Runoff and Intersex Fish in the Potomac

Source: Washington Post

The Potomac Conservancy reports that runoff is causing the intersex fish problem.

The report says it appears that chemicals -- it's still not certain which ones -- in the water are interfering with the hormones that guide development in the fish. It said that potential causes include animal hormones from manure washing off farm fields in the rain and human hormones and pharmaceuticals that are flushed out with treated sewage.

It seems likely, the report said, that the cause is not a single chemical but a mixture whose components might be different around the river. Pesticides might dominate in rural areas, for instance, and human hormones downstream of a sewage plant.

Hedrick Belin, the conservancy's president, said that the best solution to the problem was to try to keep these chemicals out of the water in the first place. That, he said, could entail increased testing to figure out which chemicals have hormone-mimicking properties or installing measures to keep animal waste from washing downstream.

You can read the full report for 2009 at the Potomac Conservancy's website.

Sources of Endocrine Disruptors / Source: Potomac Conservancy

The Potomac Conservancy says that they do not know what effect of these pollutants have on human health. I am not sure how closely the effects on humans have been studied; if anyone knows, I would be happy to find out. In the meantime, I think it is better to err on the safe side and reduce the flow of chemicals that disrupt hormones into runoff. Working to reduce those may have the happy side effect of reducing the introduction of other harmful pollutants into the Chesapeake watershed as well.

Chesapeake Photo Gallery

This Sunday's Washington Post has a marvelous photo gallery of aerial views of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. The photos were made over the course of several decades by Cameron Davidson. The photos show the watershed in all different seasons and weather conditions. They also show the various human impacts – cities, suburbs, farms, and fishing operations. These are interspersed with photos of habitats, such as Blackwater NWR. One photo even shows a Great Blue Heron in flight, from above.

So, go take a look.

Coal Ash in Western Maryland

Four thousand gallons of toxic coal ash almost landed in the Potomac River. The ash came from a plant run by NewPage near Luke, Maryland.

Stoltzfus said the bulk of the sludge spilled onto the West Virginia river bank across from NewPage's mill in Luke, about 210 miles upstream from Washington. Workers were expected to finish cleaning the stream bank Tuesday, Stoltzfus said.

She said a minor amount of sludge caused discoloration in the river about 30 feet downstream, with no sign of harm to any fish. The spill also was not expected to taint any drinking water supplies.

Both Stoltzfus and Koontz said the dime-sized hole in the 8-inch diameter, carbon-steel pipe probably was created by the abrasive mixture of ash and water moving through it.

The ash comes from coal the company burns to power the mill. Three 800-foot pipelines carry the ash to a 1.2 million gallon storage lagoon across the river....

Koontz said the company reported a smaller leak of about 20 gallons from one of the ash pipelines in November.

The image below shows the plant in Maryland, the pipeline, and the lagoons across the Potomac River in West Virginia.

This was a narrow escape, and the incident underlines the need for better regulations and oversight of how coal waste is treated. Our water resources are too important to have them threatened by a leaky pipeline or a weakened impoundment dam.

The State of the Chesapeake

Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a series of articles on the poor health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Cleaning up the bay, which has been in serious trouble since the early 1980s is especially complicated since its tributaries pass through multiple jurisdictions; New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Virginia, and West Virginia all contain part of the watershed, which is fed by two major rivers (the Potomac and Susquehanna) and numerous smaller tributaries. That means that cleanup strategies have to be coordinated among the various stakeholders, which then have to fight their own internal battles over funding and enforcement priorities.

In the meantime, work is being left undone.

Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania all pledged that their farmers would put up fences along streambanks to keep cows out. But they didn't make it a legal requirement: Officials feared this kind of regulation would be a burden on farmers and would be difficult to enforce....

But in Virginia, many farmers simply didn't want the hassle. And reimbursement funding, which came out of state budget surpluses, was often short. From July 2006 to June 2007, Virginia turned away 144 farmers who wanted to fence off 84 miles of streambank.

Now, Virginia has reached only about 20 percent of its goal for fencing off streams. Across the Chesapeake watershed, the figure is 27 percent.

The problem with cow manure is that it contains nitrogen that feeds algae blooms, which in turn cause dead zones throughout much of the bay. Cow manure is just one of many nitrogen or phosphorus sources within the watershed. Sources include fertilizers, sewage, detergents, and septic tanks, among others. While the cleanup has effected some reductions in nitrogen and phosphorus, and stabilized some underwater life, it has fallen far short of its goals.

