streamstrapped sediment moving downstream. Infindings yet to be published, they foundthat retention of sediment by restoredreaches was relatively small in relation toinputs of sediment flowing from upstreamsources. The amount of sediment storedwas variable; during some bigger storms,more sediment was washed out and sentdownstream than was retained. And therestored streams didn’t retain more sedi-ment than unrestored streams nearby did. Overall, Filoso says her research find-ings make her worried that we may be

expecting streams to do more than theycan naturally do — and that we may berelying on them as a last line of defensebefore polluted stormwater flows into theChesapeake Bay. Restored stream channelsare often relatively small compared withthe total surrounding area that drains intothem, she notes. The restored corridor ofNorth Cypress Branch, for example,measures about nine acres compared witha drainage area of 475 acres. Filoso suggests that by relying moreon stormwater management practiceslocated upland, outside of a stream chan-nel, we can reduce the volume ofstormwater flowing into the stream. Andin turn, we can avoid over-relying on thecleansing effects of denitrification andother processes that remove pollutantsfrom stream water, whose effects varyover time and by location. “An analogy I make: if you have asick patient, you don’t go for the mostinvasive, extreme treatment right fromthe beginning,” Filoso says. “You try tomake an assessment of what may be caus-ing the problem, and you try to eliminatecauses. . . . When there’s nothing morethat you can do, then you go and do sur-gery. To me, stream restoration is morelike surgery.”

Volume 14, Number 1 • 9

North Cypress Branch

Anne Arundel County has supported restoration projects (examples, left)that may promote the removal of nitrate from the stream’s water. In a natural process, called denitrification, bacteria can convert nitrate into nitrogen gas (N2)both in the groundwater below as well as along the sides of a stream bed, an areascientists call the “hyporheic zone” (right). A restoration project can increase den-itrification by widening the stream channel to increase contact between thestream’s surface water and groundwater. MAPS, ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, GOOGLE DATA ©2015,

(COUNTY OUTLINE AND STREAM LOCATIONS ADDED BY SANDY RODGERS); MARYLAND, ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ TEXAS

MAP LIBRARY; ILLUSTRATION (ABOVE), ADAPTED FROM FISHER ET AL.., GEOMORPHOLOGY 89:84-96 (2007)

N2

Riparian Upland

Active channel

Surface stream

Hyporheic zone

Sandbar TerraceHoward’s Branch

Wilelinor tributary

A n n e A r u n d e l C o u n t y

M a r y l a n d

“It’s funny, because when I came intothis whole thing, I was really convincedthat [stream] restoration could do more. Ireally thought, this makes sense. And Iwanted it to work. But the data so farindicate that it doesn’t do as much as Ithought it would do.” Filoso adds that a fuller picture of theeffects of stream restorations may emerge

in future research projects that comparenutrients and sediments in the streamspre- and post-restoration. She wasn’tcommissioned to begin monitoring thesix Anne Arundel streams until afterrestoration work there was completed.“Without long-term, good-quality data,”she says, “it’s really difficult to determinehow the systems are working.”

Crafting an Effective Toolkit

In its final report for the Chesapeake BayProgram, the advisory panel on streamrestoration acknowledged concernsabout its effectiveness as a tool toimprove water quality and suggestedways to improve it. The report encour-aged government managers and plannersto couple stream restoration projectswith management practices locatedupland to reduce stormwater flow intostreams. (See Getting SMART aboutClean Water, p. 12.) But the upland practices, likeinstalling drainage swales and removingimpervious asphalt, present their own setof challenges — and costs, says BillStack. He served as a staff member forthe advisory panel and is deputy directorof the Center for Watershed Protection, anonprofit based in Ellicott City,Maryland, that advises local governmentsand organizations. Previously he ledstream restoration projects for theBaltimore City Department of PublicWorks. In that role, he oversaw an inten-sive effort to install stormwater-controlmeasures in Watershed 263, an area of930 acres encompassing 12 neighbor-hoods in West Baltimore. (For a detaileddescription of this project, see ChesapeakeQuarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2.) “I know how expensive these proj-ects are. The cost is huge,” Stack says.“The other issue is finding enough pub-

