At the halfway point between and the question is: Are we on track? See how Virginia waterfront property owner Norman Colpitts uses a cost-effective living shoreline to protect his property while benefiting the environment.
The living shoreline includes a small oyster reef to prevent erosion on his property. These oysters create wildlife habitat, filter and clean the water, and slow down waves before they erode the shore. This video captures the devastating effects of heavy rains that pummeled Pennsylvania the week of July 23, These scenes were shot on July 26, the day before the river crested.
The James River in Richmond overflowed its banks after heavy rain washed huge amounts of dirt and pollutants into the current. Clear, clean water turned the color of chocolate milk. Even days after the storm the surge continues as runoff flows miles downstream from the headwaters. Stay up to date about the Bay!
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Runoff Pollution Runoff Pollution Urban and suburban polluted runoff is a significant source of harmful nitrogen pollution that continues to grow in the Chesapeake watershed. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website.
You cannot download interactives. Of that, only about 1. Most of our drinking water comes from rivers and streams. This water is the lifeline of ecosystems around the world.
Erosion is the process where rocks are broken down by natural forces such as wind or water. There are two main types of erosion: chemical and physical. In physical erosion, the rock breaks down but its chemical composition remains the same, such as during a landslide or bioerosion, when plants take root and crack rocks. Explore the process of erosion with this collection of resources. Individuals, communities, and countries depend on a variety of different resources to help them thrive: electricity, timber, oil, water, and food to name a few.
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In the United Nations General Assembly adopted 17 sustainable development goals designed to transform our world by The sixth goal is to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. According to the United Nations, one in three people live without sanitation. A lack of sanitation and sanitary waste management systems can reduce a community's access to clean water, and lack of access to clean water can allow diseases to run rampant, sometimes creating epidemics of water-borne infectious agents.
Learning about how freshwater systems work in the wilderness, rural communities, and urban centers can help us better understand the challenges of providing clean water and sanitation to people around the world. Humans impact the physical environment in many ways: overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Changes like these have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and undrinkable water.
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Toxic runoff can pollute surface waters, like rivers and lakes, as well as seep into underground groundwater supplies. Photograph by James P. Also called crude oil. Media Credits The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. Last Updated Jan. Media If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer.
To our knowledge, this decision tree is the first tool to provide guidance on whether or not to consider land-sea planning at all. This work addresses both nutrient and sediment loading; however, these pressures differ both in their spatial and temporal dynamics. The response of coastal ecosystems to dissolved nutrients is likely affected by the temporal dynamics of nutrient transport, and the nutrient composition of runoff relative to the oceans Paerl et al.
Nutrient loading may affect a broader marine area because it is transported further than sediment in freshwater plumes Maughan and Brodie, Sediments typically remain more concentrated around the river outlet than nutrients, and have longer-lasting ecological impacts than nutrients, both because nutrients can be rapidly removed by biological processes and because sediment can be re-suspended Risk, Sedimentation may also cause ecological degradation from just one or a few episodic pulses Risk, , while nutrient loading is more likely to be problematic at chronic levels Lapointe et al.
Sediment has a complex role at the land-sea interface that we did not fully capture in the decision tree: humans both increase via land conversion and decrease via dams sediment loads in rivers Syvitski et al.
Although we primarily discuss its applications to nutrient and sediment loading, this framework could be expanded to address other pollutants transported by rivers to coastal oceans.
Sediment, nutrient, and chemical pollution tend to occur together, downstream of agriculture, logging, landfill, and mines Peters et al. Unlike nutrients and sediments, chemicals may be transported to coastal and marine ecosystems via multiple pathways other than watersheds e. We hope that in the future, the ecotoxicology literature will provide sufficient research on coastal and marine ecosystems to enable the inclusion of chemical pollution in this decision tree framework.
The decision tree should be used with the current state of affairs in mind. However, we acknowledge that the temporal dimension is crucial for conservation. Historic degradation of watersheds and coastal marine habitats may have consequences for decades, even if the activity that generated the original damage no longer occurs Kemp et al. The decision tree also does not incorporate the risk of future human activities.
In regions where managers might anticipate damaging human activities increasing in the future, proactive land-sea planning might avoid deleterious impacts entirely.
Protection of coastal and marine ecosystems is typically less costly and more effective than restoration; therefore, we strongly encourage any managers expecting increased anthropogenic impacts in the future to consider land-sea planning now.
Identifying the influence of land-based drivers on coastal and marine ecosystems is only the first step in effective management. If land-based drivers are found to negatively impact a nearshore marine region, what should managers do? First, all marine managers can acknowledge the effects of runoff—however great or small—on their regions. Taking a cumulative impacts approach to ecological health, as opposed to focusing on individual threats, frequently worsens the outlook for coastal oceans, and highlights the importance of protecting ecosystems before combined human activities push them over critical thresholds Halpern et al.
Considering the possible deleterious impacts of nutrient or sediment loading, in addition to other more frequently recognized threats such as fishing, may change management priorities, and cost-effectiveness of interventions Halpern et al. For example, declining water quality may undermine the success of marine protected areas whose locations were chosen based primarily on fishing effort or habitat protection Boersma and Parrish, Second, managers may consider attempting to actively mitigate the runoff threat.
Because most marine managers do not have direct jurisdiction or much influence over terrestrial activities that generate runoff, any mitigation of nutrient or sediment loading may have to be preceded by inter-agency cooperation and the possible involvement of higher authorities.
Mitigation options include limiting or strategically shifting the nutrient- or sediment-producing activity or buying out the industry or property ; protecting riparian zones, wetlands, and other coastal buffers that filter nutrients and sediments from freshwater; and investing in improved urban wastewater management Mitsch et al.
In coastal regions and islands with traditional stewardship systems, oversight of different activities and sections of the land-sea continuum may be much more tightly linked, and managing runoff may be simpler as a result. In all of these cases, a formal land-sea planning process will help managers identify which activities are most feasible and cost-effective in their regions Klein et al.
The decision tree is intentionally based on purely environmental factors, and only addresses the relevance of land-based nutrient and sediment loading to nearshore marine ecosystems. The results of the decision tree, and the management options outlined above, must be considered in light of the local social and economic context.
In Appendix S1, we outline a non-exhaustive list of social and economic considerations that are important to land-sea management but are not captured in our purely environmental decision tree.
These considerations include culture and politics, revenue and livelihoods, health and nutrition, ecosystem services, and the watershed context. We stress, however, that the first step in addressing land-based pressures from the marine perspective should be to methodically determine whether they matter for the health of coastal oceans.
The research presented contributes to a more systematic and holistic approach to studying and understanding coastal runoff. We suggest that the importance of considering land-based impacts for conservation can be identified using a simple decision tree, which has minimal data requirements. In some regions the impacts of actions on land may be negligible relative to other concerns.
Systematic consideration of the vulnerability of coastal ecosystems to land-based impacts will help regional and federal conservation managers to avoid wasted efforts in less vulnerable regions, and to focus their efforts in higher risk areas. Even in regions where managers are very familiar with the runoff context, the decision tree can be used to justify and standardize the choice to invest in land-sea planning or not.
Ultimately, this will result in more timely and effective conservation actions. AFH also drafted the paper with substantial input from all authors. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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