Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee
Upcoming Meetings
STAC December 2024 Quarterly Meeting
Tuesday, December 3, 2024 from 9:30am - Wednesday, December 4, 2024 from 1:00pmScope and Purpose
The Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) provides scientific and technical guidance to the Chesapeake Bay Program on measures to restore and protect the Chesapeake Bay. Since its creation in December 1984, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s (CBP) Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) has worked to enhance scientific communication and outreach throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed and beyond. STAC provides independent scientific and technical advice in various ways, including (1) technical reports and position papers, (2) discussion groups, (3) assistance in organizing merit reviews of CBP programs and projects, (4) technical workshops, and (5) interaction between STAC members and the CBP. STAC serves as a liaison between the region's scientific community and the CBP. Through professional and academic contacts and organizational networks of its members, STAC ensures close cooperation among and between the various research institutions and management agencies represented in the Bay watershed.
Projects and Resources
A Comprehensive Evaluation of System Response (CESR)
Achieving Water Quality Goals in the Chesapeake Bay: A Comprehensive Evaluation of System Response (CESR) includes an evaluation of why progress toward meeting the TMDL and water quality standards has been slower than expected and offers options for how progress can be accelerated. This report is a summation of a three year investigation into the 40 year effort to reduce nutrient loads to Chesapeake Bay.
Learn more on the STAC webpage.
CESR Resource Documents
For the CESR Report, three workgroups were formed around the subsystems of the long causal chain that links management actions to their eventual impact on water quality and living resources: nutrient and sediment reductions (watershed), water quality response to nutrient and sediment reductions (estuary) and living resource response to water quality (living resources). Each of these workgroups generated an independent document with a self-determined scope (i.e., workgroups were afforded flexibility to address issues beyond the original objectives).
Learn more on the STAC webpage.
Publications
Using Carbon to Achieve Chesapeake Bay (and Watershed) Water Quality Goals and Climate Resiliency: The Science, Gaps, Implementation Activities and Opportunities
Published on June 20, 2024The Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) hosted a 2-day workshop to bring together leading experts to elevate the use of biochar in practice Bay-wide by evaluating and translating current research for integration into current Chesapeake Bay protocols. Concurrent with rapid global research and biochar-focused publications, US research grew with demonstration projects in the Chesapeake Bay region conducted by a multidisciplinary team of researchers, state and federal partners, and non-profits. These projects show significant environmental benefits including water quality improvement (reduction of nutrients/toxics), improved agricultural and urban soil health, and significant increases in soil infiltration capacity and hydrology. They have greatly advanced the empirical evidence supporting biochar protocols, standards, specifications, and crediting which are lacking in the Bay region. The purpose of this workshop was to accelerate the water quality efforts via the benefits biochar provides to more closely meet 2025 requirements and plan forward for water quality policies and carbon negative opportunities considered in the forthcoming 2025-2035 Climate TMDL.
Over-arching questions asked:
- What are the specific and efficient ways to integrate biochar into current protocols and strategies?
- How will biochar enhancement crediting be developed? What is needed to improve the integration?
- Who are specific programmatic partners that will benefit from this integration?
Evaluating an Improved Systems Approach to Wetland Crediting: Consideration of Wetland Ecosystem Services
Published on April 29, 2024The Chesapeake Bay Agreement (CBA) has numerous direct goals for improving habitat, living resources, and water quality, conserving lands, engaging communities and addressing a changing climate. To date, the progress toward the wetlands outcome (creation/ restoration of 85,000 acres and enhancement of 150,000 acres) has been very slow and the outcome is projected to be off course for 2025. Two specific confounding issues arise in efforts to achieve the Bay wetlands goal: 1) the idea that restoration is driven, and incentivized and accounted for, in order to meet the TMDL’s water quality (WQ) benefits, leaving habitat benefits undervalued; and 2) there is often tension between competing restoration priorities and financial resources among different Best Management Practice (BMP) types that include wetlands, such as wetland restoration/creation/rehabilitation, stream restoration, and the creation or restoration of forest buffers.
The collaborative workshop “Evaluating an Improved Systems Approach to Wetland Crediting: Consideration of Wetland Ecosystem Services” was held March 22-23, 2022 to explore the wetland accounting system and provide insight on improved approaches to promote wetland projects toward the wetlands outcome. Four sessions were organized around topics of 1) Accounting, 2) Landscape Systems Approach, 3) Wetlands Projects and Co-Benefits, and 4) Management Implications and Recommendation Development with 21 presentations, Q and A and facilitated discussions.
