Monitoring Needs and Partnership Opportunities Assessment: A Report to the Chesapeake Bay Program Monitoring Re-Alignment Action Team Chesapeake Bay Program September 2009 Prepared for United States Environmental Protection Agency Chesapeake Bay Program 410 Severn Avenue Annapolis, MD 21403 By Monitoring Re-Alignment-Partnership Issue team To receive additional copies of the report please call or write: US EPA Chesapeake Bay Program Office 410 Severn Avenue, Suite 109 Annapolis, Maryland 21403 ii Table of Contents Summary of Recommendations for Partnering Opportunities for Enhancing Monitoring for Chesapeake Bay Program ................................................................................................................................................ vi Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... x Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................1 Partnership Issue Team Objectives..........................................................................................................1 Scope of Report........................................................................................................................................1 Relation to the Presidential Executive Order............................................................................................2 Monitoring Inventory Compilation .................................................................................................................3 Methods ....................................................................................................................................................3 Summary Inventory...................................................................................................................................3 Water Quality Partnership Opportunities ......................................................................................................9 Management Goals and Priority Water Quality Monitoring Needs...........................................................9 Summary of Current Monitoring Programs to Address Water Quality Needs........................................10 Case Study-Agricultural BMP Performance Studies......................................................................12 Case Study-Urban and Suburban BMP Performance Studies ......................................................16 Case Study- Sub-watershed Urban and Suburban BMP Effectiveness Monitoring ......................17 Monitoring Gaps, Challenges, and Partnership Opportunities for Water Quality...................................20 Fisheries Partnership Opportunities............................................................................................................25 Management Goals and Priority Fisheries Monitoring Needs................................................................25 Summary of Current Monitoring Programs to Address Fisheries Needs ...............................................26 Monitoring Gaps, Challenges, and Partnership Opportunities for Fisheries ..........................................29 Habitat Partnership Opportunities...............................................................................................................31 Management Goals and Priority Habitat Monitoring Needs ...................................................................31 Summary of Current Monitoring Programs to Address Habitat Needs ..................................................33 Monitoring Gaps, Challenges, and Partnership Opportunities for Habitat .............................................33 Watershed Partnership Opportunities.........................................................................................................37 Management Goals and Priority Watershed Monitoring Needs .............................................................37 Summary of Current Monitoring Programs to Address Watershed Needs ............................................38 Monitoring Gaps, Challenges, and Partnership Opportunities for Watersheds......................................38 References..................................................................................................................................................41 Appendix A- The 2009 Chesapeake Bay Region Monitoring Inventory .....................................................43 Appendix B- Chesapeake Action Plan Monitoring Needs Gap Analyses ...................................................83 Appendix C- Summary of Federally Funded Monitoring Programs ..........................................................105 Appendix D- Summary of Priority Monitoring Partnership Opportunities..................................................111 iii iv v Summary of Recommendations for Partnering Opportunities for Enhancing Monitoring for Chesapeake Bay Program • Staff resources should be allotted in 2010 to conduct a more comprehensive survey of monitoring activities in the Bay and its watershed and periodic up dates every five years there after. The data call for monitoring programs should include a well-defined definition of what is or is not a monitoring program. Programmatic needs for monitoring information extend beyond water quality and there needs to be an emphasis capturing monitoring efforts that address all CBP areas. • The 2009 Monitoring Inventory has identified numerous potential candidate programs to establish monitoring partnerships with to expand our monitoring networks and meet programmatic information need. However to participate in these potential partnerships, the Bay Program would need to provide resources (money, technical expertise, staffing) for these efforts. The CBP needs to have a flexible source of funds to establish priority partnerships. The new Technical Support Services Team should oversee the funds. • There are opportunities to better utilize on-going monitoring being conducted by federal, state, and local governments, and non-governmental organizations to address information needs for all Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) goals: water quality, fisheries, habitat, and watershed. However, the CBP will have to greatly increase capacity to obtain, manage, and utilize appropriate information from these monitoring programs. CBP should develop or apply guidance documents which lay out analytical quality assurance requirements for a monitoring program to become a partner in our monitoring networks. Guidance for data management, data submission and metadata currently exists but will need modification for working with small data providers (CBP, 1998; CBP, 2001; and CBP 2006). • There needs to be careful consideration of monitoring needs of the entire Chesapeake Bay program when re-aligning monitoring funds. It was noted during the monitoring needs assessment conducted across all goal implementation teams that changes to the water quality monitoring programs will have repercussions in other parts of the program. Decreases in tidal monitoring effort will degrade our abilities to insure habitat conditions favorable for the maintenance and expansion of SAV acreage and conduct ecosystem based fisheries management. However increases in the non-tidal monitoring program will enhance our abilities to assess stream health and target stream restoration. Water-quality • The current CBP tidal water-quality monitoring programs (water quality, benthic invertebrate, phytoplankton and submerged aquatic vegetation) provide the majority of the data to assess vi water-quality criteria, the priority-monitoring objective. These programs also provide information to document status and trends, prepare communication products and support models. These programs need to be continued, because there are very limited partnering opportunities to support these programs. • There are opportunities to enhance partnerships, mostly with citizen monitoring groups, to assess the status of water-quality conditions in selected tidal tributaries and shallow waters of the Bay. These partnerships do not currently address the needs for criteria assessment in shallow waters or change over time. • There are opportunities to partner with on-going efforts in small watersheds to better evaluate the effectiveness of management practices. The CBP should increase resources to synthesize results from past and present small watershed studies to provide products on effectiveness of point source, agricultural, and storm-water management practices to reduce nutrients, sediment, and toxic contaminants. The CBP should select 6-18 small watersheds, which have on-going monitoring of best management practices (BMP’s), land-use activities, and water quality, to co- locate long-term monitoring sites as part of the non-tidal water-quality network. These small watersheds would provide information to help provide on-going evaluation of different types of water-quality management actions. • There are opportunities to partner with on-going programs to better assess the nutrient, sediment, contaminant, and bacterial conditions in the watershed to better target restoration and protection activities. However, these partnership opportunities will not address the needs of the CBP non- tidal network to monitor changes in nutrient and sediment loads and concentrations to help assess progress toward load allocations. • Assessing criteria related to toxic contaminant impairments