Learn more about research projects supporting environmentally aware communities to promote interest and participation in environmental stewardship.
| Title | UMD Researcher | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Weaving the Green Ribbon: Understanding Neighbor Attitudes and Actions to Improve Health and Function of Urban Streamside Forests | Megan E. Carr, Lea R. Johnson, Byoung-Suk Kweon | Riparian forest buffers in urban and urbanizing regions are impacted by landscaping and maintenance decisions made on adjacent residential properties. This study examines relationships between residential management decisions and stream forest health in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and the perceptions and priorities of residents and land managers. This study will identify potential motivations to implement practices that will contribute to the health of riparian forests, and to identify best management practices balancing the priorities of residents with the need for ecosystem services that these forests provide. |
| Thriving Agricultural Systems in Urban Landscapes | Gurpal Toor, Ray Weil, Suzanne Dorsey (now MDE), with Penn State and others | This project seeks to create economically thriving and environmentally beneficial agricultural systems in urbanized landscapes in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. |
| Increasing Resilience to Sea Level Rise in Coastal Maryland | Brian Needelman | Investigators from the University of Maryland have partnered with the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve to form the Deal Island Peninsula Project to increase the resilience of coastal marsh and communities on Maryland's Deal Island Peninsula in the face of sea level rise. The project works with a wide diversity of stakeholders developing restoration and adaptation approaches to increase the resilience of habitats and communities on the peninsula. |
| Diagnostic Stormwater Management Across Urban Ecosystems: Diagnostic Development and Revitalization | Paul Leisnham, Amanda Rockler, Victoria Chanse, Sacoby Wilson, Hubert Montas, Adel Shirmohammadi | The overall goal of this project is to better understand how urban watersheds can be improved through improvements to stormwater management. It will quantify the strength of healthy and unhealthy cycles and their critical feedback and intervention pathways within and between stormwater and human systems. The ultimate goal being to help reduce pollution from urban ecosystems to the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. |
| Effectiveness of Maryland’s cover crop program and water quality in the Chesapeake Bay | David Newburn, Erik Lichtenberg and Patrick Fleming | We evaluate farmer behavioral responses to incentive payments in the context of the Maryland cover crop cost-share program aimed at reducing nitrogen loads in the Chesapeake Bay. We combine the econometric model with the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) watershed model parameters in order to assess the water quality impacts on nitrogen loads delivered to the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland made cost-share subsidies for planting cover crops the centerpiece of its strategy for reducing agricultural nitrogen emissions into the Chesapeake Bay. |
| Household willingness to pay for stream restoration and nitrogen reduction: Evidence from the Baltimore Metropolitan Region | David Newburn and Charles Towe | We conducted a household survey with choice experiments in the Baltimore metro region to examine household willingness to pay (WTP) for stream restoration attributes and nitrogen reduction. |
| Incentives for lawn management and fertilizer reduction to improve water quality | David Newburn, Robert Johnston | We are planning to conduct a survey of 10,000 households later this summer in the Baltimore metro region to examine lawn care and fertilizer usage. We will model household responses to incentives to reduce lawn fertilizer and the adoption of stormwater management practices. |
| Developing value-added use of blue catfish in Chesapeake Bay | Liangli (Lucy) Yu | Blue catfish is an invasive species in Chesapeake Bay area, and its expansion and population increase may have significant ecological impacts. Yu's group propose to develop value-added use of the blue catfish such as potential edible protein ingredients for food and feed applications or snack foods for humans. The research also may lead to patentable commercial food, feed or other agricultural products, and benefit local economy. |
| Modeling recreational anglers: responses to risky catch | Jorge Holzer and Kenneth McConnell | Although researchers are broadly aware of the many environmental attributes of recreational fishing, the literature on recreational fishing typically characterizes fishing trips with the mean catch rate. This research seeks to expand this approach to account for the uncertainty of catching fish by estimating a model of risk aversion. Essentially this implies that anglers have preferences over the distribution of catch. (This is conducted in Atlantic, but the PI indicates that it is also applicable to Chesapeake Bay) |