Pooled Monitoring Initiative – A Novel, Regional Approach to Pooling Funds and Answering Top Restoration Research Questions in the Chesapeake Bay
Sadie Drescher
Chesapeake Bay Trust
Annapolis, Maryland
Efforts to restore our waterways call for a significant increase in the number of watershed restoration projects intended to improve both water quality and habitat. Questions about the performance and function of some of these practices persist in the regulatory and practitioner community that prevent more rapid implementation. As a result, an initiative called the Pooled Monitoring Program has been designed to connect key stream restoration and stormwater management questions posed by the regulatory and practitioner communities with researchers in the scientific community.
Pressing questions about the practices have been articulated over the last nine years with input from the regulators and practitioners. Examples include questions about cumulative impacts of restoration practices at a watershed scale, differences in efficacy of different stream restoration techniques, climate change impacts to restoration practices, pollutants of emerging concern, how to predict or model structural stability of stream restoration, and trade-offs among different resources impacted positively and negatively by restoration activities (e.g., trees removed during stream restoration). The Initiative articulates the “burning” restoration questions that regulators and practitioners need to make decisions. The novelty of the Initiative is derived from identifying funds used for other types of monitoring that have more power in a pool.
Results of the research are communicated back to the regulators and practitioners in a way that maximizes their ability to inform work in those realms. The Pooled Monitoring Program aims to answer these questions to ultimately increase confidence in proposed restoration project outcomes, clarify the optimal site conditions in which to apply particular restoration techniques, provide information useful to regulatory agencies in project permitting, and provide information that will help guide monitoring programs. Finally, new key restoration questions are added each year ensuring that the top restoration questions continue to be answered with robust research using the Pooled Monitoring Program. This presentation will share the framework for the program, findings and use of this research to date, and future program direction with input from audience welcome. For more information see our website at https://cbtrust.org/restoration-research/.
About Sadie Drescher
Sadie joined the Chesapeake Bay Trust in 2014. At the Trust she leads the restoration programs that include implementation projects, research efforts, and innovative watershed and community engagement award programs. Sadie’s work focuses on watershed restoration and stormwater management to support policy, training, and outreach initiatives. At the Trust, Sadie enjoys working with partners to form strong grant programs that benefit the water and people in the Chesapeake Bay.
Prior to joining the Trust, Sadie was a Watershed Researcher and Planner for the Center for Watershed Protection where she developed watershed management strategies for local communities and was an US EPA Chesapeake Bay Program Office coordinator. Before working at the Center, Sadie was a Research Specialist in the Science and Policy Division of SC’s coastal management program, worked at the USDA Center for Forested Wetlands in SC, and was an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education fellow for the US Department of Energy in Tennessee. She has background in environmental science with a M.S. in Environmental Studies from the College of Charleston and a B.S. in Environmental Biology from Tennessee Technological University.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadiedrescher/
