The Chesapeake.

THE NATION'S LARGEST ESTUARY IS A SAGA OF BOUNTY-RICH WATERS, FORESTED SHORELINES - AND A GROWING POPULATION. THE QUESTION NOW: HOW DO WE KEEP FROM LOVING IT TO DEATH? THE FIRST IN A TWO-PART SERIES. NEXT-TIME: PUGET SOUND.

The English settlement of North America began with a fragile wooden fort along Virginia's James River in a region so primeval one settler called it "a plain wilderness, as God first ordained it."That wilderness presented hardships for which many of Jamestown's settlers were unprepared, but the river and the Chesapeake Bay into which it flowed abounded with wealth of another kind. Capt. John Smith bragged that fish were so thick that ". . . we attempted to catch them with a frying pan."

What the settlers did not realize was the link between the forest and the Bay. It was an oversight that would lead to the decline of both. The health of the Chesapeake is a reflection of its 64,000-mile drainage basin, a tract more massive than Smith likely ever imagined. From the Adirondack foothills around Cooperstown, New York, it stretches west into the mountains of West Virginia, and east into Delaware. Draining an area roughly the size of Washington state - and including such cities as Washington, Richmond, Baltimore, Harrisburg, and Binghamton - the majority of the watershed lies in the Allegheny Mountains and the rolling Piedmont and flat coastal plains of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

When Smith explored the Chesapeake in 1608, about 95 percent of that basin was forested. These forests were not "pristine." Native Americans cleared patches of land for agriculture, villages, hunting, and even rattlesnake control. The clearings, usually accomplished by fire, could affect thousands of acres. Yet the oldest and largest trees survived burns of the underbrush. As a result, the trees the colonists found were huge. The forest canopy may have been up to 110 feet tall, a full 40 percent higher than today.

The colonists quickly saw the value of such forests, which they turned into planking, masts for the English navy, and other export products. What the settlers did not grasp so quickly was the unseen value of the forests. Tree roots fought the forces of wind, rain, and gravity, holding soil in place. They soaked up large quantities of water, moderating flows into the Bay and absorbing large amounts of nutrients. Their leaves and branches dropped into streams and decayed, forming the base of the aquatic food chain.

Yet by the mid-1600s, these forests were being cleared for agriculture and firewood. By the mid-1800s, 40 to 50 percent of the watershed had been cleared to meet the growing nation's energy demands. A single home could burn 20 to 40 cords of wood a year for heating and cooking. Iron works sometimes required 20,000 to 30,000 acres of trees to function. Fueled by these demands, forest clearing continued until, by the dawn of the 20th century, only 30 to 40 percent of the Bay area's forests remained.

A Different Watershed

More than trees were gone. As forests were cut, more soil ran off the land. Also washed off were more nutrients, primarily nitrogen and phosphorus. Sediment and nutrient-fueled algae blooms cloud the water, blocking sunlight to important underwater grass beds that provide vital food and habitat for waterfowl, juvenile fish, blue crabs, and other species. Today only about one-tenth of the Chesapeake's "underwater meadows" remain.

Algae fuels the food chain, but when there's more around than the fish, oysters, and others can eat, algae die and sink to the bottom, decomposing in a process that depletes the water of oxygen. Some species can flee these "dead zones"; many that cannot will die. As habitat declines, so do oysters, waterfowl, and many species of fish - many are at or near historic lows.

Nutrient impact can be even uglier, contributing to blooms of harmful, sometimes toxic, algae species and other microbes. Watermen on Maryland's Pocomoke River began seeing fish with large sores in the fall of 1996 and spring of 1997. That summer thousands of fish were eaten alive by the microbe pfiesteria. Dozens of people exposed to the water were sickened.

Pfiesteria was a graphic reminder of what had been recognized by many for years - people must find ways to control the nutrients that forests once soaked up like a massive sponge. To restore the Chesapeake, the federal government; the states of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania; and the District of Columbia formed the Chesapeake Bay Program. Their goal: to cut the amount of nutrients entering the Bay by 40 percent from 1985 levels by the year 2000. The Bay Program has spent billions upgrading sewage treatment plants, persuading farmers to use less fertilizer, and urging common-sense lawn care.

The latest recruit to this effort is trees. Research shows streamside forests mimic the benefits once derived from the region's vast forests. But as with forests as a whole, most streamside forests have been replaced by cities, subdivisions, or fields. Recognizing this, the governors of the Bay states agreed to reforest 2,010 miles of streambanks by the year 2010.

