UMCES Research Strengths


Principal Research Strengths
	Interdisciplinary Research in Estuarine and Coastal Dynamics. For over 20 years the Center has had a nationally significant program related to the biological, physical, and geochemical dynamics of estuaries and the coastal ocean. This was a result of a concerted effort to build a program by recruiting established scientists in that area to attract external research funding and provide scientific knowledge needed by our principal clients, the citizens of Maryland. This research activity is particularly robust at the Horn Point Laboratory (HPL), but faculty at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL) play an important role. Even Appalachian Laboratory (AL) scientists have contributed in this area.

Fisheries Ecosystem Science. Since the founding of CBL in 1925, UMCES has been engaged in fisheries research because of the strong interest in the living resources of the Chesapeake Bay and nearby coastal waters. Presently, our fisheries research is strongly “ecosystem-based,” including work at the forefront of multispecies and ecosystem process modeling and fisheries habitat restoration studies. While our present capabilities are focused at CBL, there is broad expertise across all three laboratories, including shellfish studies and aquaculture at HPL and freshwater fish studies at AL.

Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology. Environmental chemistry and toxicology research programs are also focused at CBL, environmental chemistry permeates virtually all aspects of research on ecosystem processes at the laboratories and some freshwater toxicological research is conducted at AL. The Center’s strengths in this area are a result of investments in new faculty positions and facilities initiated in the 1980s.

	*Ecology of Terrestrial Landscapes and Watersheds*. The Center’s research strength in terrestrial landscapes and watersheds is emerging as a result of similar strategic investments in faculty positions and facilities initiated in the mid-1990s. This was a logical step for a Center that had two well-established marine laboratories and a smaller, struggling laboratory for upland studies (AL) because of the regional demand for scientific knowledge regarding the functioning of watersheds draining to the Chesapeake Bay and implications of changing land use patterns in the region. This strategic redirection has allowed the research at the AL to become much more interdisciplinary and tied into the research in the estuary at the other laboratories. Our capabilities in this area are concentrated at AL, but landscape and process studies are also conducted on coastal plain watersheds at HPL and CBL. In fact, AL, CBL and HPL investigators are working as a team to develop and apply watershed-estuarine models needed for determining Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL), for example.

	Sources, Cycling, Transport and Effects of Nutrients. Research on the cycling, transport and effects of nutrients is equally distributed among the three laboratories because of the truly cross-cutting nature of this theme. The research is inherently interdisciplinary and both laterally integrated (involving atmospheric, terrestrial, riverine, estuarine and oceanic processes and also sources, transport, sinks and effects) and vertically integrated (involving fundamental science, applied research, monitoring, modeling, through management decision systems). The Center has extraordinary depth and breadth in this area, which places it in a position both to serve regional needs and to apply this expertise to different parts of the country and the world to address problems cause by global enrichment of the biosphere.

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