Development of a multimetric water quality Indicator for tracking progress towards the achievement of Chesapeake Bay water quality standards

A multimetric water quality standards (WQS) attainment indicator (MMI) was created to assess the habitat quality of the Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries. The indicator uses metrics of dissolved oxygen concentrations, water clarity assessments, underwater bay grass acreages, and season-specific chlorophyll a distributions. This suite of metrics is recognized as symptomatic of eutrophication and responsive to nutrient and sediment management actions. Habitat criteria for these metrics were established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to protect the survival, growth, and reproduction of tidal bay living resources. The criteria were adopted into state WQS used to define outcome targets of the regulatory 2010 Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). Direct accounting of monitoring results compared with state standards would be the most direct measure of water quality status related to achieving habitat health goal conditions under the TMDL. However, the Chesapeake Bay Program long-term water quality monitoring program that supports Clean Water Act 303d water quality impairment assessments does not provide sufficient measurement resolution across all temporal scales represented in these TMDL-related WQS. Recognizing data and analysis gaps, we developed the indicator to provide estimates of WQS attainment for the Chesapeake Bay. The structure of the indicator uses metrics that have been measured consistently with the historical Chesapeake Bay tidal water quality data collections since 1985. The ability to compute scores on contemporary and historical data will provide for bay-wide and spatially explicit long-term trend evaluations of habitat quality.