Google Ghost

Google Maps occasionally produces strange results in places where multiple images are stitched together. One such phantom is in the northern Chesapeake Bay: something that looks like a green mask.

According to Google's engineers, it was unplanned and not part of the original photographs.

Chikai Ohazama, who oversees mapmaking operations at the Internet giant, said the skull never actually appeared in the water. Instead, he said, it was created by accident on a computer as Google technicians digitally combined two satellite photos of the same area.

"I'm sure they just missed" the skull shape that was produced in the combined image, Ohazama said.

Ohazama said that the image had probably been up for a year at least and that there were no plans to remove it. He said there was no evidence that anyone at Google had drawn the skull on purpose.

"We try to reflect reality as much as possible," he said. "That couldn't happen. Or, it shouldn't happen."

I have not seen any of the other odd things mentioned in the article, but I have noticed some places where seams between images do not match up exactly. In the example below (from Google Earth), two photographs were taken from slightly different perspectives, so that the two sides of a bridge appear to trail off into the water.

Sea Level Rise in the Chesapeake Region

Last week the National Wildlife Federation issued a detailed report on the potential effects of sea level rise in the Chesapeake Bay. The report assumes a mean sea level rise of 11 inches by 2050 and 27.2 inches by 2100. This represents the high end of the IPCC's most recent climate forecast. Some climatologists, such as James Hansen, predict that the sea level will rise much faster – up to 5 meters by 2100. The Delmarva Peninsula is particularly vulnerable to sea level changes because of its flatness and long coastline. Around the Chesapeake, sea level rise is exacerbated by land subsidence since so much water is diverted for agriculture.

With a 27.2-inch sea level rise, the Chesapeake Region would lose many of its characteristic habitats. Tidal marshes on the whole would decline by 36% – with many freshwater marshes turning into saltmarsh. Tidal swamps would decline by 57%. Over 167,000 acres of dry land would disappear. Ocean and estuarine beaches would each decline by more than half. In their place would be over 266,000 more acres of open water.

Within the Chesapeake Region, one of the most vulnerable places is the area around Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. The peninsula surrounding Blackwater currently consists of a diverse mixture of freshwater marshes, swamps, coastal forest, and agricultural lands. By 2100, most of the freshwater marshes and swamps would disappear. They would be replaced mostly by saltmarsh and open water.

You can get some idea of how the Blackwater region would change by looking at the maps below. As you can see, most of the refuge – the area enclosed by the purple line – would be under water by 2100. Such a drastic change in habitats would force the waterfowl that currently winter around the refuge to look elsewhere. Where they would go remains to be seen.

Blackwater area now

Blackwater area in 2050

Blackwater area in 2100

All maps were produced by the National Wildlife Federation for the report. (Click to enlarge)

(crossposted)

Stream Restoration to Reduce Nitrates

A team from the University of Maryland found a way to measure some benefits of urban stream restoration:

Using state-of-the-art techniques in a long-term study, Kaushal's team injected stable isotope tracers into restored and unrestored sections of an urban stream, and measured how microbes in the streambanks naturally absorb nitrate and convert it into inert nitrogen gas. By analyzing those samples, the team was able to determine in-the-field nitrogen reductions by stream microbes through a process known as denitrification.

The research showed that stream restoration techniques that "reconnected" the banks to the stream doubled nitrogen removal rates by microbes, and reduced nitrogen levels in ground water by 40%, contributing to significantly lower nitrogen levels in the stream compared to unrestored conditions. Getting water out of the stream channel into denitrification "hot spots" in floodplain wetlands helped improve water quality.

Reducing waterborne nitrates is particularly important in the Chesapeake Bay region. The bay suffers from large dead zones during summer months due to a lack of dissolved oxygen. Hypoxia is caused by algae that feeds on the excessive nitrates and phosphates that flow into the bay year-round. Cleanup efforts have failed to meet their goals for reducing nitrate content in the watershed because there are so many sources scattered over such a large area. Faulty sewer systems, agricultural fertilizers, and lawn fertilizers are the main culprits.

Urban stream restoration is only part of the solution to improving the health of our watersheds. It looks like one that could benefit urban wildlife, as well as ecosystems downstream.

Mercury in Marshes

The Baltimore Sun shows the key role that wetlands play in cycling mercury from air pollution into water and then into fish.

Mercury isn't created by marshes. The element occurs naturally in rocks, dirt and coal, and it floats into the air when coal is burned in power plants and factories. This airborne form of the metal, called inorganic mercury, doesn't usually get into people, Mitchell said.

