New study reinforces need to preserve land and monitor water quality

by Dave Wilson. (Wilson is the public outreach coordinator for the Maryland Coastal Bays Program.)

A new scientific study released last month on the importance of protecting forested headwaters of streams and surrounding wetlands should serve to remind residents how important land preservation and water quality monitoring have been for the protection of watersheds.

“Where Rivers are Born: The Scientific Imperative for Defending Small Streams and Watersheds” shows once again how forestlands upstream provide the natural processes which benefit humans by mitigating flooding, maintaining water quality, recycling nutrients, controlling sediment, recharging groundwater, providing habitat for plants and animals and safeguarding the biological productivity of estuaries like the coastal bays.

Stream ecologists, hydrologists, and wildlife biologists from 10 universities prepared the study in the wake of federal government plans to cease protection of about two thirds of the nation’s wetlands after a
Supreme Court ruling last year said the Clean Water Act did not cover wetlands “isolated” from non-navigable waters. The US Army Corps of Engineers is allowing comments on its interpretation of the ruling before the rollback takes effect.

Although much of the study deals with wetlands, many of its key finding revolve around the need to keep adequate water quality monitoring in estuaries and their tributaries and to slow the conversion of natural land to impervious surfaces for homes, businesses and roadways.

In the coastal bays, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Maryland Department of Environment have provided critical data to help pinpoint problem areas and to show where coastal bays tributaries are being impacted. Real-time monitors on the bay have helped scientists determine how weather changes can instantly impact water quality. Additional data which showed nutrient pulses or inexplicable water level rises have helped data collectors pinpoint illegal activity.

This, in turn, has directed growth to less sensitive areas, brought millions in federal dollars and began land preservation over the past decade which will pay enormous dividends in water quality protection. To be sure, bayside property protection has obvious aesthetic, water quality and wildlife benefits, but the forested land wherever it is in the coastal bays watershed should have equal priority of protection.

In many cases, the tiniest of unnamed tributaries miles west of their bay shore deep in local forests have immeasurable spawning and nursery capacity for a host of freshwater, saltwater, and anadromous animal and fish species.

The reason why land preservation in these areas has been so popular and successful in the past is that it is voluntary, non-regulatory and protects the culture and character of the region. It also has the long-term effect of keeping taxes low and negating the need for all types of enforcement which can be expensive.

To keep learning how and why to protect sensitive areas, water quality monitoring which leads to action must be beefed up, wetlands laws must be enforced, and land preservation in the watershed must continue.

Estuary ecology has no simple solutions and is scientifically complex. But this study and years of knowledge have shown us that some problems have definite remedies if the citizens and their government have the will to take them on.