10 • Chesapeake Quarterly

Stream restoration designs are selected depending on a stream’s topography and othercircumstances . In regenerative stormwater conveyances (top), step-like pools are installed in steeplygraded streams below the outfalls of stormwater drainage pipes to control water rushing out duringrainstorms. By contrast, wetland seepage systems (bottom) are designed for flatter stream channels.Side channels are built parallel to the stream flow to store stormwater runoff. Water in these “seep-age reservoirs” (A) slowly flows through a constructed “sand seepage bed” to the stream (A’).ILLUSTRATION, ADAPTED FROM PALMER ET AL., ECOLOGICAL ENGINEERING 65:62-70 (2014)

North Cypress Branch, a stream in Severna Park, Anne Arundel County, had been eroded by stormwater runoff from a 475-acre drainagearea (outlined in yellow), which includes a shopping center and its parking lot (left). In 2013, the county and its partners concluded a project to improvethe stream by designing a variety of structures — such as terraced step pools and a “braided” network of channels — that work to slow and widen thestream flow. AERIAL IMAGES: (LEFT) PROJECT DESIGNER BAYLAND CONSULTANTS AND DESIGNERS INC.; (RIGHT) PROJECT DESIGNERS BAYLAND, CLEAR CREEKS CONSULTING, AND UNDERWOOD & ASSOCIATES.

Braided network of channels

Log boulder step pools

Regenerative SWstep pools

licly owned property where you can putthese practices in the ground that willmake a substantive difference. . . . As a ruleof thumb, if you’re limited to publiclyowned property, at best you can treatabout 15 percent of runoff volume.” Because of challenges like these, itcould take decades to install enoughstormwater control measures in uplandareas to improve the Bay’s water quality,Stack estimates. Using his own analogyabout doctors, he says that projects thatreduce stream-channel erosion today willhelp “staunch the bleeding” of excess sed-iments and nutrients to the Bay — andbuy time to allow other treatments towork. When the advisory panel recom-mended ways to estimate by how muchstream restorations reduced nutrients andsediments, it said it was taking a conserva-tive approach to account for variabilityand uncertainties in performance. For

example, the panel said the estimatedreductions in sediments using the naturalchannel design approach should be cut by50 percent. And stream restoration proj-ects receiving credit for reductions willhave to be monitored every five years todetermine that they are still working asoriginally designed. This monitoring and assessment iscrucial, Stack says. “I’m concerned that alot of managers, a lot of [engineeringfirm] practitioners, they see the highcredits that stream restoration gives, andthey’re just going to jump on the band-wagon and start putting these projects inthe ground without using a scientificallybased design process that we can learnfrom and refine and tweak.” The Chesapeake Bay Program is pur-suing this kind of iterative learningprocess, dubbed “adaptive management,”to tweak a variety of interventionsbesides stream restoration in order to

improve water quality and make progresstoward meeting the Total MaximumDaily Load water-quality targets by thedeadline of 2025. In addition, the pro-gram’s Science and Technical AdvisoryCommittee has prepared a new reportabout using science-based principles todesign sustainable, effective streamrestoration projects in the ChesapeakeBay watershed. Designing projects that are consis-

tently effective will require further work,says Tom Schueler, executive director ofthe Chesapeake Stormwater Network.With Stack, he also worked as a staffmember for the advisory panel. SaysSchueler, “We need a lot more science, alot more economics, a lot more researchand practice to make the best policydecisions about how to restore streamsand how to do these other restorationpractices in watersheds.” — brainard@mdsg.umd.edu

Volume 14, Number 1 • 11

Two Takes on Stream Restoration

Bob Hahn Jr. and PattyHinks live only a few

houses away from each other inSeverna Park in Anne ArundelCounty. Both of their backyards share the same, expansiveview of North Cypress Branchand the stream restoration proj-ect completed there in 2013.But they hold very differentviews about the project’s results. “I think it’s a good thing ifthe research pans out and ithelps the Bay,” says Hahn on arecent sunny afternoon on his back lawn, overlooking the restored channel. Hegrew up nearby and has good memories of spending time down by the streamyears before the restoration project. But he also likes the new version and the widerspace that the project created. “It’s real nice here in the summertime,” he says, “and I think it’s improved myproperty value.” But to Hinks, the beauty and privacy of the forested creek were what drew herto buy her house 30 years ago. “Now it’s the Great Lakes,” she says, referring to thewide, shallow pools the restoration created. “I wish they would have experimentedsomewhere else, because there was a lot of acreage [of trees] that they had to takeout here.”