The metal becomes a health hazard when it's changed by microorganisms that multiply in the oxygen-deprived muck at the bottoms of rivers, lakes and wetlands. In this mud, bacteria transform inorganic mercury into methylmercury, which is at least 10 times more toxic and collects in the bodies of animals.

Tainted worms are gobbled by small fish, and these are eaten by big fish - such as tuna and shark - that are eventually eaten by humans. The methylmercury accumulates as it moves up the food chain, with the toxicity multiplying 10-fold at each step.

The Smithsonian researchers at the center of the article see the production of methylmercury as something that artificial wetland designs need to alleviate if possible. In particular, how the planners handle mercury will influence the outcome of a 12,000-acre wetland construction project at Blackwater NWR. The wetlands are planned to remove some of the carbon dioxide being emitted by those same power plants that are causing the problem.

Mitchell said natural wetlands - such as Kirkpatrick Marsh, owned by the Smithsonian research center - should be left alone so the wildlife is not disturbed.

But to the east, on the other side of the Bay Bridge, the federal and state governments are studying a vast wetlands-building proposal at the Blackwater refuge. Funding for this effort could come in part from power companies that face new state greenhouse gas limits and want to build wetlands as a way of "offsetting" their pollution.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources will look carefully at the mercury-producing potential of the proposed Blackwater wetlands as they are designed, said John Sherwell, manager of DNR's power plant research program.

The article mentions a few methods of remediation, such as adding charcoal to wetland beds to reduce mercury and building new wetlands on gravel to increase the flow of oxygen and discourage bacteria. Ultimately, reducing mercury at the source would help more.

Today in Water News

The past two days have not been good for news about the environment. Many commonly-used chemicals are dispersing through our waterways and finding their way into the food chain. Yesterday, the federal government released the results of research into the prevalence of pharmaceuticals in our drinking water.

Pharmaceuticals, along with trace amounts of caffeine, were found in the drinking water supplies of 24 of 28 U.S. metropolitan areas tested. The findings were revealed as part of the first federal research on pharmaceuticals in water supplies, and those results are detailed in an investigative report by the Associated Press set to be published today.

In addition to caffeine, the drugs found in water treated by the Washington Aqueduct include the well-known pain medications ibuprofen and naproxen, commonly found in Aleve. But there were also some lesser-known drugs: carbamazepine, an anti-convulsive to reduce epileptic seizures and a mood stabilizer for treating bipolar disorders; sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic that can be used for humans and animals in treating urinary tract and other infections; and monensin, an antibiotic typically given to cattle. In addition, the study uncovered traces of triclocarban, a disinfectant used in antibacterial soaps.

That the drugs were found so commonly nationwide highlights an emerging water dilemma that the public rarely considers. The drugs we use for ourselves and animals are being flushed directly into wastewater, which then becomes a drinking water source downstream. However, most wastewater and drinking water treatment systems, including Washington's, are incapable of removing those drugs.

Researchers found more drugs in other cities:

_Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

_Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

_Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

_A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.

Pharmaceuticals get into drinking water in several ways. The most obvious way is that people excrete some of any medications they take. Another major source is the livestock industry. Cattle in concentrated animal feeding operations receive large doses of steroids, antibiotics, and other drugs, some of which are then passed into waterways. Pets now frequently receive medications as well.

The federal government does not regulate the presence of pharmaceuticals in drinking water and wastewater, though it may do so in the near future. Unfortunately the safety of drinking water does not seem to be the primary motivation.

"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency....

To the degree that the EPA is focused on the issue, it appears to be looking at detection. Grumbles acknowledged that just late last year the agency developed three new methods to "detect and quantify pharmaceuticals" in wastewater. "We realize that we have a limited amount of data on the concentrations," he said. "We're going to be able to learn a lot more."

While Grumbles said the EPA had analyzed 287 pharmaceuticals for possible inclusion on a draft list of candidates for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, he said only one, nitroglycerin, was on the list. Nitroglycerin can be used as a drug for heart problems, but the key reason it's being considered is its widespread use in making explosives.

Meanwhile, a report to the Maine legislature indicates that bird egg shells in the state contain traces of 100 industrial and environmental chemicals.

According to research to be presented to the Maine Legislature, all 60 eggs tested by biologists and chemists - taken from 23 wild species, inhabiting every major ecosystem in the state, from Kittery to Calais - carried at least trace amounts of the 100 chemicals, occasionally at levels believed to be harmful to the birds.

