Environmental Monitoring Commons^™

Identifying Key Stream Restoration Variables In An Agriculturally Impaired Chesapeake Bay Watershed, Julia Portmann

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The Chesapeake Bay watershed spans several states, supports diverse ecosystems, and is crucial to local economies. However, agricultural practices in this region impair water quality. The Smith Creek watershed, within the Shenandoah Valley, was designated a showcase watershed in 2010 by the United States Department of Agriculture to demonstrate the efficacy of implementing restoration projects. We sampled fifteen farms ranging from unrestored to thirty-six years since restoration. At each site, we conducted a kick-net survey for macroinvertebrates, measured canopy cover, algal density, substrate size, and bank height and angle. We identified macroinvertebrates to family and calculated the Chesapeake Basin-wide Index …