— J.B.

For Further Information

Recommendations of the ExpertPanel to Define Removal Rates forIndividual Stream RestorationProjects, Chesapeake Bay Program,2014.

Longitudinal patterns in carbon andnitrogen fluxes and stream metabo-lism along an urban watershedcontinuum. S.S. Kaushal, K.Delaney-Newcomb, S.E.G. Findlay,T.A. Newcomer, S. Duan, M.J.Pennino, G.M. Sivirichi, A.M.Sides-Raley, M.R. Walbridge, K.T.Belt. Biogeochem istry 121(1):23-44,2014.

Assessing stream restoration effective-ness at reducing nitrogen export todownstream waters. Solange Filosoand Margaret A. Palmer. EcologicalApplications 21(6):1989-2006, 2011.

Renewing an Urban Watershed,Chesapeake Quarterly, Volume 7,Number 2, 2008.

The Storm over Drains, ChesapeakeQuarterly, Volume 4, Number 4,2006.

Designers of the North Cypress Branchrestoration project planned a series of constructed flood-plain wetlands like this one to help slow the stream’sflow. PHOTOGRAPH, JEFFREY BRAINARD

P eople use online maps for a lotof different tasks: to plot outtheir road trips or find a late-

night pizza place. Now, a group fromMaryland has created a site for mappinghow Marylanders are working towardcleaning up their local waterways. It’scalled the Stormwater Management andRestoration Tracker (SMART) tool. Local government officials inMaryland are hopeful that this new toolwill help them meet the goals set out bya federal and state effort to clean up theChesapeake Bay — by giving counties away to count some of the small-scaleefforts to improve water quality thatmight normally be overlooked. Watershed restoration specialists in the

Maryland Sea Grant Extension programare spearheading the effort, which is in itspilot-testing phase. They work with com-munities across the state to help themtarget a big problem in the region:stormwater runoff. During rainstorms,water runs off roofs and gushes downdriveways, carrying nutrients and sedi-ments toward small streams within theBay watershed. That steady flow canworsen the health of local waterways andeventually trickles down to theChesapeake itself. Scientists, engineers, and landscapeprofessionals have developed a number ofpractices for containing and controllingthis runoff. These practices allow com-munities to capture stormwater before itever reaches a brook or a creek. Rainbarrels, for instance, are small cisterns thatcollect the water streaming out of homedownspouts. Rain gardens are specializedplant beds that are designed to sop upstormwater like a piece of bread dippedin soup.

Many homeowners around Marylandhave already started installing practiceslike these in their front yards, saysJacqueline Takacs, a watershed restorationspecialist at Maryland Sea GrantExtension who serves the southernMaryland region. The problem is that norecord exists of where or when suchefforts have been put into place. That’simportant, she and her colleagues argue.Marylanders want to help out withefforts to clean up the Bay, but they alsoask “who is using my data?” That’s where the SMART tool comesin. Just as Google maps lets you see all ofthe pizza-by-the-slice places in yourneighborhood, this tool maps out whereMarylanders have installed rain gardensand similar stormwater managementpractices around the state. The teamdeveloped the tool in collaboration withexperts in geographic information sys-tems at the Center for GIS at TowsonUniversity in Maryland. And it’s easy to use: residents go tothe tool’s website and type in detailsabout the sorts of stormwater manage-

ment practices they’ve implemented athome. There are 11 different practices tochoose from, including rain barrels andgardens. The Maryland Sea Grant team willtrain volunteers to travel out to thesehomes to certify that the practices havebeen implemented correctly — that raingardens, for instance, have been dug deepenough and are located where they canabsorb the most stormwater. In the end,each home with a practice in place ismarked on an online map with a coloredpin. Anyone in the region can use thetool, but the team is currently only veri-fying practices located in HowardCounty, Maryland. The site has alreadyreceived around 400 submissions, and theteam plans to expand the program to theentire state by late 2015. It could also become an importantpiece of the multi-state effort to clean up