"We found mercury, flame-retardants, industrial repellents, transformer coolants, and pesticides in [the eggs of] birds that live on Maine's oceans, salt marshes, rivers, lakes, and uplands," said Wing Goodale, senior biologist with the BioDiversity Research Institute in Gorham, the center for environmental science that carried out the research....

The study, the largest ever documenting historical and emerging contaminants in Maine birds, points to the pervasiveness of a new breed of pollutants: chemicals integral to products that barely existed a few decades ago, whether personal computers or stain-resistant clothing....

"What's surprising is, a lot of this stuff doesn't come from big production plants; it's just everyday material that's become a part of our lives," said Barry Mower, a contaminant specialist with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, which was not involved in the research. "It's also surprising - and worrisome - that these contaminants were found in such a wide variety of species."

The species with the highest levels of contaminants tended to be those with a close connection to waterways, such as bald eagle, peregrine falcon, great black-backed gull, belted kingfisher, and piping plover. While the study did not show harm to the birds tested, some may emerge as the levels of contaminants build in subsequent generations.

At least some states are taking action to reduce the flow of contaminants into our waterways. Virginia has joined Maryland in banning dish detergents that include phosphates. The ban will take effect in 2010 to give manufacturers and retailers time to develop alternate products.

Nutrients such as phosphorus, Skowronski found in her research, encourage the growth of algae, which is harmful in large quantities because it clouds the water and sucks out the oxygen that underwater plants and animals need to survive.

The result, ecologists say, is large areas where few creatures can live. A 2003 study by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation found that a dead zone of hundreds of square miles appears in the bay every summer, spurred by a rush of spring rains that washes nutrients into waterways....

Phosphorus is one of the three main pollutants in the bay, the others being nitrogen and sediment. A nationwide ban on phosphates in laundry detergent went into effect in the late 1980s.

EPA Overstating Chesapeake's Progress

An independent review of the EPA's computer models of the Chesapeake Bay found that they overstated the impact of various improvements on the bay's health.

Simpson and other researchers were asked by the bay program to review some of the calculations plugged into its computer model. These equations described the impact of certain save-the-bay tactics: plant X amount of cover crops to hold fertilizer on farm fields, thus achieving a decline of Y in fertilizer-polluted runoff.

But Simpson said his review found that many of the equations were based on small-scale experiments that might not predict what would happen on a large farm. Others were based on the educated guesses of experts.

"A lot of them, there was very little data" when the calculations were devised about 10 years ago, Simpson said. "So a lot of it was just professional opinion."

And, as it turned out, a lot of the assumptions were off target, Simpson said. He and a team of university researchers with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Water Program reviewed new research that documented how much good each of these practices did in the real world.

According to the bay program, they found that 18 of the 36 measures actually had less of an effect than they had been credited for.

For instance, a practice called conservation tillage, in which farmers try to plant crops with minimal disturbance of the soil, was supposed to deliver an 18 percent reduction in nitrogen pollution. But the real number was more like 8 percent, Simpson's team found.

Another tactic was using fencing and water troughs to keep livestock from drinking and standing in streams. This keeps cows from polluting bay tributaries with their waste, and it was believed to deliver a 60 percent drop in nitrogen. But Simpson's team found the number was more like 25 percent.

Similar problems have been noted by previous reviews, as in a report from the GAO in 2005. It is hard to be optimistic about the bay's health under the best of circumstances. (See Jeremy's explanation of the ecology of the blue crab for a few of the reasons why.) Today's report suggests that even the good news needs to be tempered.

DC Waterways

A report from the Potomac Conservancy suggests that water quality in the Potomac River may be deteriorating.

The report comes as federal scientists say that more "intersex" fish, showing elements of both genders, are being found in the river. Previous studies had shown that male bass in District waters were growing eggs; new data show that female fish also seem to be developing abnormally, one researcher said yesterday.

The Potomac Conservancy's report cites the intersex problem -- along with high levels of dirt, sewage and other pollutants -- to show that the Potomac might be in danger of backsliding after a decades-long rehabilitation.

"We've plateaued," said Hedrick Belin, president of the conservancy, which has pushed for cleaner water and the protection of land along the Potomac's banks. "The improvements that we've made, the progress, has stalled out."

Growing suburbanization in the Potomac watershed means more hard surfaces for stormwater runoff, which typically carries pollution from roadways and pesticides and fertilizer from lawns. Some of the fish problems have been associated with the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant at the southern tip of DC. It is possible that agricultural or industrial sources of endocrine disruptors also contribute to that problem.

