Portfolio I: Estuarine Processes

Managing For Success

The research investments of MDSG are directed at developing important sources of information for understanding and managing Chesapeake Bay. We have consistently demonstrated our commitment to the success of this investment by concentrating on research topics that have real-world implications. Issues that we address include academic, commercial, and management communities and often bring partners together who only rarely cross paths without some catalyst to interact. Funds are awarded competitively to investigators and institutions that have the resources, capabilities, and reputations to perform the proposed work successfully.

To aid this, MDSG has taken care to ensure that each grant is substantial and sufficiently focused to be meaningful, and we have avoided diluting our resources to the extent that we lessen the probability of success. Furthermore, MDSG has displayed both initiative in start-up studies that have become true success stories nationally, and has made a continuing, long-term commitment to studies that have borne fruit and that we consider particularly successful and worthy of additional support. These include research programs of Breitburg and Purcell, Brush, and Harding and Hood. MDSG has also maintained strong relationships with PIs following the term of projects, and we have on a number of occasions provided additional support to assist in data analysis, presentation, or dissemination of findings in a variety of media. MDSG has provided an important link for researchers, special interest groups, policymakers and regulators to communicate effectively and to ensure beneficial uses of results of the research we support. This interaction is extremely important to make progress in a region such as Chesapeake Bay that has so many institutions and individuals working toward its understanding and management.

Applications of Estuarine Research

The connection of research on estuarine processes to users of the data and information that result from research has a long and successful history at MDSG that spans nearly two decades. An early example of how scientific findings were conveyed to a broad audience can be found in the long-term support that MDSG provided for research on the causes and consequences of oxygen depletion in Chesapeake Bay. Findings of a set of research projects supported by MDSG were translated into a book and briefing summary we produced that remain among the most frequently used sources for management on the subject of hypoxia. Another example of focused research with a strong outreach component that is also part of contemporary research includes submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) whose decline in the 1970s precipitated much concern about water quality and loss of habitat in Chesapeake Bay. Some years ago MDSG developed a film whose emphasis was ecosystem change exemplified by the SAV loss that has been a powerful outreach tool for communicating the importance of the Bay "clean up" to the public. "Twilight Estuary" makes the environmental problems of the Chesapeake understandable to the "lay person" and is widely used in science classes to introduce fundamental concepts pertaining to the history and management of the Bay. MDSG continues to support valuable research on SAV in the current funding cycle, recognizing the sentinel of change that SAV abundance represents in gauging improvements of water quality and biota in the estuary. Such efforts combine the skills of scientists in projects we support, communicators who translate that information in articles and films, and extension staff, including a Sea Grant Extension water quality specialist who has served as a liason on issues such as the toxic dinoflagellate, Pfiesteria, toxic contaminants, and exotic species. Recent work using remote sensing to study Bay planktonic processes also has a strong outreach component wherein data and information are distributed via web sites to managers and the general public, providing near real-time imagery of important indicators of estuarine health. These examples typify the approach of MDSG to make effective use of research findings.