Estuary Resource Document for the CESR Report

As part of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s (CBP’s) Science and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) initiative “Achieving Water Quality Goals in the Chesapeake Bay: A Comprehensive Evaluation of System Response”, an Estuary Working Group was formed to generate an assessment of scientific knowledge gaps, uncertainties, and recent ecosystem changes to consider in light of CBP’s impending goal of full implementation of management measures (Total Maximum Daily Load [TMDL] agreements and associated necessary stakeholder actions) that are being finalized and designed to achieve living resource-based nutrient targets by 2025.

This document summarizes aspects of the knowledge gaps, uncertainties, and associated needs and opportunities relating to our understanding of how the Chesapeake Bay estuary has responded to previously implemented management plans, and what features of the ecosystem may slow or enhance its response to future management actions in the face of expected continuations of climatic change.

The CBP operates under the principles of adaptive management, with well-articulated long-term outcomes being sought through comprehensive evaluation of management alternatives, articulation of uncertainty, and processes for revising management goals, strategies, and models as new information arises. In this report, we have evaluated the estuarine ecosystem dynamics through the lens of adaptive management, with an eye toward the CPB’s stated long-term objectives. In this light, recognition of key uncertainties in the estuarine dynamics leads us to suggest adaptive pathways forward. To meet its long-term objectives effectively, it is our scientific assessment that the following steps would be fruitful for CBP and STAC to undertake:

1. Shift the management and science focus from one of slowing and preventing ecosystem degradation to one of accelerating ecosystem restoration and recovery – that is, toward mitigating impacts via the TMDL and accelerating the restoration of hydrobiogeochemical processes underlying targeted ecosystem services and as needed to meet CBP goals (e.g., wetlands, submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) restoration).
2. Promote collaborative research integration approaches in which model uncertainty and predictions guide applied field research and monitoring, and where monitoring and research guide improved models, thus improving capacity to forecast system responses to management actions and climate change and to identify fundamental uncertainties.
3. Focus research efforts on spatial and temporal scales relevant to stakeholders and decision makers; for example, understanding the dynamics of ecosystems at the land-sea interface (triblets) in Chesapeake Bay restoration.
4. Investigate the impact of tipping points and improve our understanding of critically important ecological thresholds and their role in estuarine restoration dynamics.
5. Account for climate change in Chesapeake Bay restoration and expectations of recovery.
6. Use shallow water habitats as a testbed for integrating the land-sea interface, tipping points, and climate change using monitoring, modeling, and research approaches. In particular, we present the shallow water benthos as an exemplar that could be further pursued as a demonstration of the potential power of the first five steps — that is, as an exemplar of an ecosystem where there has been prior successful application of an integrative monitoring, modeling, and research approach at the land-sea interface.
7. Develop a future vision of Chesapeake Bay management that a) better embraces and addresses decision making in the face of uncertainty by incorporating adaptive management; b) considers potential major interventions; and c) uses an outcomes-based framework.
8. Identify new tools, approaches, and personnel that could feature in Chesapeake Bay restoration science and analysis.

In this document, each of the eight steps above is discussed in terms of the key attributes of the associated topics, the potential changes that could help address highlighted concerns, and finally, specific steps regarding what the CBP and its partners (including the STAC as well as STAC members and their affiliated institutions) can collectively undertake to enhance the restoration of Chesapeake Bay. The topics were selected based on their importance to the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, their topical relevance to existing and anticipated trends, and the degree of previous STAC attention.