You can read the full report from the Conservancy and some commentary from the Baltimore Sun Bay & Environment Blog.

Also, following up on the CSX derailment into the Anacostia, the railroad reports that the coal cars rolled into the river by themselves:

On Friday afternoon, a CSX operator failed to secure the brakes properly while moving the cars around the Benning rail yard in Anacostia, CSX Transportation officials have said. Eighty-nine cars coasted more than a quarter-mile before rolling onto a closed span of bridge near the Sousa Bridge that then collapsed. Ten cars derailed, and six tumbled into the river. The bridge span was closed in November 2006 after an inspection revealed structural problems. The cars, which have a capacity of 100 tons of coal, were full when the accident occurred.

"When you mix coal dust with water, there's a chemical reaction that occurs," said Jim Connolly, executive director of the Anacostia Watershed Society. "We're very concerned that the coal be removed as quickly as possible."

If there are two spans crossing the Anacostia at this location, presumably there are multiple crossover points between the tracks leading up to the spans. Aside from the failure to set the brakes, what I wonder is why crossover switches were open to the closed span.

Climate Change Close to Home

One thing to remember about climate change is that it will have profound effects on local ecosystems. An article in yesterday's Washington Post highlights the effect of climate change in a place I know well, Blackwater NWR. Acres of marsh are disappearing into the Chesapeake to become open water instead.

At the Blackwater refuge, it is rising waters, not rising temperatures, that are eliminating habitat. A quirk of geology means that water rises especially fast here: Paradoxically, the land in this area is sinking as North America slowly unbends from the weight of glaciers during the last ice age.

Add that to the effect of melting polar ice, and scientists expect that most of the marsh will become open water by 2030. When it goes, there could be a shortage of habitat for the Eastern Shore's marsh animals and migratory birds, said Stone, the refuge biologist.

"Birds will return for spring migration, and they'll be looking for territory, and there just won't be enough territory to go around," he said.

No doubt the problems that Blackwater experienced with invasive nutria exacerbated the subsidence problem.

When you are done reading the article, make sure to visit the wonderful pictures from the refuge in the photo gallery.

Disappearing Marshes in Delaware; Bay Grass Data Destroyed in Maryland

Delaware's coastal marshes are falling the rise in sea level.

In some areas, the marsh is disappearing. At the 16,000-acre Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, for example, as much as 1,160 acres of interior marsh has vanished since 1979. In its place: water. ...

"It's approaching a crisis at the refuge," said David Carter, environmental program manager with the Delaware Coastal Management Program. "We're really looking at an early indication of problems."

Scientists in Delaware and throughout the region are trying to figure out why some salt marshes -- both here and elsewhere in the mid-Atlantic -- are thriving and others are in trouble. ...

Tidal salt marshes are one of Delaware's most unique and valuable ecosystems, providing a refuge and forage area for dozens of bird species, a nursery ground for fish and a habitat for muskrats. But once inundated with water, the grasses -- the glue that holds the wetland together -- die off. Without the grass, sediment slips away and the marsh disappears. Once the marsh is gone, upland residents lose a natural sponge that helps minimize flooding and a filter that buffers the impact of pollution on the Delaware Estuary.

Once a wetland is gone, Carter said, it is expensive and difficult to bring it back. One possible fix may be to spray sediment over the marsh, much like sand is added to the beach to compensate for erosion and rising sea level. Carter said more work is needed to better understand where Delaware's troubled salt marshes are and how best to restore and repair them.

Two researchers lost 30 years worth of data on the Chesapeake's bay grasses in an office fire.

Bay grasses are crucial habitat for crabs, small fish and other marine life. They were once so plentiful that boaters routinely complained to natural resources officials that the plants were clogging their propellers. But since 1972, when Tropical Storm Agnes dropped millions of tons of sediment into the bay, the grasses have struggled for life against an increasing tide of pollution and runoff. ...

Investigators from the state fire marshal's office have not determined what caused the blaze, which caused an estimated $550,000 in damage at the sprawling Horn Point scientific campus along the Choptank River. ...

The 25-foot-by-40-foot trailers, meant to be temporary offices and to house computer equipment, had become fixtures since they were installed in the mid-1980s, said laboratory director Michael Roman. With data and backup servers stored in one of the buildings, the researchers never imagined a fire would destroy both trailers, which sat about 10 feet apart.

"As a scientist, you collect data, write it in a notebook, then type it into a computer," Roman said. "There's no question that their research was irreplaceable. It's hard to resurrect."

