Moving Towards Sustainable Land Management in the Chesapeake Bay Through Novel Engagement Strategies

Each state and district within the Chesapeake Bay watershed has cooperated with the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) to develop local Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) that identify the type and quantity of best management practices (BMPs) that, if implemented, are estimated to meet 2025 Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) goals for Bay water quality. However, top-down management of large regions, such as the 167,000-km2 Bay catchment, is often necessarily limited by the feasibility of providing implementation plans that are customized by watershed hydro-physiographic characteristics and socio-political considerations. The Bay simulation model divides the catchment into watersheds of approximately 350 km2 each; these watersheds become the Bay model’s smallest overland management unit. We used Bay WIP plans, local information, and a hydrologic model called Topo-SWAT to model three of these smallest-unit watersheds in more local detail. Our smallest management unit became contiguous, similarly managed, cropland...