Despite decades of effort toward reducing nitrogen and phosphorus flux to Chesapeake Bay, water-quality and ecological responses in surface waters have been mixed. Recent research, however, provides useful insight into multiple factors complicating the understanding of nutrient trends in bay tributaries, which we review in this paper, as we approach a 2025 total maximum daily load (TMDL) management deadline. Improvements in water quality in many streams are attributable to management actions that reduced point sources and atmospheric nitrogen deposition and to changes in climate. Nutrient reductions expected from management actions, however, have not been fully realized in watershed streams. Nitrogen from urban nonpoint sources has declined, although waterquality responses to urbanization in individual streams vary depending on predevelopment land use. Evolving agriculture, the largest watershed source of nutrients, has likely contributed to local nutrient trends but has not affected substantial changes in flux to the bay. Changing average nitrogen yields from farmland underlain by carbonate rocks, however, may suggest future trends in other areas under similar management, climatic, or other influences, although drivers of these changes remain unclear. Regardless of upstream trends, phosphorus flux to the bay from its largest tributary has increased due to sediment infill in the Conowingo Reservoir. In general, recent research emphasizes the utility of input reductions over attempts to manage nutrient fate and transport at limiting nutrients in surface waters. Ongoing research opportunities include evaluating effects of climate change and conservation practices over time and space and developing tools to disentangle and evaluate multiple influences on regional water quality.

This review aims to synthesize the current knowledge of sediment dynamics using insights from long‐term research conducted in the watershed draining to the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the U.S., to inform management actions to restore the estuary and its watershed. The sediment dynamics of the Chesapeake are typical of many impaired watersheds and estuaries around the world, and this synthesis is intended to be relevant and transferable to other sediment‐impaired systems. The watershed's sediment sources, transport, delivery, and impacts are discussed with implications for effectively implementing best management practices (BMPs) to mitigate sediment issues. This synthesis revealed three key issues to consider when planning actions to reduce sediment loading: Scale, time, and land use. Geology and historical land use generated a template that current land use and climate, in addition to management, are acting upon to control sediment delivery. Important sediment sources in the Chesapeake include the Piedmont physiographic region, urban, and agricultural land use, and streambank erosion of headwater streams, whereas floodplain trapping is important along larger streams and rivers. Implementation of BMPs is widespread and is predicted to lead to decreased sediment loading; however, reworking of legacy sediment stored in stream valleys, with potentially long residence times in storage, can delay and complicate detection of the effects of BMPs on sediment loads. In conclusion, the improved understanding of sediment sources, storage areas, and transport lag times reviewed here can help target choices of BMP types and locations to better manage sediment problems—for both local streams and receiving waters. This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Water Quality Water and Life > Stresses and Pressures on Ecosystems Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awareness

[1] Elemental carbon (EC) aerosols absorb solar radiation which results in heating of the atmosphere. Recent increases in the atmospheric burden of EC may account for $10 to 15 % of global warming. Long-term EC data, however, are sparse. We report here our measurements of annual mean atmospheric EC concentration, [EC] for 1978-1986, 1987-1996, and 1997-2005 were, 550, 225, and 62 ng m À3, respectively. We also collected $55 cm long sediment cores from West Pine Pond near Whiteface Mountain. The cores were sliced and their 210 Pb ages determined. The first (top) five slices each represented sediment deposition over 7 years and the remaining 13 years each. EC was chemically separated from the sediment samples from four cores, and its concentration in each slice was determined using the thermal optical method. from 1917from -1930from . From 1931from -1943from through 1978from -1984, the concentration decreased gradually, from 680 to 560 ng m À3. The concentrations for 1985-1991, 1992-1998, and 1999-2005 were 295, 195, and 60 ng m À3 , respectively. Model calculations for BC emissions from fossil fuel combustion for the US by Novakov et al. (2003) qualitatively reproduce the trend determined experimentally in this work.