Acknowledgement of the limitations of the current management framework to achieve significant gains in wetland area supports the conclusion that absent significant adaptive management of wetlands efforts, any outcome for net wetlands gains beyond 2025 will be similarly confounded. Workshop findings included suggestions for how to approach restoration projects at a systems level (e.g., creek, shoreline reach, watershed) in order to maximize synergies for multiple ecological outcomes and ecosystem services. Recommendations for improvement on existing efforts, as well as new processes, tools and partnerships are suggested from the workshop’s analysis of the state of the science as considerations to increase implementation of wetlands projects.
View detailsUsing Ecosystem Services to Increase Progress Toward, and Quantify the Benefits of Multiple CBP Outcomes
Published on February 23, 2024“Ecosystem services” are the benefits ecosystems provide to people. These benefits include providing food, clean air, clean water, recreation, and many other explicit or intrinsic values to people and communities. Investments in Chesapeake Bay restoration are typically designed to improve water quality, given the legal requirements of the Clean Water Act. The Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement sets goals that encompass a wide range of ecosystem services. A narrow focus on water quality can result in the implementation of practices and policies that maximize nutrient and sediment reductions at the expense of feasible alternatives that offer greater ecosystem services or multiple benefits to living resources and communities.
This workshop was designed to gather input from a diverse array of stakeholders to help shape a coherent framework to identify impactful and durable ways to embed ecosystem services considerations in decision-making. This framework is critical to drive change for both the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) and for multiple lagging outcomes in the 2014 Watershed Agreement that provide ecosystem service benefits beyond water quality. As jurisdictions are doubling down on their efforts to meet the TMDL 2025 target date and large investments are being made in environmental restoration and conservation, there is an opportunity to work strategically to achieve a broader set of goals for ecosystems and communities.
View detailsRelated Links
STAC Website
Visit the STAC Website for all STAC activities, resources and publications.
Members
Larry Sanford (Chair), University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Bill Dennison (Vice Chair), University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Meg Cole (Coordinator), Coordinator, Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee, Chesapeake Research Consortium
Tou Matthews (Staffer), Projects Manager, Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC), Chesapeake Research Consortium
645 Contees Wharf Road
Edgewater, Maryland 21037
Email: matthewst@chesapeake.org
Phone: (443) 823-1752
Erin Letavic, HERBERT, ROWLAND & GRUBIC, INC.
Chris Brosch, Delaware Department of Agriculture
2320 S. Dupont Highway
Dover, Delaware 19901
Email: chris.brosch@state.de.us
Phone: (302) 698-4555
Craig Beyrouty, University of Maryland
Katherine Bunting-Howarth, New York Sea Grant
New York Sea Grant 112 Rice Hall Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
Email: keb264@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-255-2832
Weixing Zhu, Binghamton University
Shirley Clark, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)
W236F Olmstead Building
Middletown, Pennsylvania 17057
Email: sec16@psu.edu
Phone: 717-948-6127
Ben Hayes, Bucknell University
Jason Hubbart, West Virginia University
1098 Agricultural Sciences Building
Morgantown, West Virginia 26506
Email: Jason.Hubbart@mail.wvu.edu
Phone: 304-293-2472
Celso Ferreira, George Mason University
Jeni Keisman, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
5522 Research Park Drive
Baltimore, Maryland 21228
Email: jkeisman@usgs.gov
Phone: (410) 267-5729
Scott Knoche, Morgan State University Patuxent Environmental & Aquatic Research Laboratory
Ellen Kohl, St. Mary's College of Maryland
David Martin, The Nature Conservancy
Efeturi Oghenekaro, District of Columbia Department of Energy & Environment (DOEE)
1200 First Street NE, 5th Floor
Washington, District of Columbia 20002
Email: efeturi.oghenekaro@dc.gov
Leah Palm-Forster, University of Delaware
Kenny Rose, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Tess Thompson, Virginia Tech
Anthony Buda, USDA Agricultural Research Service
Mark Monaco, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Greg Noe, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Michael Runge, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Leon Tillman, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
339 Busch's Frontage Road, Suite 301
Annapolis, Maryland 21409
Email: leon.tillman@usda.gov
Phone: (443) 875-7169
Amir Sharifi, District of Columbia Department of Energy & Environment (DOEE)
Charles Bott, Hampton Roads Sanitation District
Christine Kirchhoff, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)
Emily Trentacoste, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.
Washington, District of Columbia 20004
Email: trentacoste.emily@epa.gov
Phone: 202-564-2987