Aerial and Field SAV Observations

I worked with local volunteers and agency staff to conduct Severn & Magothy SAV transects once per summer in 2007-2011, with 4 transects per river. The results are summarized in this PDF file. Here are the conclusions from that report; please send me any comments on it, to peter.bergstrom@noaa.gov.

· In both rivers, redhead grass predominated [...]

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On 10/7/11, Mark Lewandowski (Maryland DNR) and I kayaked in Longs Creek, on the north side of the mouth of Back River (MD), where Mark supervised SAV planting for a number of years through Bay Grasses in Classes. For more details on the site and the planting see my report from our visit last year.
Secchi [...]

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Brooke Landry (MD DNR) and I checked Mill Creek planted SAV (planted in June 2011) on 10/5/11, and there was a little bit left in all 4 exclosures, but only covering 2-5% of each exclosure. All of the plants were short with no sign of flowering, and all were at the deeper edge [...]

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I surveyed about 2.5 miles of tidal Mattawoman Creek by kayak on 9-17-11, starting at the kayak launch at the end of Mattingly Road and paddling upstream, not quite reaching the bridge across the creek. The trip included high tide so it was only near the end of the trip that SAV was visible at [...]

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How far can the high flow from a hurricane move SAV wrack? Wrack are the plants that get broken off but float until they end up on a shoreline. It appears they can move pretty far, based on two recent observations.
I walked down to the end of First St in Eastport, Annapolis on 9/15/11, where [...]

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Piscataway Park is on the tidal fresh Potomac River, just downriver from Piscataway Creek and across from Mount Vernon (see map).  Two stretches of eroding shoreline at the park were slated for living shoreline restoration projects, so vegetation transect surveys (sampling SAV in water, and wetland and other plants on land) were designed and [...]

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The day after the earthquake was a good day to survey SAV in Shallow Creek with near-perfect weather and fairly low tides. The water could have been clearer (Secchi was 0.45 m) but it’s usually murky here, and the salinity was 8 ppt.  This graph compares those values to what we measured here in past [...]

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I repeated the annual Magothy SAV transects that I started in 2007 on 8-9-11, with help from some of the folks associated with the Magothy River Association who helped before (Carl Treff, in his boat, and Tim Decker) and a new helper, Sally Hornor.  Here is my report on the surveys we did of the [...]

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Mill Creek on Magothy River had a 3 million gallon sewage spill in its lower nontidal reaches in December 2005, that added a large amount of sediment to its upper tidal reaches. Its uppermost tidal reaches were dredged last winter (2010-2011) to remove some of that sediment and restore the previous boat access. There were [...]

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I repeated the annual Severn SAV transects that I started in 2007 on 7-26-11, with help from a new crew (from the Arlington Echo Outdoor Education Center–director Steve Barry and staff Ashley Jarvis and Dan Somers, using Steve’s boat, and NOAA intern Elena Chiras). The Severn Riverkeeper folks (led by Pierre Henkart) who helped [...]

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