Stream Health Outcome:Factors Influencing Progress

Several factors could impact our ability to improve stream health and function throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed. These factors have directly informed the management actions our partners will take to achieve the Stream Health outcome.

Ecosystem Factors

  • Changes in flow and hydrology related to drainage from agricultural lands and impervious surfaces
  • Changes in channel form and function, which result in an instability and disequilibrium that affect diversity and quality of habitat
  • Thermal impacts
  • Excess nutrients in-stream (from agricultural and stormwater runoff and nutrient-rich groundwater)
  • Excess sediment in-stream (from legacy sediment, unstable stream banks and runoff)
  • Limited organic (and nutrient) processing in-stream
  • Poor wastewater infrastructure
  • Presence of endocrine disrupting chemicals
  • Toxicity of effluent generated by resource extraction (e.g., acid mine drainage, fracking)
  • Road de-icing practices (e.g., applications of salt)
  • Loss of riparian forest buffers and the benefits provided by shading
  • Presence of invasive species

Policy and Administrative Factors

  • Common watershed, stressor and stream assessment and restoration guidelines
  • Review and approval of stream restoration projects
  • Cooperative Extension infrastructure that provides adequate technical assistance and knowledge-sharing
  • Financial resources that provide adequate support to local implementation efforts
  • In urban areas, land available for retrofitted and new upland best management practices (BMPs)
  • Integration of water quality and living resource goals

Scientific Knowledge and Application of Research

  • Stressor identification and prioritization
  • Metrics that correlate with priority stressors
  • Research to guide the selection of achievable reference conditions and design approaches
  • Monitoring that evaluates the functional lift(s) or improvement(s) that could result from best management practice implementation
  • Lag times that could affect our ability to evaluate the effects of BMPs on stream health
  • Time frame for recognizing new BMPs or adjusting BMP credits
  • Research to refine nutrient credits
  • Identification of nutrient hotspots in stream valleys where soils and other erodible geologic materials contain excess nutrients
  • Data to develop a Chesapeake Bay-wide fish-based indicator to complement the Chesapeake Bay-wide Index of Biotic Integrity (Chessie BIBI)
  • Limitations of the applicability of the Chessie BIBI and other ecological data to streams on which restoration work is being conducted annually