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 stream channel form and function, which result in instability that affects the diversity and quality of habitats.
  • Temperature change.
  • Excess nutrients and sediment in waterways.
  • Limited organic (and nutrient) processing in waterways.
  • 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.
  • Land available for retrofitted and new upland best management practices (BMPs) in urban areas.
  • 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 other improvement(s) that could result from best management practice implementation.
  • Lag times between BMP implementation and ecosystem response monitoring that could affect the ability to evaluate the effects of BMPs on stream health.
  • Time frame for recognizing new BMPs or adjusting BMP credits to reflect emerging science.
  • 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 Basin-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.