Building Climate Resilient States: Addressing Adaptation Challenges Facing the Chesapeake Bay Through Advanced Monitoring Supporting Impact-Based Decision Support Services

The Chesapeake Bay is a crucial economic and social asset to the Mid-Atlantic region, with its natural resources valued at over $100 billion annually. However, it faces growing threats from sea level rise, coastal inundation and erosion, increasing salinization of freshwater throughout the Chesapeake Basin, along with habitat loss, inland flooding, extreme weather, nutrient pollution, harmful biological activity, and air pollution. These challenges underscore the pressing need for state and local communities to take decisive action in adapting to the changing climate, ensuring that all communities, particularly those historically underserved, receive equitable support.

Efforts proposed by the Maryland Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plan are extensive and include: 1) improved observations on land, along the coasts and within the Bays, 2) improved coordination and real-time access to weather, water and climate data and information, 3) enhanced predictions of weather, water and climate events based on an Earth System Science approach, and 4) connecting the improved environmental data and intelligence to decision makers across all government levels, especially as it relates to the Chesapeake Basin, the DELMARVA Peninsula and associated tributaries, and the wide range of both urban and rural underserved and underrepresented communities. Our effort directly aligns with the top three scientific priorities of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s path forward beyond 2025: 1) Optimize monitoring, modeling, and analysis, 2) Integrate existing and new science findings in decision making, resource allocation, and communication strategies and 3) Prioritize research that addresses knowledge gaps in existing and emerging challenges

With support from the University of Maryland Grand Challenges Program, our team is establishing a real-time observation network using low-cost water level sensors in areas prioritized by local and county-level partners. The focus is on underrepresented, high flood-risk communities that currently lack the necessary observations to maintain timely situational awareness of the Chesapeake coastal zone. This is particularly critical as these communities face the dual threats of extreme weather events and increasing tidal flooding. We are in the process of identifying and filling data gaps in current networks and providing easy access to the data for all users. The early results are encouraging as the data has increased the situational awareness of rising waters and is becoming the basis for better monitoring of flood events (especially related to storm-surge on top of rising Bay levels). This data can also be used to improve and assess forecasts in an economically important region with a complex shoreline. We will expand our efforts in collaboration with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Association Coastal Ocean Observing System (MARACOOS) to further influence the mitigation of near-term impacts from increasingly extreme weather, water, and climate events (e.g., droughts) through "Impact-Based Decision Support Services" (IDSS). In this presentation, we will discuss our early results, along with our plans for an expanded network of water height and water quality sensors around the region.