12 • Chesapeake Quarterly

Getting SMART about Clean WaterOnline tool tracks where Marylanders are working to manage stormwater

Daniel Strain

Decorative and functional, this rain barrel(left) helps homeowners to collect the stormwaterflowing from their downspouts. When Marylandresidents enter practices like this into the SMARTtool site, they show up as red pins on a map(above). Green pins show the practices that havebeen verified by trained watershed stewards.PHOTOGRAPH, AMANDA ROCKLER; MAP, SMART TOOL MAP SHOWING

AN AREA IN HOWARD COUNTY

more of the water in smallstreams makes contact withthe soils in the channel. Andmore leaves are washed intosmall streams relative to theamount of water there.These conditions help topromote a biologicalprocess, denitrification, thatremoves nitrogen from thewater. Mile for mile, smallheadwater streams are themost efficient at this amongall streams. However, smallstreams are also the mostlikely to be filled in orburied by construction anddevelopment.

Elmore, a geologist,became interested in map-

ping streams after he came to work in 2006at the Appalachian Laboratory, part of theUniversity of Maryland Center forEnvironmental Science (UMCES), inFrostburg.

While developing a map of buriedstreams in Baltimore, he and a colleague,Sujay Kaushal of UMCES, noticed thatmany of them were not shown on theNational Hydrography Dataset, an existing,widely used, nationwide database about sur-face waters. That database was created in the1990s after streams in areas like Baltimorewere already buried. They also noticed thatsmall streams in non-urban areas weren’tincluded on the NHD map, either.

Seeing an opportunity to create a moredetailed map, Elmore used funding fromMaryland Sea Grant to begin mappingstreams across Maryland west of theChesapeake. It was, Elmore says, “the most

T o protect streamsflowing downtowards the

Chesapeake Bay, you some-times have to journey up tothe mountain tops.

That’s what AndrewElmore and his colleaguesdid. Again and again, indozens of Maryland forests,the scientists scrambleduphill, tracking the course ofsmall streams. It was part ofa labor-intensive effort tobuild a novel, detailed mapshowing Maryland streamsnot recorded on other maps.By mapping the headwatersof small streams near thetops of forest ridges andhills, the researchers worked to create acomputer model that predicts the locationsof small streams across all of Maryland westof the Chesapeake Bay. The model offers atool to protect streams from developmentand to improve the region’s water quality.

These small headwater streams are easyenough to ignore — many are small enoughto step over as you walk through a forest.But knowing their locations is important forseveral reasons. First, they are importantpockets of biodiversity. Biologists have foundthat relative to larger streams, the smallerones support a more diverse array of aquaticspecies, like fish and insects. The mix ofspecies can be different from stream tostream — and this diversity can be easily lostwhen construction of new homes and roadsfills in or buries a stream.

Small streams are also important forwater quality. Compared to large streams,

Volume 14, Number 1 • 13

the Bay called the Chesapeake BayTotal Maximum Daily Load. In2014, the Chesapeake BayProgram, which oversees thiseffort, approved procedures thatwill allow local governments toinclude practices entered into theSMART tool toward meetingtheir cleanup goals. That could saveMaryland counties money. And itwould show homeowners thattheir efforts were contributing to alarger goal. “Even 100 rain gardens may bea teeny-tiny piece” of what’sneeded to clean up the Bay, Takacssays. “But it’s still a piece.” In addition to managing theSMART tool project, specialistswith the Maryland Sea GrantExtension program have workedto combat stormwater runoff in anumber of different arenas. Theyhelped to launch four watershedsteward academies in the state thattrain volunteers to carry outstormwater management projects.They also support a local greenjobs program called the Restoringthe Environ ment and DevelopingYouth (READY) program. The specialists are working todevelop a certification program forlandscape contractors who installstormwater management practicescalled the Chesapeake BayLandscape Professional Certifica -tion Program. They also designedthe Maryland Watershed Restora -tion Assistance Directory, an onlinedatabase of organizations that fundefforts to slow down runoff. To learn more about theSMART tool or how MarylandSea Grant Extension’s watershedrestoration experts can help yourcommunity visit:

http://www.extension.umd.edu/watershed/smart-tool

http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/water-issues-and-restoration