Response has been enthusiastic; scores of miles were planted this year alone. "People have gotten real excited about restoration," says Al Todd, the U.S. Forest Service's liaison to the Bay Program. "It's a way to involve people and volunteers...It's real easy for people to understand the connection between planting a tree next to a stream and helping the Bay."

AMERICAN FORESTS has joined the effort, both in tree plantings and technical support. Its Global ReLeaf for the Chesapeake Bay campaign pledged to plant 1 million trees in the watershed as part of a larger goal of planting 20 million trees for the new millennium. In 1998 alone, 171,600 Bay trees have been planted. Using computer models, AMERICAN FORESTS staff have worked with the state of Maryland to analyze how various potential buffer sites would respond to tree plantings. Also calculated were the pollution-control benefits of planting trees in nearby urban areas to reduce stormwater runoff (see page 15).

"We see them using this both to convince the property owners to plant trees and show them the benefits and also to use these numbers to support their own fundraising efforts to get trees planted" says Cheryl Kollin, director of AMERICAN FORESTS' Urban Forestry Center.

Development Concerns

Even as enthusiasm grows for buffer plantings, foresters increasingly worry that other woodlands are at risk. Forests rebounded from their turn-of-the-century low to 62 percent of the watershed by 1970, only to begin falling again. Some 470,000 acres of forest were lost between 1985 and 1995 - that's 129 acres a day, according to a Forest Service study. The greatest loss is in a rapidly developing urban arc running from Norfolk, near the mouth of the Bay, west to Richmond, north to Washington, DC, then east to Baltimore. This arc holds most of the basin's 15 million people. That number will grow to about 18 million by 2018.

Population is not the only force at work. Family size in the Bay area is shrinking but the number of households is growing, along with the demand for ever-larger lots. The Maryland Office of Planning recently concluded that by 2020 new development would cover an additional 360,000 acres (560 square miles) in the central third of the state. That's more land than was developed in Maryland's previous 360 years of settlement.

Says Bill Matuszeski, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay Program office: "We are put in a situation where our real choices are: How do we prevent our existing forests from being lost, how do we rebuild forests where we can, and where are they most important?"

As those questions are sorted out, pressure builds on remaining woodlands. Only 20 percent of the basin's forests are publicly owned - mainly state forests in Pennsylvania and national forests in Virginia and West Virginia.

In the short term, private forestland is often more valuable developed than managed. Rick Cooksey, a planner with the U.S. Forest Service, says this situation creates a "shadow effect" - people moving into new subdivisions often fight any attempt to harvest nearby trees, making timber-company owners more likely to sell them for development.

While forest buffers can to some degree mimic the role once played by the watershed's vast forests, they can never replace the massive nutrient sponge and sediment trap of past forests. The question is whether today's residents have learned the lesson missed by Capt. John Smith and his compatriots. The recent surge of enthusiasm for tree planting may be the first sign that they have.

RELATED ARTICLE: TECHNOLOGY RELEAFS THE BAY

The Bay's tributaries need more trees, but where? That's the question AMERICAN FORESTS and the Maryland Tributaries Program teamed up to answer, using two counties on the lower western shore as an example.

Using our CITYgreen desktop GIS software, AMERICAN FORESTS staffers reviewed high-priority planting sites and suggested a few of their own. The analysis tabulated urban ecosystem benefits such as reducing stormwater runoff and calculated the monetary benefits of establishing riparian buffers.

At Severn Run, near the state capital of Annapolis, AMERICAN FORESTS modeled the impacts of planting two 50-foot-wide tree buffers, each approximately 700 feet long. Planting and growing 600 trees there would reduce the amount of nitrogen by 43 percent and phosphorus by 77 percent, resulting in less pollution in the water.

Of eight study sites, five had land-use conflicts, so AMERICAN FORESTS proposed planting in residential areas adjacent to or in addition to the riparian buffer. At a nearby subdivision, staffers found that decreasing stormwater runoff, a chief conduit for nitrogen and phosphorus, would significantly lower pollutant levels. Increasing canopy cover from 27 percent to 69 percent on 12.7 acres there would, in combination with buffer plantings, decrease runoff volume 20 percent and peak flow 13 percent.

AMERICAN FORESTS' recommendation: Maximize benefits by widening existing buffer strips on agricultural lands that have marginal value. Increasing tree planting in nearby neighborhoods will further slow stormwater runoff.

Those findings and colorful maps produced by CITYgreen will help Tributary teams and other civic leaders work with land owners to reach common goals. For more information on the study or on CITYgreen, contact Alice Ewen at 202/955-4500 ext. 227

- Cheryl Kollin

Karl Blankenship is the editor for the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay's newspaper, Bay Journal.