Chesapeake Forest Restoration

Maintaining and restoring forests to support healthy communities and ecosystems in the Chesapeake Bay watershed

USDA Forest Service

The Wicomico River (top) and Whites Neck Creek (bottom) flow toward the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland.

This storymap summarizes content included in the  Chesapeake Forest Restoration Strategy , which was updated by the US Forest Service and partners in September 2020. This Strategy was the basis for a  Shared Stewardship agreement  signed in October 2020 by all of the watershed’s seven state foresters and the Chief of the US Forest Service. Additional information about ongoing forest restoration work in the watershed can be found on the  Chesapeake Riparian Forest Buffer Network , the  Chesapeake Tree Canopy Network , and the  Chesapeake Bay Program’s Forestry Workgroup  webpages.

Introduction

Map of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

Map of the Chesapeake Bay Area

Forests are the predominant natural land cover in the populous Chesapeake Bay watershed, home to the largest estuary in the United States. From its headwaters in the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, the Chesapeake Bay watershed supports over 3600 species of animals and plants across multiple physiographic regions.

Unfortunately, many forests in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have been lost. The remaining forest land in the watershed is increasingly impacted by fragmentation and parcelization resulting from declining forest product markets, development pressure, and high property taxes. Fragmentation refers to the division of larger tracts of forest into patches and parcelization divides forests into multiple ownerships.

In a region with many people, the pressures to remove forests are prominent, but so is the need to restore forests to the landscape. Since 1989, the US Forest Service has been leading a collaborative, voluntary partnership to address forestry issues in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. 

What is Forest Restoration?

Forest Restoration is used here to broadly mean to move the landscape to an improved ecological condition through re-establishing forests and tree canopy as well as improving forest health through enhanced forest management. This calls for the re-establishment of forests in lands that are devoid of trees through afforestation - where forest was not recently present (such as on farms and developed land) and reforestation - where there was recently forest.

Ryan Davis (Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay) during tree planting instruction with the Huntingdon State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon, PA.

Restoring Forest Health

Later-successional forests are often more valuable than new forests in terms of the ecosystem services they provide, such as timber and carbon storage. Because forests have dominated the landscape for thousands of years, perhaps their most important service is providing essential habitat for a diversity of species, including species of conservation concern, like the wood turtle and certain neotropical migratory bird and salamander species. However, multiple interacting stressors can have a compounding negative impact on the benefits that forests can provide.

Fall Colors (2017 Chesapeake-watershed forum)

Shared Stewardship

For decades, Federal, State, and local partners in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have been working together through the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership to improve water quality and other ecosystem services through forest restoration. This collaboration provides an ideal framework to prioritize where forest restoration is most needed and outline pathways to implement targeted forest restoration to achieve watershed-wide goals.

Restoring Chesapeake Forests through Partnerships

Many partners are working to restore the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem and its vital forests. The  Chesapeake Forest Restoration Strategy  lays out broad priorities and actions that will guide our forestry partnership efforts in the years ahead

Steve Algeier from University of Maryland Extension discusses invasive plant control.

Drivers for Forest Restoration in the Chesapeake

The largest driver for restoration for the past 30 years of the Bay Program has been poor water quality. In 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) listed the main stem of the Bay as impaired for non-point source pollutants (nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment). A regulated blueprint to improve water quality, the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), limits the load of pollutants that can enter waterways throughout the watershed. Maintaining and increasing forest cover are Best Management Practices (BMPs) that count toward the TMDL’s required pollution reductions, with riparian forest buffers being one of the most cost-effective BMPs.

Chesapeake Executive Council Directives and Agreements in 1996, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2014 set goals for forest cover, including riparian forest buffer restoration, forest conservation, and urban tree canopy expansion. The most recent Directive signed by the Executive Council is the 2014 Watershed Agreement, which had the following vision:

“The Chesapeake Bay Program partners envision an environmentally and economically sustainable Chesapeake Bay watershed with clean water, abundant life, conserved lands and access to the water, a vibrant cultural heritage and a diversity of engaged citizens and stakeholders.”