— strain@mdsg.umd.edu

To Map Streams forRestoration, First Go

to the SourceJeffrey Brainard

Geologist Andrew Elmore andhis colleagues tromped up mountainstream channels to record dataabout the locations of their headwa-ters. They merged that informationwith other data to build a new,detailed model of small and buriedstreams in Maryland west of theChesapeake Bay. PHOTOGRAPH,

UMCES/CHERYL NEMAZIE

ambitious attempt yet to model streamnetworks over a large region.”

For this project, his scientific collabo-rators were Steven Guinn and MatthewFitzpatrick of the Appalachian Laboratoryand Jason Julian, now at Texas StateUniversity. Their approach was based on afundamental idea: to know where buriedstreams might be located today, you haveto know what the Maryland landscapemust have looked like centuries ago, alandscape crisscrossed by streams, beforesuburbs and houses spread across the state.Parts of Maryland provide clues aboutthat seemingly pristine landscape: thestate’s remaining forests.

The researchers figured that if theydevised a computer model predictingwhere streams flow today within thoseMaryland forests, they could use the samemodel to accurately predict the locationof stream channels elsewhere, including innon-forested suburban and urban localeswhere houses and roads now stand. Theycould create a road map to find small andburied streams.

To create that computer model,Elmore says, the scientists had to collectseveral types of data. They searched exist-ing sources of information about terrainelevation and slope and soil characteris-tics, features that can indicate the presenceof streams. But they needed other informationthat was missing: the locations of a samplegroup of “channel heads” where stream

headwaters begin.To map thoseheadwaters, theyhad to drive andhike to the tops ofmountains, likeDan’s MountainWildlife Manage -ment Area inAlleghany County.And to the tops ofhills, like those inPrince WilliamForest park inVirginia.

Elmoredescribes how the

researchers literally followed the evidence . “At each forested watershed, wewould work in groups of two to threepeople to map,” Elmore says. “We wouldstart at a rather large stream and walkupstream to the first confluence. One ofour group would start following thesmaller stream, still walking uphill, andthe rest of us would keep walking up thelarger stream until we found anotherconfluence and another small stream towalk up. The walking continued until wereached the channel head — channelheads are the most uphill evidence of astream channel. When we found thislocation, we recorded the GPScoordinates .”

The trio ended up often having tomake their way through dense vegetationwhen there were no established trails tofollow, Elmore recalls. “To make the bush-whacking easier, we only mapped streamsin the spring, winter, and autumn, whenundergrowth vegetation was sparse.” Inall, the scientists walked about 85 miles ofstream length, and they found more than250 channel heads. The new data came atsome cost: they often emerged from theforest with many small cuts on their legs.

When the scientists put all of this datatogether, their computer model predictedthe paths of streams as they floweddownhill from upland, forested areas.Elmore and his colleagues then extendedthe model to predict where streamswould probably flow today across all of

Maryland west of the Bay, including innon-forested areas. “The map is really amap of what the stream network wouldlook like if the entire landscape had thesame land use, and land use history, as ourforests,” Elmore says. In all, the map cov-ers 23,000 square miles including thePotomac River watershed and fivesmaller watersheds.

To check the model’s accuracy, the sci-entists used existing field data about theactual presence or absence of streams inmore than 10,000 locations in Maryland.Eighty-four percent of the model’s pre-dicted stream locations correctly identifiedan actual stream, an improvement over theexisting, nationwide map. Only 55 per-cent of stream locations shown in theNational Hydrography Dataset (NHD)were correct.

Elmore’s model filled in blank spotson the NHD map with many new, thinsquiggly lines representing the probablelocation of streams. In some portions ofMaryland, the “stream density” inElmore’s model (measured as kilometersof stream length per square kilometer) is2.5 times the density shown in maps ofthe same area based on NHD data.

