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