Forests and marsh at the Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge in Kent County, MD. (Photo courtesy of Will Parson Chesapeake Bay Program)

The goals specific to forests in the 2014 Watershed Agreement include: 

Signature page from the 2014  Chesapeake   Bay Watershed Agreement 

  • Riparian forest buffers: Continually increase the capacity of forest buffers to provide water quality and habitat benefits throughout the watershed. Restore 900 miles per year of riparian forest buffer and conserve existing buffers until at least 70 percent of riparian areas throughout the watershed are forested.
  • Urban tree canopy: Continually increase urban tree canopy capacity to provide air quality, water quality and habitat benefits throughout the watershed. Expand urban tree canopy by 2,400 acres by 2025.
  • Forest Protection: By 2025, protect an additional two million acres of lands throughout the watershed currently identified as high-conservation priorities at the federal, state or local level. While forest conservation is not the focus of this Storymap, the  Chesapeake Conservation Partnership  outlines important strategies for land and forest conservation.
  • Keeping Forests Forests: In 2018, Bay Partners began recognizing state and local policies that keep forests on the landscape (even if not permanently protected) as BMPs for meeting water quality goals.

Trees in Communities

Urban and Community Landscapes

Increasing tree cover in towns and cities is a priority because of the numerous environmental and social benefits felt directly by people. Grassroots community involvement can spur tree-planting initiatives in developed areas and unique partnerships to plant trees for different but mutually beneficial reasons. Developed areas accounted for 13.5% of the watershed in 2018. 

Benefits of trees in communities. (U.S. Forest Service illustration by Cheryl Holbrook)

Where are there opportunities to restore trees in communities?

The maps in the following section show the distribution of turf grass cover (e.g. lawns and fields) and impervious surfaces (e.g. paved surfaces) in the watershed. This is a broad-scale representation of extensive area that could be enhanced through tree planting. At the community scale, these land cover assessments become most meaningful when analyzed in conjunction with local datasets. Most community assessments have found that the majority of the existing tree canopy and plantable space occurs on private properties, outside the direct authority of local governments.

In many communities across the country, tree canopy is not distributed evenly across the community and areas of low canopy often overlap with places where other environmental and socioeconomic stressors are concentrated. Focusing investment in these areas, in partnership with impacted residents, can help ensure all residents are receiving the benefits of trees. Another way to maximize benefits to children and other community members is planting shade trees in schools, parks, places of worship and other community spaces that desperately need them.

Impervious acreage and turfgrass acreage by county, based on 2013 high-resolution land use data. (Courtesy data and maps by Peter Claggett (USGS) and Nora Jackson (Chesapeake Research Consortium))

Achieving Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) Goals

Achieving an urban tree canopy (UTC) goal in a given locality requires a holistic approach, addressing tree conservation, planting, and maintenance needs. At the local level, this means developing a sound urban forest management plan, including short- and long-term actions needed to sustainably support each component of the equation.

Equation for calculating Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) change. (Luley and Bond 2002, A Plan to Integrate Management of Urban Trees into Air Quality Planning. Naples, NY: Davey Resource Group), Graphic by John Damm Graphics)

Introduction to Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) Assessments

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Conserve First

Many communities across the country are losing more tree canopy than they are gaining, due to a variety of factors such as development, pests and diseases, lack of maintenance, storms and other stressors, as well as natural mortality. Keeping as many healthy, mature shade trees on the landscape as possible should be a central strategy.

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Plant Abundantly, On Public and Private Lands

To mitigate losses and ultimately expand tree canopy cover over time, robust tree planting and maintenance programs are needed. Trees are an essential part of a community’s infrastructure and should be well-integrated into stormwater programs and capital improvement projects.

One opportunity to get more urban forest buffers planted is to couple buffer planting with urban stream restoration projects, which are frequently used to meet Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems and Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load requirements.

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Invest In Maintenance

With tree planting as a primary strategy to help maintain and increase canopy cover, the importance of adequate maintenance cannot be overstated. While finding money to plant trees may be relatively easy, maintenance needs are more difficult to cover and require a long-term mindset for sustainability. Trees that are not planted and maintained properly – especially in the first few years of establishment – will not survive to generate the needed tree canopy.

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Respond Proactively To Tree Loss

While removals of healthy trees should be avoided as much as possible, some tree losses are inevitable, especially given increases in storm damage, pests and diseases, drought and other stressors. State forestry agencies have developed proactive responses, such as deployment of Urban Forest Strike Teams to help communities assess and recover from severe storm damage to trees. When damaged or unhealthy trees must be removed, urban wood utilization programs help communities reduce wood waste (and disposal costs) and generate productive materials that give these trees a second “life”.