The differences between the two mapsreflect several differences in how theywere created, Elmore says. The U.S.Geological Survey (USGS) produced theNHD in the 1990s using aerial photo-graphs, he notes. What’s more, for thepurpose of creating stream maps, theUSGS defines a stream as a body of flow-ing water that contains water most of thetime. However, some of the smallerstreams shown in Elmore’s model mayflow only intermittently — during springrains, for example.

Eventually, the national NHD datasetwill evolve to include a higher level ofdetail similar to that in Elmore’s model,says Jeffrey Simley, a USGS cartographer.“The only thing holding us back is thelack of funding for such development andthe need for such detail in many parts ofthe country,” he says.

Elmore and his colleagues published adescription of the model in 2013 in thejournal PLoS One.

14 • Chesapeake Quarterly

The new model of stream locations, created with funding fromMaryland Sea Grant, shows previously unrecorded Maryland streams (blue),adding detail to stream maps previously created as part of the NationalHydrography Dataset (black). In this map, forested areas are colored green,agricultural lands are yellow. MAP, UMCES APPALACHIAN LABORATORY

Volume 14, Number 1 • 15

Daniel Strain

Uses for the New Map

The model is “an important tool forimproving our understanding of how tokeep the Bay clean,” says Christine Conn,director of the integrated policy andreview unit of the Maryland Departmentof Natural Resources. “If we don’t knowwhere these streams are, we have diffi-culty managing the resource, both forconservation and restoration.” The department has begun using themodel to review impacts from proposedconstruction projects and to identify smallstreams that are habitats for brook trout,which the agency manages. Conn addsthat her agency may incorporate Elmore’sdata into its next update of the maps usedto create its GreenPrint tool, a statewidemap that identifies lands and watershedswith high ecological value as prioritiesfor conservation. Elmore says that the model could helpinform decisions about where to locateconservation projects, such as artificialwetlands, to maximize benefits. “If you’relooking at a broad region, you don’t wantto cluster all your restoration projects inone area, you want to distribute them onthe landscape,” he says. Officials in several Maryland countieshave contacted Elmore about using themodel to help them comply with newrules, called TMDLs (Total MaximumDaily Loads), intended to improve theBay’s water quality. The model could helpinform where to plant stream-side buffersof trees to help remove nutrients and sed-iments from runoff. The model “opens upthe amount of land where we couldpotentially plant buffers to meet thoseTMDLs,” he says. And, Elmore jokes, “If you’re in thebusiness of water-proofing people’s base-ments, I can give you a great map of whoto send fliers to.” The researchers postedthe stream map on a website (http://streammapper.al.umces.edu) that showslocal streets superimposed. Zoom in atthe block level, and you might notice aburied stream running near or underyour house.

— brainard@mdsg.umd.edu

Knauss Fellows fromMaryland for 2015

T hree graduate students from Maryland will employ their scientific knowledge tohelp the federal government develop marine policy in 2015. With support fromMaryland Sea Grant, these students began their year-long Knauss Marine Policy

Fellowships in February. All three are working for the U.S. National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the Washington, D.C. area.

Jeanette Davis has joined NOAA’sNational Marine Fisheries Service. Sheassists the Office of Science andTechnology in its sea turtle conserva-tion efforts, working to develop stockassessments for vulnerable populations . Davis is a doctoral student at theInstitute of Marine and Environ men talTechnology in Baltimore, a part of theUniversity of Maryland Center forEnvironmental Science (UMCES). Shehas explored the bacterial communitiesthat are associated with tropical seaslugs that congregate near Hawaii everyspring to mate. Some of these microbes may produce compounds that could have uses inhuman medicine, such as to fend off cancer. Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, Davis received her bachelor’s degree fromHampton University in Virginia. During that time, she lived for a month on a 53-footsailboat as part of a research internship. She also participated in Maryland Sea Grant’sNational Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program in2006. She hopes that her Knauss Fellowship will give her a grounding in marine policyand help her to apply her scientific knowledge to developing policies that benefit thenatural world.

