Tidal Monitoring and Analysis Workgroup Meeting Thursday March 6, 2008 Conference Call 1:00 - 3:00 Meeting Minutes Participants: Jeni Keisman, CBP/UMCES Peter Bergstrom NOAA Peter Tango (USGS/CBP) Katie Foreman, CBP/UMCES Bill Dennison, UMCES Ben Longstaff, NOAA/UMCES Dave Jasinski, UMCES Bruce Michael, MDNR Caroline Wicks, NOAA/UMCES Emily Nauman (NOAA/Eco Check) Rick Hoffman, VA DEQ Tish Robertson, VDEQ Jake Goodwin CRC/CBP 1:00 Introductions and announcements Peter Tango mentioned the upcoming non-tidal group workshop. He also updated their status on the Assessment report. The non-tidal workgroup will release a report that is approx two pages without the pie chart. However their report is still in flux and the final outcome of their report has not been decided. Tentative Report card release date is April 3, 2008. The Report Card was not posted online. This was a decision made based on what happened last year. There will be some shifts in CBP as a few communications staff are heading out. 1:15 Dissolved Oxygen Review Jeni K. reported on the DO Review. The Patuxent River was discussed as there was an error in the previous analysis that was presented in the last meeting. A map (3rd page) shows which stations in the Patuxent River have improved or stayed the same. The upper reaches showed a lot of improvement. The York River showed a decrease and with the new analysis the York River decreased even more. The mesohaline segment was significantly worse. The tidal fresh section performed better this year. The work group expressed an interest in looking at the mainstem outside the York to get a better picture there. ACTION: Jeni will look at the D.O. Review for the area outside the York River. ------- 1:20 Chlorophyll a Review. Why did the Northern Bay score so much worse than in 2006? March 5, 2008 had revised chlorophyll analysis. The chlorophyll still dropped and the greatest driver was CB20H. The 2006 scores did not have July scores where the 2007 did. Mid-Bay was reported next. At segmentCB4MH the data improved dramatically in 2007 and 6 out of 10 stations passed in 2007. In 2006 there were some stations passing but in 2007 there were mostly failures. The Choptank River showed 22 points higher than 2006 even with the new analysis. The largest segment in the river is CHOMH1. CHOMH1 is a large segment that had improved and therefore improved the overall score of the Choptank. (See document for the threshold values). Rick Hoffman expressed that the threshold levels were low concentrations. Why did the Upper western shore/Northwest tributaries score better in 2007 than in 2006? In gunpowder there is a low N. In the middle river the chlorophyll a counts improved in 2007. Data for WT2.1 and WT3.1 were shown and they provided an example of trends between stations in 2006 and 2007. Bill explained that the upper tributaries don't respond similar to the lower tributaries and a more detailed report card should be sought for the future. The question of Are these going up and down each year was captured well in Jeni's work. The current question is; why does the score fluctuate so much? Turbidity, flushing events, drought conditions, ect. All contribute to the year to year variability. This Review may be put on as Tech supporting information to the data. 1:30 Water Clarity review A review of water clarity for 2006 and 2007 was presented. The mid bay region had increased. The improvement didn't make sense to observers in that area. In 2007 it wasn't a good year according to MDNR reps but there were more occurrences of "good" secchi depth scores in 2007. It was expressed that 2006 was a bad year also. The data showed that everything failed in 2006. The story is different from one year to the next and that should be considered. Ben expressed that the group should know, or work toward finding out, what drives the variability in the data. Our responsibility is to have the details for our broad scale reports. 1:45 Review of 2007 Bay Habitat Health Index scores. Tish brought up that the group could look at medians as well as means. Jeni expressed concurrence for stations that show a significant difference between two years. Peter B. asked why we would want to do a statistical analysis and explained that the target is higher than the data. What do we say to people who ask if the Bay improved? (Jeni K) In the past we would answer that question with a long term analysis and not a year to year basis (Peter B.) Being able to explain what happened year by year is good to have for the public (Ben L.) Northeast tributaries improved since 2006 and a figure was displayed to show this. Many of the same stations that failed in 2006 failed in 2007. Other stations from the region improved. The Choptank was then discussed and it improved pretty ------- dramatically. The chl a improved in the mesohaline sections. Oligohaline was similar to last year. The lower section is driving the improvements that we see overall. 