Why Ethanol May Be Bad For The Chesapeake

Speaking of alternative fuels with problems, it appears that a boom in ethanol production may set back efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. Currently, the favored form of ethanol is produced from corn. The resulting rise in corn prices has led more farmers to plant more corn at the expense of other crops. A study of agriculture in the Chesapeake watershed found that corn production is already growing.

In the Chesapeake area, according to the study, the drawback to ethanol's boom is that more farmers have planted cornfields to take advantage of the prices. Corn harvests are expected to increase 12 percent in Maryland this year and 8 percent in Virginia, according to a forecast in March from the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Although the spike is expected to be greater in Mississippi, where forecasters predict a 179 percent jump, across the vast Chesapeake watershed -- extending from southern Virginia to Cooperstown, N.Y. -- smaller shifts can add up. The authors of the study released yesterday forecast that over the next five years, the area of land newly planted with corn could be as much as 1 million acres, four times the size of Fairfax County.

[...]

More cornfields could be trouble, the study warned, because corn generally requires more fertilizer than such crops as soybeans or hay. When it rains, some of this fertilizer washes downstream, and it brings such pollutants as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed unnatural algae blooms in the bay. These algae consume the oxygen that fish, crabs and other creatures need to breathe, creating the Chesapeake's infamous dead zones.

The study argues for funding to create buffer zones to mitigate increased runoff. Local representatives are trying to get this into the agriculturual bill that will be voted through Congress in the next couple weeks.

Climate Crisis Rally

This morning and afternoon there was a climate crisis rally on the west lawn of the Capitol. The rally was attended by several hundred people, three bipedal polar bears, and one six-foot-tall bipedal raccoon. I attended and stayed for most of it.

The rally was organized by a coalition of organizations to encourage passage of legislation on two issues: preserving the Arctic NWR as wilderness and reducing carbon emissions. The chief sponsors of the bills introduced to address those issues were present at the rally to speak. Rep. Edward Markey is sponsoring legislation to address the ANWR issue (H.R. 39). Senators Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders were there to talk about their emissions bill, the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act of 2007 (S. 309). Rep. Henry Waxman, sponsor of its House equivalent (Safe Climate Act), spoke in support of stricter emissions limits. John Kerry and a few other politicians also spoke, and they were joined by several scientists, schoolchildren, and members of the native Gwich'in people. The various speakers were very well received. Barbara Boxer, in particular, was the subject of loud ovations when she took the stage and when she began to speak.

The Post has more coverage of the event.

There are pictures from the rally here and here.

Addendum (3/21): Al Gore was in town today to testify on climate change.

---

Climate change has been a big topic of discussion among local birders because of fears of what it might entail for the bird species we love to watch. The topic comes up in discussions of dwindling waterfowl in the Chesapeake watershed; it also appears when fall migration seems to be behind schedule. While some of those phenomena may not be completely due to long-term climate change, we can expect changes to the local animal populations in the next few decades. Sometimes I see the problem dismissed as only a change of a few degrees, but it is worth keeping in mind that those few degrees can make a big difference:

"We certainly know that we've been experiencing climate change impacts," said Bill Dennison, a vice president at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. He added that even a seemingly slight warming trend can be significant in the interdependent world of nature.

"What's a degree? Well, think about if you ran a couple degrees' temperature," Dennison said. "We're already a couple degrees elevated. That's affecting our health."

...and...

"All it takes is a couple of degrees to lose those fish," said Don Cosden, a state fisheries official.

The local trout prefer water colder than 68 degrees, he said. Already, streams such as this one can get that hot on summer days. State officials estimate that the fish might be gone from central Maryland in less than a century -- although they would probably survive in the cooler western mountains and in states farther north.

Given that many birds are as sensitive to temperature changes as the fish, we can probably expect some species to disappear from the area. The Post article cites brown pelicans and Baltimore orioles in particular, but range changes may go well beyond that.

Cited article.

Low Canvasback Numbers on the Chesapeake

The Baltimore Sun reports on this winter's exceptionally small flocks of canvasbacks around Chesapeake Bay:

Department of Natural Resources officials counted 13,700 canvasbacks during their annual midwinter waterfowl survey, which tracks about 20 species of ducks and geese that fly south each winter. That marked a precipitous drop from the four previous years, when canvasback numbers hovered between 30,000 and 40,000 during the annual count.

The survey found declines in other species of ducks as well, and recorded the lowest numbers of waterfowl in Maryland's portion of the Chesapeake Bay in five years.

