Would you like to know how water quality is shaping up in your home waters? Is your local waterway suffering through dead zones (areas of low-oxygen content that can suffocate carbs and fish).

We are pleased to release a series of Creek-By-Creek water quality reports that take a close look at conditions inside most of the tributaries in the Severn River watershed.

Our Field Investigator, Emi McGeady, has been working overtime this year to produce this series of reports that describe conditions in the creeks our water quality teams visited during the 2020 monitoring season.

Data Is Most Powerful Weapon

Emi has been running our water quality monitoring program since August 2020, usually taking on the role of Team Leader to collect our data as she is in the image to the left.

The binder she’s holding contains the all-important data sheets for each monitoring station we visit.

It’s by recording all this data (oxygen, salinity, pH, temperature and clarity) that we create the scientific record that explains what’s happening in our river.

As Emi says, “data is the most powerful weapon of all!”

SRA shares all our WQ data with the scientific, regulatory and academic communities via the Chesapeake Data Explorer.

When operations ended in November, Emi analyzed the data over the winter and produced this series of Creek-By-Creek reports.

This is the first time anybody’s ever done such comprehensive work to describe local creek conditions.

The reports cover the entire river, from Lake Ogleton and the creeks of Whitehall Bay at the mouth of the river, up through our oyster restoration area, to the very top of the river at our Indian Landing Station between the Ben Oaks and Pointfield Landing communities in Severna Park.

Good News For Our Oysters

Emi also produced a report on water quality around our oyster restoration reefs between the Rt. 50 and USNA Bridges.

The report describes conditions at each of the restoration reefs to explain why our oysters are thriving today.

Special thanks to the many people and organizations whose support makes SRA’s Water Quality Monitoring Program such a success. Thanks to:

• Delaplaine Foundation for their financial support for SRA’s volunteer-driven, water quality monitoring program,
• Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative for their technical direction, and
• Chaney Foundation for supporting our scientific research vessel, Sea Girl,
• Nini Goodwin for donating Sea Girl to SRA, and most importantly, and
• Special thanks to all our WQ Crew who volunteer their time each week to study the Severn River, collect data from 51 stations, and provide great company as they enjoy a morning on the river.

Here are the new Creek-By-Creek reports. Just click on the links to review Emi’s analysis of your home creek or area of the Severn River.

• Back Creek Report 2020 ,
• Brewer Creek Report 2020 ,
• Chase Creek Report 2020 ,
• Clements Creek Report 2020 ,
• Forked Creek 2020,
• Narrows Report 2020,
• Indian Landing Report 2020, 
• Lake Ogelton Report 2020,
• Luce Creek Report 2020,
• Mill and Burley Creek Report 2020,
• Oyster Reefs Report 2020,
• Round Bay Report 2020,
• Saltworks Creek Report 2020,
• Valentine and Plum Report 2020,
• Weems Creek Report 2020, and
• Whitehall and Ridout Creek Report 2020.

Many of our creek-by-creek reports feature overhead drone shots of the creeks for Emi’s reports.

In addition to studying and analyzing all the water quality data, Emi learned how to fly a photography drone over the winter to supply many of the images of our tributaries in the Creek-By-Creek reports.

Developing her piloting skills to support our Water Quality Monitoring work was just one of many skills Emi developed during her time with SRA.

Emi also became a certified scuba diver so she could develop SRA’s in-house scientific oyster diving program.

That we’ve had the pleasure of working with Emi is due to the Chesapeake Conservation Crops program funded by the Chesapeake Bay Trust.