1:45 2007 Chesapeake Bay habitat health index was presented (Ben L) Ben thanked everyone for their help. The first slide showed the indicators (first slide). Most of the indicators improved. The second slide was shown Bay wide long term trends. Next Ben showed biotic indicators; the initial BIBI does not have data and is marked as 0. The zero values will not be part of the report. Next slide (5) shows the WQ trends, which were similar overall. Slide 6 shows the BHHI regional comparison between 2006 and 2007. This relationship was explained by Jeni previously in depth. The question of why the Upper Western Shore significantly increased over the year was raised (Bill D). The next slide shows the BHHI, BI, and WQI which all followed the decrease in 2006 and increase in 2007. Maybe in the next month we can look at a few River systems and the individual parameters driving the results. Diversity was high in the Patapsco but the biomass abundance was lower. Peter B requested a review of the biotic index for 2001 which shows a zero value when it was probably due to no data. Next the Choptank River was shown with the BHHI, BI, and WQI over long term. The Choptank River improved since 2006. It was expressed that the Choptank shows improvements that may be driven from lower sections influenced by the Bay. Then data from 2002 and 2003 was shown and in the Choptank it was variable and sensitive to weather. Is the Choptank driven locally or by the mainstem? If it's a wet year then the Susquehanna pushes the bloom but the farmlands of the eastern shore contribute too so that the Choptank may be influenced by the mainstem and locally. Bill suggested that we may want to look at some maps of change. Other group members expressed that we could investigate this further. The next slide (9) shows a decline in the York River. The data from 1995 showed an improvement. Do we have any indication as to what is a significant difference from year to year? Internally we could run comparison of SE and sample size across the year (Jeni K). This would allow us to have our own insurance and is worth while to do (Bill D). Rick H. asked if the rest of the tributaries were available. Ben will post them in a week or so after the final checks are made. The last two slides were of the report card (but were removed from the site immediately following the meeting). A lot of skilled people from around the world will help us brainstorm the best way to show our report card in the next week (Bill D.) The Newsletter was discussed (the front page was not listed). Everyone should look at the newsletter over the week and get comments to Ben (1 week). The website will have methodology and some historic data as well. Group members explained that it's great that it is being pushed and not the same as last year. 2:15 pm The 2008 Summer Ecological Forecast Workgroup members expressed the need to start thinking about what we want they want to do this year in terms of the 2008 Summer Ecological Forecast. The document shown explained what we did last year. Dave and Jeni will team up on the hypoxia forecast. The document lists who will complete proposed indicators. Methods with Karlodinium sp. were discussed and a harmful algae task force meeting is coming up in the spring It ------- was suggested not to do a newsletter on this topic, because the website could display the data sufficiently (see document under Products section). The general idea for the time frame is to have any draft forecast material produced by Early May, Final forecast material provided by mid May, and complete forecast and press release by the end of May. 2:30 Other Announcements/comments Pulling out the VA tributaries from our report card should be communicated to VA. Rick H. will distribute the appropriate drafts to the appropriate people We need to keep our pace up so that we come out with the best final product. It was emphasized that we need turn around of the Bay report card within a week. The week of March 24th may have a conference call in lieu of the April 3rd meeting. Thanks to everyone involved Bill D. brought up San Francisco and the coast in the Rep. of Georgia. In some countries, at war, the people are displaying data and maps from crumbling (literally) labs. The effort is very impressive and what we are doing here is truly a world model. 2:40 Adjourn ------- |