What is
this course about?
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What is this course about? Chesapeake Bay is well known as the largest and most productive of America's 850 estuaries. In recent decades it has also been known as an ecosystem in decline, owing to the impact of human activities. Whether that decline can be arrested and even reversed is an open question; but the Bay is perhaps the most intensively studied system of its type in the world, and the scale of the cooperative effort on the part of federal, state, and local governments to promote its recovery is unprecedented. During this semester we will discuss the environmental problems affecting the Bay and try to understand their causes. However, this is not primarily a course in environmental management. I want you to understand the scientific basis that is necessary for prudent management of the system, but we will not have much time in class for debating public policy choices. Our main objective is to consider Chesapeake Bay as an extraordinarily complex natural system. We will explore the fundamental characteristics of this system from several different perspectives. We will spend the first part of the semester discussing geological characteristics, physical and chemical properties of estuarine waters and sediments, and estuarine circulation patterns. During the middle part of the course we address the basic structure and function of aquatic ecosystems, the major types of plant and animal communities found in estuaries, and cycling of energy and nutrients. The last part of the course is concerned with the impact of human activities and with recent changes in water quality and living populations, although these topics will also come up at various points earlier in the semester.
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