...

Waterfowl specialist Larry Hindman, who conducts the department's surveys, said an unseasonably warm winter is to blame for the lack of canvasbacks, which decided to spend much of the season in the Great Lakes area. Federal data show that the russet-necked, white-feathered birds are breeding at a stable rate nationwide and that the continental population is relatively high.

In the 1950s, nearly 250,000 canvasbacks - about half the North American winter population - wintered in the Chesapeake Bay, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Thousands of those birds flocked to the Susquehanna Flats near Havre de Grace, where they dined on the plentiful wild celery grasses and helped drive a hunting industry. The number of ducks in Maryland has fallen in part because much of the grasses that were their food source have been destroyed.

The DNR survey confirms our impressions from the Eastern Neck Christmas Count. In terms of recent numbers, it may be a one-year blip, but the fifty-year decline is more serious.

Non-Bird Notes from the Eastern Shore

Trapping is still practiced near the Blackwater NWR. A local hunter traps muskrats on the refuge during the winter season. Their fur goes to the garment industry, musk glands are sold for perfumes, and the meat is sold by local grocery stores. The practice may sound cruel to modern ears, but it does play a role in refuge management. Trapping helps keep the muskrat population in check and prevents muskrats from overrunning the refuge and destroying the aquatic vegetation that migrant waterfowl need. Blackwater only recently eradicated its population of invasive nutria, which had stripped much of the marshes bare of their grasses.

Historic Highways

Many Washington-area birders travel to Delaware Refuges such as Bombay Hook and Prime Hook to view their concentrations of waterbirds and shorebirds in fall and spring. Many of the rural roads we travel to reach these refuges are also rich in history. Northern Delaware was an important corridor for the Underground Railroad. A portion of that network may be designated as a scenic and historic highway.

Travelers who make the journey from the Choptank River in Maryland to the Pennsylvania border will follow routes 10, 15, 9 and 299, passing more than 20 sites connected to the Underground Railroad. The landmarks include houses, churches, fields and vacant lots.

"We are not pointing out one particular Underground Railroad route, but using contemporary roadways to touch on as many sites as we can to give people a sense of the passage from west to north and from the south to the north," said Debra Martin, preservation planner for the city of Wilmington.

One of my sisters has been working on this project and researching some of the sites for the past year.

Eagles at Blackwater

The Post this morning has an article on watching bald eagles at the Blackwater NWR on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Here is a taste:

Still, there are whole generations of Americans who have never seen their national emblem in the wild. For them, and for all lovers of majestic birds, there is Blackwater Refuge and the surrounding tidal marshes of Dorchester County. On this soggy patch of the Eastern Shore, less than two hours from Washington, is one of the largest concentrated bald eagle populations in the country (the largest on the East Coast outside of Florida). And for the next couple of months, eagle-watching conditions are perfect: The number of birds is at its annual peak; courtship and nesting activities are getting underway; and unlike in summer, when the eagles seek the afternoon shade, they are active all day in the cool open air. Between December and March, eagle-spotting at Blackwater is about as close to a sure thing as you can get in the maddening world of wildlife viewing.

Read the rest.

More on Waterfowl

After some more thought on last night's post, and the relative lack of waterfowl on Sunday's count, I decided to check into the results from past Christmas Bird Counts from Lower Kent County. The historical results section of Audubon's CBC website provides an easy way to do this. I generated a few graphs of species that seemed to be out of line with previous counts. The numbers are interesting.

For starters, here is the tundra swan graph.

This one charts scaup and canvasbacks.

This one shows buffleheads.

This shows long-tailed ducks (known previously as oldsquaw).

This one shows black ducks.

The breaks in the tables may indicate years in which counting was canceled due to bad weather. Eastern Neck NWR is the main spot for waterfowl within the count circle. The refuge is only accessible by a bridge, and when weather conditions are hazardous, the bridge is closed. I chose the 59th CBC as a starting point because it appears to be the earliest Lower Kent CBC in the database.

A few things are apparent in these graphs. One is that tundra swans really have declined over the past ten or fifteen years, at least in the upper Chesapeake Bay area. During the eighties, tundra swans seemed to have a base winter population around 5,000 to 7,000; that number has shrunk to about 1,000. Perhaps this is due to mute swan competition or worsening conditions in the bay's underwater vegetation.

The second is that the sample species I picked out have 2006 numbers largely in line with those of the past decade. Numbers fluctuate from one year to the next, but seem to be relatively stable. Canvasbacks are probably the most out of line with recent years, but there does appear to be some precedent for this.

