Bay Barometer: Health and Restoration in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (2012-2013)

Published:

December 2, 2013

Categorized in:

Report

The Chesapeake Bay is a dynamic system. Across the watershed, rainfall, temperature and other conditions can fluctuate from month to month and year to year, impacting the surrounding environment. But tracking changes in ecological health over time allows scientists to understand these natural variations as well as the long-term effects of restoration work.

Understanding the effects of our management actions and our progress toward meeting our health and restoration goals requires a complex set of tools, from monitoring stations to computer simulations of the Bay watershed. These and other tracking tools helped produce the data in this report, which reflect changes in the Bay over the course of many years. Water quality, pollution loads and “indicators” of ecological health provide a snapshot of the Bay and its watershed and our efforts to restore it.

Full data and information can be found at ChesapeakeProgress.