The Future Chesapeake
Shaping the Future
by
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The Future Chesapeake by J. R. Schubel provides a comprehensive overview of the origin and evolution of the Bay through the millennia, and the reasons for its immense biological productivity that made it a magnet for people for centuries. He documents the slow decline of the Bay ecosystem as human activities increased with population throughout the largest watershed of any estuary in the country, and reviews the efficacy of the Chesapeake Bay Program initiated in 1983 to restore the Bay to its former glory. According to the author, while the Chesapeake Bay Program has kept the Bay from deteriorating further, the more than $24 billion effort has failed to achieve its goals and the probability of success will decline with climate change even with an increase in current efforts. Sea level rise, warming of the Bay’s waters, changes in precipitation and runoff, and an increasing population in the watershed will all be driving forces in determining the future Bay. Schubel argues for a complementary approach designed to shape the future Bay to bring expectations into closer alignment with future environmental conditions that represent the new normal, rather than an approach focused on returning the Bay to a previous state that no longer exists. The book is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Schubel’s thesis applies not only to the Chesapeake Bay but extends to efforts to restore other coastal systems around the country and around the world. These systems all are at the leading edge of environmental change, change that is more rapid than at any time in the 200,000-year history of modern humans. According to the author, while we cannot create the future Bay, we have much of the knowledge and many of the tools needed to shape the future Bay. It’s time to apply them, not as a replacement of existing efforts, but as a complement to them.
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About the Book
The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary. After slow deterioration for several centuries, the Chesapeake Bay Program was launched in 1983 to restore it.
After spending more than $24 billion, the results of the restoration program are disappointing.
The Bay Program has arrested the decline of the Bay, but it has failed to achieve its restoration goals—something that will become more challenging with climate change.
The rate of environmental change today is more rapid than at any time in the history of humanity. The concept of restoration—to return to an earlier time and condition—is an outmoded concept for coastal ecosystems like the Chesapeake Bay that are at the leading edge of change.
A better strategy would be to focus on shaping the future Bay. While we cannot create the future Bay, we have many of the tools to shape it, tools that have never been used as a complement to existing efforts.
Learn about the past and present of the Bay, how climate change will affect its future, and how we can intervene to shape the future of the Chesapeake.
About the Author
J. R. Schubel has worked throughout his career at the interfaces of coastal science-management-policy. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, where he became associate director of its Chesapeake Bay Institute. He has published widely on the Chesapeake Bay and wrote and illustrated The Living Chesapeake. He left Johns Hopkins to become dean of Stony Brook University’s Marine Sciences Research Center. For three of his twenty years at Stony Brook, he served as provost. He holds the title of Stony Brook distinguished service professor emeritus. He is president emeritus of the New England Aquarium and the Aquarium of the Pacific.