My third observation is that each of these species have had major spikes in recent years: tundra swans and black ducks in the early and mid-eighties, scaup and long-tailed ducks after 2000, buffleheads and canvasbacks in the nineties. The peak years for tundra swans and scaup must have been particularly spectacular. Perhaps some of the impression that 2006 has been a poor year for waterfowl is due to local memories of these peak years.

A Weekend for Owls

For the second year in a row, I joined a team of birders on a trip to the Eastern Neck NWR for a Christmas Bird Count. The Lower Kent County CBC is a difficult one for DC birders, so relatively few make the trip. Participation is a full day commitment: leaving town around 5 am and returning after 7 pm. (The early start is a real challenge for night-owls like me.) This count also comes a day after the Washington CBC, in which most local birders participate. Yet Eastern Neck is worth the two-hour trip for its diversity of habitats and avifauna.

Yesterday our team started out on the bridge at the north end of the refuge and worked our way south. On the way we counted 81 bird species and 10,601 individual birds in the island's wetlands, meadows, agricultural fields, and pine forests. The action was a little slow at first, but bird activity really started to pick up around 9 am, once the sun had had time to warm the fields. Many sparrow species were represented. White-throated and song sparrows were the dominant ones, of course, but they included fox and American tree sparrows, both uncommon in this area. Chipping, field, savannah, and swamp sparrows also sent representatives, as did towhees and juncos. It became so warm that even the hermit thrushes started singing! A red-headed woodpecker rounded out a seven-woodpecker day.

The big surprise was the lack of waterbirds. Usually the bay waters around Eastern Neck teem with migrant waterfowl. Normally swans number in the thousands; yesterday we only recorded a little over 500. Normally there are great flocks of canvasbacks; this year only 15 were present. Most other waterfowl species were similarly underrepresented. I hope that waterfowl are simply slower to migrate this year, and that their absence does not signal deepening problems with the Chesapeake Bay's underwater ecosystem.

Near the end of the day, a couple of us had a long look at a great horned owl flying through an open grove of loblolly pines. Shortly after, another owl flushed and disappeared behind the tree line. It really turned out to be a great weekend for seeing owls.

Species	Number
Canada Goose	3800
Cackling Goose	2
Mute Swan	8
Tundra Swan	530
Gadwall	1
American Wigeon	1
American Black Duck	300
Mallard	270
Northern Pintail	23
Canvasback	15
Scaup, sp.	1500 (includes both Greater and Lesser)
Bufflehead	350
Common Goldeneye	25
Hooded Merganser	6
Common Merganser	20
Red-breasted Merganser	21
Ruddy Duck	312
Red-throated Loon	1
Common Loon	5
Pied-billed Grebe	1
Double-crested Cormorant	18
Great Blue Heron	11
Black Vulture	7
Turkey Vulture	10
Bald Eagle	6
Northern Harrier	2
Sharp-shinned Hawk	2
Red-shouldered Hawk	1
Red-tailed Hawk	4
Virginia Rail	5
Killdeer	1
American Woodcock	2
Ring-billed Gull	50
Herring Gull	350
Great Black-backed Gull	65
Mourning Dove	50
Eastern Screech-Owl	1
Great Horned Owl	6
Belted Kingfisher	4
Red-headed Woodpecker	1
Red-bellied Woodpecker	35
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker	1
Downy Woodpecker	15
Hairy Woodpecker	6
Northern Flicker	10
Pileated Woodpecker	3
Blue Jay	100
American Crow	7
Horned Lark	15
Carolina Chickadee	40
Tufted Titmouse	14
White-breasted Nuthatch	3
Brown-headed Nuthatch	1
Carolina Wren	35
Golden-crowned Kinglet	1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet	10
Eastern Bluebird	20
Hermit Thrush	5
American Robin	97
Gray Catbird	1
Northern Mockingbird	15
Brown Thrasher	1
European Starling	300
Cedar Waxwing	25
Yellow-rumped Warbler	9
Eastern Towhee	12
American Tree Sparrow	1
Chipping Sparrow	7
Field Sparrow	15
Savannah Sparrow	8
Fox Sparrow	6
Song Sparrow	240
Swamp Sparrow	50
White-throated Sparrow	450
Dark-eyed Junco	40
Northern Cardinal	65
Red-winged Blackbird	780
Common Grackle	335
Brown-headed Cowbird	1
House Finch	14
American Goldfinch	15
Total Species	81
Total Individuals	10,601