Chesapeake Bay - restoration projects

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, and the first to be targeted for restoration as a single ecosystem. The Bay covers 4,431 square miles, and the watershed covers 64,000 square miles including areas of Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Over 100,000 streams and rivers drain into the Bay, with the Susquehanna River draining 42 percent of the watershed. It is a national and regional resource that provides seafood, functions as a center for shipping and commerce and is home to thousands of species of wildlife.

Tide gauges around the Chesapeake Bay indicate that the relative sea level in the Bay is rising at twice the average global rate of 1.8 mm per year. In a few areas land subsidence goes beyond the regional value caused by postglacial rebound. A possible cause of localised subsidence is groundwater extraction, which has occurred at an increasing rate in recent decades. Such rates appear to be the cause of shore erosion and pond development which are factors in wetlands loss around the Bay.

Against this background the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Ducks Unlimited, working with state and federal agencies, have restored 2,500 acres of wetlands and 350 miles of riparian buffers along the shores of Chesapeake Bay. A multi-state oyster restoration project in Chesapeake Bay involving scientists, advocacy organisations, citizens, and state and federal agencies has planted over 100 million oysters on 40 sanctuary reefs as part of a major oyster restoration project. (See http://www.cbf.org/).