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CHESAPEAKE BAY NUTRIENT FLUX
Under the aegis of this Virginia Sea Grant project, we have collected high resolution total nitrogen and total phosphorus data at the Chesapeake Bay Mouth, and combined them with temperature, salinity and current data collected by colleagues at Old Dominion University to see if it is possible to calculate nutrient budgets for Chesapeake Bay, at reasonable cost, based on such data or whether any such effort would be defeated by high frequency variability. We have found that conditions are chaotic during spring tides, but more coherent during neap tides, and we conclude that it may indeed be possible to use Bay Mouth data to help understand whether efforts to abate excessive nutrient loads into the Chesapeake Bay are working. |
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