Contact:  Eliot Hurwitz           FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                  2/20/96


NOAA Funding Supports Innovative Estuarine Study in
Chesapeake Bay


      A team of researchers has been awarded $650,000 to study
effects of multiple environmental stressors on the Patuxent River
Estuary in the Chesapeake Bay, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration'ūs Coastal Ocean Program announced.  The grant is for
the second year of a projected six-year, $6 million study.

     Traditionally, studies of coastal ocean degradation have
focused on a single stressor such as nutrients, trace inorganics,
and low dissolved oxygen levels.  The Patuxent study, led by Dr.
Denise Breitburg of the Academy of Natural Sciences' Benedict
Estuarine Research Laboratory in St. Leonard, Md., is designed to
look at how all of these stressors interact to impact a single
coastal ecosystem.  This award represents half of the anticipated
COP funding for the project in FY 1996.


     "NOAA is happy to continue its support of this important
project.  The research that is being led by Dr. Breitburg is
innovative and has the potential to yield answers to some of the
important resource management questions in the Chesapeake Bay. 
Because findings in this study will be useful for managing other
coastal water bodies and because the study draws upon the resources
of many participants, it is a model of a cost-effective way of using
science to address the nation's high-priority coastal problems,"
said Donald Scavia, director of the Coastal Ocean Program.
 

    The Patuxent River system, as with much of Chesapeake Bay, is
suffering from excess nutrient levels that degrade water quality,
and is a target of Chesapeake watershed nutrient reduction
strategies.  It is also the site of a large number of ongoing
research and monitoring efforts that are providing a wealth of
information being used in the new study. 



     The centerpiece of the Breitburg study is the development of a
series of laboratory and large-enclosure field experiments.
Investigators will build a number of large, temperature-
controlled outdoor tanks, or mesocosms, to simulate the estuarine
environment.  They will then construct and test mathematical models
of how the elements of the system interact. The next step will be to
enclose a part of the river itself somewhere near St. Leonard, and
attempt to tune the models to work at that larger scale.  These
models will be designed to assist the region'ūs development of
effective strategies to combat persistent environmental degradation
in the Chesapeake estuary.  


     The team conducting the study is composed of researchers from a
number of disciplines in several states.  In addition to the
Benedict Laboratory, participants include the University of
Maryland; the Maryland Department of the Environment; the
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md.; the
Academy of Natural Sciences' Patrick Center in Philadelphia, Pa.;
Rutgers University in New Jersey; State University of New
York-Buffalo; and the Center for Risk Analysis, SENES Oak Ridge,
Inc., Oak Ridge, Tenn. 


     The Coastal Ocean Program was formed to provide a focus in NOAA
that cuts across the agency's coastal missions to fund high-quality
scientific research through a partnership approach that joins NOAA
scientists with academic researchers.  This research is aimed at
finding management solutions that will protect coastal resources and
ensure their availability now and in the future.