So, since its inception nearly a decade ago, the Coastal Bays Program has been both funding projects and luring research dollars to the coastal bays watershed to help define the intricacies of wildlife losses and water quality degradation. To date, most of the work has been on aquatic issues and resources, such as seagrasses, nutrients, algae, and hydrology.

For the past two years in particular, strides have been taken to better understand nutrient cycling, nutrient sources, and their assimilation into the environment. Following is a list of some of these projects and what they are designed to address.

Last year, the Coastal Bays Program funded a project to examine the role of denitrification -- the process by which nature removes nitrogen from water. This will help scientists determine how much nutrient inputs the bays can handle and create definitive input reduction goals.

Coastal Bays is also funding a study using isotopes to determine the source of nutrients coming into the bays from sewage, septic, animal, and agricultural fertilizer. In addition to source identification, researchers will use these nitrogen signatures from floating seaweed and other water quality parameters to do additional ranking of the health of various parts of the coastal bays. This work is essential for directing management goals.

In Chincoteague Bay, the National Park Service is examining a suite of water quality indicators, including dissolved oxygen, chlorophyl, ammonium, suspended solids, and total nitrogen and phosphorous. This work will prove essential in devising an adequate nutrient budget for the large, lesser studied coastal bay. A report from another Park Service project from 2002 is due out in February. This study used land use, seagrass density, water source signatures, and eutrophication levels to come up with nutrient loading estimates for Sinepuxent and Chincoteague bays.

Last summer, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science conducted experiments in the coastal bays to determine the nature and extent of exchange between nutrients and oxygen in bay sediments. The work also included water column respiration rates. Like the denitrification study, the work will help give a more adequate overview of how much nutrients the system can handle.

Studies beginning this year include a nutrient and sediment load study for the St. Martins River area and a new modeling tool which will help measure the amount of nutrients entering the bays from airborne sources. Along with this, a circulation model, Coastal Bays has funded, to get a better idea of tidal exchange, flow, and bay water circulation in the southern coastal bays will be critical to developing a nutrient budget which reflects volume and exiting and entering rates of nutrients.

Added to the coastal bays volunteer water quality monitoring, these projects are essential parts of devising quantifiable nutrient reduction goals and the means for attaining them. Science continues to be the linchpin for good public policy.

Next week read about ongoing segrass, aquatic habitat and algae work going on in the coastal bays.