Jessica Foley is spending her fellowshipyear in the Office of Oceanic and Atmo -spheric Research at NOAA. There, sheworks with members of the administra-tion’s leadership on diverse topics, includingthe oceans and Great Lakes, climate , andweather. Foley is a master’s student in the MarineEstuarine Environmental Sciences Programat the University of Maryland. Her researchfocuses on a mathematical model thataddresses the growth of seagrass beds in the

Jeanette Davis assists the National MarineFisheries Service at NOAA. PHOTOGRAPH, JEANETTE DAVIS

Jessica Foley is at NOAA’s Office ofOceanic and Atmospheric Research. PHOTOGRAPH,

JESSICA FOLEYContinued on p. 16

Delmarva Peninsula’s coastal lagoons,adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean. Foley’sresearch will help scientists to track howchanges in the future — such as risingtemperatures associated with climatechange — might affect the health of thisimportant green life. Foley’s introduction to estuarine sci-ence came as an undergraduate student atthe University of Rhode Island, whereshe studied mangrove trees growing inPuerto Rico for her senior thesis. She hasalso founded a student-run collegiate fieldhockey program, worked at a wastewatertreatment facility, and spent many sum-mers knee-deep in wetlands from bogs tosalt marshes and mangroves .

Brittany Marsden serves as the inaugu-ral Knauss Fellow in the Formulation andCongressional Analysis Division atNOAA. She helps the administration todevelop its research priorities and com-municate the significance of NOAAresearch to Congress. She also helps sci-entists get the funding they need to carryout their work. Marsden is a doctoral student in theMarine Estuarine Environmental SciencesProgram at the University of Maryland.Her research addresses the genetic diver-sity and growth patterns of submersedaquatic vegetation (SAV) growing in theChesapeake Bay watershed.

After earning her undergraduatedegree from the University ofRichmond, she worked as an environ-mental educator, first with the Chesa -peake Bay Foundation and later at thePatuxent Research Refuge in Maryland.Among other activities, Marsden organ-ized and led educational experiences foryoung students, helping high schoolers,for instance, to search for arrowheads andother historic artifacts on eroding Bayislands. Those experiences sparked herdesire to pursue an interdisciplinarycareer in marine conservation.

The Knauss Fellowship, begun in1979, is designed to let outstanding grad-uate students spend a year working onscience policy in Washington, D.C. Theprogram, coordinated by the National Sea

Grant Office, places fellows in legislativeor executive branch offices in the federalgovernment that work on ocean, coastal,and Great Lakes policy issues. Fellowshipsrun from February 1 to January 31 andpay a yearly stipend plus an allowance forhealth insurance, moving, and travel.Applicants must apply through the SeaGrant program in their state. For moreinformation, visit:• Maryland Sea Grant Program, Knauss

Fellowships:www.mdsg.umd.edu/education/knauss

• National Sea Grant Program, KnaussFellowships:www.seagrant.noaa.gov/knauss

Non-Profit Org.U.S.Postage

PAIDPermit No. 04386College Park, MDMaryland Sea Grant College

4321 Hartwick Road, Suite 300University System of MarylandCollege Park, Maryland 20740

Address Service Requested

Chesapeake Quarterly is printed on recycled paper, processed chlorine free, using soy-based inks

Knauss Fellows, cont. from p. 15

To see online articles and to send us your comments, scan the code at left or go to www.chesapeakequarterly.netA Maryland Sea Grant publication • www.mdsg.umd.edu • Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Want to support this publication and our work? Donate online at: http://mdsg.umd.edu/donate

Brittany Marsden is in the Formulationand Congressional Analysis Division at NOAA.PHOTOGRAPH, BRITTANY MARSDEN

On the Bay Blog

A t the end of March, a new blogcalled On the Bay was launched

as a service from Maryland Sea Grantand Chesapeake Quarterly magazine.Posts will include short essays, slideshows, podcasts, occasional videos, andfrequent reporting on marine andenvironmental issues. From time totime we will carry guest-written postscontributed by those with Bay mem-ories to share and by those engaged instudying, managing, or protecting theChesapeake Bay’s ecosystem.

You can read On the Bay at:

www.mdsg.umd.edu/onthebay-blog