Nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay: a retrospective newsletter

Nitrogen newsletterEcoCheck – with help from the Tidal Monitoring and Analysis Workgroup (TMAW), USGS, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and Old Dominion University – has produced a newsletter that summarizes nitrogen monitoring data and trends in both the non-tidal and tidal areas of the Chesapeake Bay. Nitrogen pollution has been a primary cause of a degraded Bay ecosystem for over a century. Since the Clean Water Act of 1972, Bay monitoring programs have measured the amount of nitrogen coming from human activities on land (urban, surburban, rural, and industrial) and from natural cycling in the water column. This information is used to evaluate management actions for nutrient reduction.