The northern part of the watershed (or drainage basin) is bordered by the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania and New York. What does the discovery tell us? In 2010 the bay's dead zones were estimated to kill 75,000 tons of bottom-dwelling clams and worms each year, weakening the base of the estuary's food chain and robbing the blue crab in particular of a primary food source. [81], The depletion of oysters has had a particularly harmful effect on the quality of the bay. [citation needed], The arrival of English colonists under Sir Walter Raleigh and Humphrey Gilbert in the late 16th century to found a colony, later settled at Roanoke Island (off the present-day coast of North Carolina) for the Virginia Company, marked the first time that the English approached the gates to the Chesapeake Bay between the capes of Cape Charles and Cape Henry. North of Baltimore, the western shore borders the hilly Piedmont region of Maryland; south of the city the Bay lies within the state's low-lying coastal plain, with sedimentary cliffs to the west, and flat islands, winding creeks and marshes to the east. It is the seventh-oldest surviving English place-name in the United States, first applied as Chesepiook by explorers heading north from the Roanoke Colony into a Chesapeake tributary in 1585 or 1586. Water from the melting ice sheets fed the ancestral Susquehanna River, giving it the power to move massive amounts of sediment as it cut its way to the coast. Residence time ranges from 110 to 264 days with an average of 180 days based on circulation in the years 1980 to 2012. Official websites use .gov By the mid-1700s, as farmers cleared more and more land for agriculture, sedimentation filled some of the navigable rivers used for travel. [82][83], The growing concerns about pollution also prompted the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia to establish the Chesapeake Bay Commission, an advisory body, in 1980. At the point where the Susquehanna River flows into the Bay, the average depth is 30 feet (9m), although this soon diminishes to an average of 10 feet (3m) southeast of the city of Havre de Grace, Maryland, to about 35 feet (11m) just north of Annapolis. 1730 East Parham Road Chart: The Largest Asteroid Craters on Earth | Statista The modern Chesapeake Bay watershed is framed by mountains on the north and west and the lower elevations on the east and south that formed from the slow collision of the African and North American tectonic plates. [104], Installation of stormwater management facilities is already a requirement for most new construction projects in the bay region, under various state and local government requirements. It provides an accessible analog for studying impact processes in layered and wet targets on volatile-rich planets. Positive indicators included decreased nitrogen levels and increases in dissolved oxygen. There are several magazines and publications that cover topics directly related to the Chesapeake Bay and life and tourism within the Bay region. [12] In 2005, Algonquian linguist Blair Rudes "helped to dispel one of the area's most widely held beliefs: that 'Chesapeake' means something like 'great shellfish bay'. Chesapeake Bay Water Quality Standards", "Oysters Are on the Rebound in the Chesapeake Bay", "Supreme Court ends challenge to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan", "Lawsuit: EPA fails to enforce Chesapeake Bay pollution caps", "Riparian Forest Buffer; Conservation Practice Job Sheet", "Maryland passes law to reduce pollution from lawn fertilizer", "Va. governor signs bill banning phosphorus lawn fertilizer", Maryland Stormwater Design Manual, Volumes I and II, Constructing Stormwater Retrofits in Maryland: Challenges & Recommendations for Cost Estimation, "Failing the Chesapeake BayBroken Promises on the Bay", "Two Million Dead Fish Appear in Chesapeake Bay", "Climate change already affecting Chesapeake Bay region", "Portrait of an Island Part I: What used to be home", "The competing impacts of climate change and nutrient reductions on dissolved oxygen in Chesapeake Bay", "After decades of waterfront living, climate change is forcing communities to plan their retreat from the coasts", "Submersed Aquatic Vegetation in Chesapeake Bay: Sentinel Species in a Changing World", "Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System", "Eyes on the Bay: Your home for Maryland tidal water quality data, downloads and visualizations", "Underwater Archaeology: History From the Deep", "Fisherman Pulls Up Beastly Evidence of Early Americans", "Revolutionary War shipwrecks near Yorktown getting their first good look in years", "Bay Journal: Independent environmental news for the Chesapeake region", "Annapolis Magazine - Eastern Shore Magazine - West County Magazine", "Season 8, Episode 3 Gear: Ghosts of the Chesapeake", "Tom Wisner; Chesapeake Bay served as bard's muse; at 79", Crawford, S. 2012. About 35 million years ago, an asteroid hit the ocean off the East Coast of North America. [124], The Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, which was constructed using shallow barges and ships to provide a blockade to the British during the War of 1812. A team of . The name might have actually meant something like 'great water', or it might have just referred to a village location at the Bay's mouth."