The Chesapeake Bay Trust, in partnership with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the Maryland Department of Transportation’s State Highway Administration (MDOT SHA), Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection (Montgomery DEP), and with input from the Maryland Department of the Environment, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and other agency and technical partners on the Restoration Research Advisory Committee, recently announced six new collaborative Restoration Research Award Program projects.
In the third year of this award program, two new funding partners have been added to the program: MDOT SHA and Montgomery DEP. Additional partners are expected in future years.
The Chesapeake Bay Trust, established by the State of Maryland to serve a convening and collaborating grant-making role, manages the awards made through the partnership and ensures that what is learned is translated back to the regulatory and practitioner communities.
Recent projects funded in the Restoration Research Award Program include:
South River Federation
$199,990 for “Assessing Watershed-scale Restoration Effectiveness: Treatment Impacts and Monitoring Requirements”
The South River Federation and Smithsonian Environmental Research Center will evaluate the cumulative performance of multiple Best Management Practices (BMPs) at a subwatershed scale. The research team will compare watershed-level discharges of sediment and nutrient pollutants from seven interconnected, restored subwatersheds of Church Creek.
Center for Watershed Protection, Inc.
$200,000 for “Using a Novel Research Framework to Assess Water Quality Impacts of Urban Trees”
This research team will quantify the stormwater treatment value of trees across urban forest types. The project will identify urban forest characteristics that influence the water and ecosystems and determine whether more complex urban forest types result in greater runoff volume reduction.
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES)
$199,314 for “Long-term impacts of living shorelines to Sub Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) habitats in the Chesapeake Bay”
This project will assess the long-term performance of living shorelines, a practice of using natural shoreline habitat to prevent erosion rather than hard shoreline armor, as well as their potential impacts to adjacent seagrass beds.
University of Maryland College Park
$198,332 for “Tree Trade-Offs in Stream Restoration Projects: Impact on Riparian Groundwater Quality”
Predicting the impact of tree removal associated with stream restoration on riparian water quality remains a challenge. This project will quantify the effects of riparian deforestation on groundwater quality across urban restored, degraded, and forested reference sites.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
$217,322, “Improving the Success of Stream Restoration Practices”
This project will improve an understanding of the conditions under which stream restoration practices “fail,” with the long term goal of improving the overall application, design, and review of stream restoration projects. Information from this study will provide guidance on factors that indicate the risk of project failure, such as watershed size or impervious land use or channel specific stream power or relative floodplain width.
Versar, Inc.
$180,408 for “An Evaluation of Forest Impacts as Compared to Benefits Associated with Stream Restoration”
The goal of this project is to better understand the impacts of stream restoration on forest resources. The research team will inventory trees, understory vegetation, and reptiles and amphibians to determine whether there are any potentially negative impacts as a result of positive stream restoration practices.
source: Chesapeake Bay Trust
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