[13]. The Chesapeake Bay BridgeTunnel was opened for two lanes in 1964 and four lanes in 1999. Along with environmental factors, the bay has been negatively impacted by humans since being settled in the 17th century, bringing with them problems like pollution, construction, and destruction of the environment. Sediment has since filled much of the channel, forming the shallow Bay. This bolide did not create the Chesapeake Bay, but it helped determine that a bay would eventually be located there. [19] The largest rivers flowing directly into the Bay, in order of discharge,[20][21] are: For more information on Chesapeake Bay rivers, see the List of Chesapeake Bay rivers. [99] The states have been developing their plans for years, in many cases building upon restoration projects that they had initiated before EPA's TMDL was finalized. Because they contribute only a fraction of the water produced by the western rivers, the eastern half of the Bay is saltier, slower moving, more given to marshes, and more productive of saltwater plants such as submerged aquatic vegetation. Oyster and rockfish populations in the bay have improved, but blue crab populations have continued to decline. The Chesapeake Bay is also home to a diverse flora, both land and aquatic. Common submerged aquatic vegetation includes eelgrass and widgeon grass. The BMPs are designed for specific sites to control pollution from nonpoint sources, principally agriculture, land development and urban runoff. National Ocean Month | U.S. Geological Survey - USGS.gov Five substantial rivers feed the western half of the Bay: the Patuxent, Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James. Millions of years later, the prehistoric Susquehanna River carved a 400-foot deep canyon as it flowed from the Appalachian Mountains toward the Atlantic Ocean. Wrinkles in sedimentary rock layers comprise the Valley and Ridge province. The Atlantic Ocean started to form about 200 million years ago. Key among these is sea level rise: water levels in the bay have already risen one foot, with a predicted increase of 1.3 to 5.2 feet in the next 100 years. The Chesapeake Bay Bolide Impact: A New View of Coastal Plain Evolution Ice sheets that covered the poles and Canada some 2 million years ago periodically pushed their way into the present-day United States. Rockfish can now be fished in strictly controlled and limited quantities. Gohn, Gregory S., Sanford, Ward E., Powars, David S., Horton, J. Wright, Jr., Edwards, Lucy E., Morin, Roger H., Self-Trail, Jean M., 2007, Site Report for USGS test holes drilled at Cape Charles, Northampton County, Virginia, in 2004: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2007-1094, 22 p. Dense stands of Brazilian waterweed can restrict water movement, trap sediment and affect water quality. Warmer, less dense freshwater flows near the surface of the Bay from the north to the south and into the Atlantic Ocean. The largest of these rivers draining into the Bay are the Pocomoke, Wicomico, Nanticoke, Choptank, and Chester. [49] Smith wrote in his journal: "Heaven and earth have never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation. They like to go on runs, hikes, or biking adventures with their . Rivers transport sediments and deposit them at the mouths of tributaries and along margins of the Bay, forming broad, flat deposits of mud and silt. [100] These plans are long and complex, involving regular consultation with many stakeholders (i.e. The significant phase of forming the peninsula occurred in the early or middle Pleistocene period (1.8 million to 11,500 years ago) with the development of the Accomack spit. Chesapeake Bay, largest inlet in the Atlantic Coastal Plain of the eastern United States. [9] Slight improvements in water quality were observed in 2021, compared to indicators measured in 2020. [127], Maryland has controlled the majority of underwater archaeology research around the Chesapeake Bay; however, Virginia's Department of Historic Resources has had a State Underwater Archaeologist since the 1970s. Where rivers came together is where settlements were founded. After months of harassment by Barney, the British landed on the west side of the Patuxent at Benedict, Maryland, the Chesapeake Flotilla was scuttled, and the British trekked overland to rout the U.S. Army at Bladensburg and burn the U.S. Capitol in August 1814. A second cause for the oyster depletion is that the drastic increase in human population caused a sharp increase in pollution flowing into the bay. About half of the nutrient pollutant loads in the bay are generated by manure and poultry litter. [79] The harvest's gross value decreased 88% from 1982 to 2007. [9] In 2021 scientists at the UMCES reported slight improvements in bay water quality compared to levels measured in 2020. In September 1781, during the Revolutionary War, the British intentionally sunk more than a dozen ships in the York River, near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Meyers, Debra and Perrealt, Melanie (eds.) "[107] In January 2011, there were reports that millions of fish had died, but officials suggested it was probably the result of extremely cold weather. Oysters serve as natural water filters, and their decline has further reduced the water quality of the bay. The eastern rivers of the Chesapeake Bay are quite different from those in the west. The TMDL would restrict water pollution from farms, land development, power plants and sewage treatment plants. [60], The Bay is famous for its rockfish, a regional name for striped bass. The Chesapeake Bay bolide impact: A convulsive event in Atlantic Coastal Plain evolution January 1, 1997 Until recently, Cenozoic evolution of the Atlantic Coastal Plain has been viewed as a subcyclical continuum of deposition and erosion.
Liberty High School Freshman Baseball, Articles I