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Trees on Farms

Agricultural Landscapes

Trees can produce economic and environmental benefits on farms through strategic practices such as riparian forest buffers, windbreaks, alley cropping, silvopasture, and forest farming. Partnership actions focus on increasing awareness and implementation of agroforestry practices. Agricultural landscapes accounted for 20.1% of the watershed in 2018.

Benefits of trees on farms. (U.S. Forest Service illustration by Cheryl Holbrook)

Why Plant Trees on Farms?

Farms and forests play a vital role in the economic, social, and ecological landscape of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Retaining sustainable and resilient rural communities and economies must be at the heart of watershed restoration efforts. By incorporating trees into agricultural landscapes, farmers can bolster the economic and environmental sustainability of their farming enterprise. Agroforestry allows farmers to incorporate trees into regenerative systems, creating positive social, environmental, and economic outcomes.

Agroforestry practices can be applied wherever there are farms. Landowner outreach, technical assistance, and incentives for agroforestry should be focused in areas that have the greatest need and present the greatest opportunity. For instance, counties with a large amount of pasture are prime opportunities for riparian forest buffer and silvopasture outreach and pilot initiatives.

Left: Pasture acreage by county based on 2013 high-resolution land use data. Right: Number of farms practicing agroforestry by county. (Map by Nora Jackson, Chesapeake Research Consortium)

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Agroforestry Practices

Riparian forest buffers act as the last line of defense, protecting streams and ultimately the bay from polluted runoff. In addition to their water quality and habitat benefits, with proper planning and management, riparian forest buffers can produce income, for example, by generating compatible products like biomass, fruit, nuts and even timber in areas further from the stream

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Windbreaks/Shelterbelts are rows of trees and/or shrubs that mitigate the negative impacts of wind, snow, or other environmental conditions. Additional benefits include capture of pesticide spray drift, reduced emissions and odor from intensive livestock production systems, carbon sequestration, and marketable products such as timber, biofuels and fruit.

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Alley Cropping is using rows of trees or shrubs to create alleys within which one or more agricultural or horticultural crops are grown. Alley cropping produces beneficial microclimates for sheltering crops. Using woody species in alley cropping can provide income through seed, fruit, nut, and fiber production. 

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Silvopasture is the integration of trees with livestock and forage production. The tree protection provided by silvopasture reduces heat and cold stress on livestock and provides forage while increasing the amount of carbon stored in woody biomass and in soils.

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Forest Farming/Multistory Cropping is the cultivation of edible, floral, medicinal, and craft crops underneath a forest canopy. Forest farming can increase the economic viability of forest land by providing annual or short-term income as timber matures. 

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Woodlot Management is the sustainable management of forested areas on farms, which can provide a number of benefits for farmers, including providing marketable timber and biomass for heat and energy, and improving habitat for wildlife and game species.  

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Biochar Production and Utilization: Biochar, a carbon-rich soil amendment that is created through careful burning of woody biomass, may provide a valuable commodity for otherwise unutilized wood. Energy production is a biproduct of making biochar. When applied, biochar can improve soil fertility, soil carbon storage, crop yields, soil structure, and water-holding capacity.  

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Healthy Forests

Natural Landscapes

Forest health in the Chesapeake region has been steadily declining. Whether it’s fire suppression, lack of regeneration due to overabundant deer, forest pests, or unsustainable harvest, forests are challenged to provide habitat and the services upon which we depend. In these natural landscapes, which include both forested and mixed open or shrub-scrub lands, restoration activities often take the form of forest management.

Why Restore Healthy Forests?

Biodiversity is the foundation for forest resiliency and therefore a primary driver of restoration. Species loss threatens to destabilize ecosystems and the benefits they provide. As human population growth and development continue in the Chesapeake, forest habitat must be conserved, managed, and restored in priority areas to minimize further losses in fish and wildlife populations.

The quality of forested habitats in the watershed is threatened by multiple stressors. One of the greatest threats is development and fragmentation, which create an opening for invasive species that outcompete native species. Over the past century, diseases such as chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease, and now emerald ash borer, have caused ecological catastrophes in native forests. Other stressors on Chesapeake forests include deer browse and altered fire regimes.

We can design forest restoration to improve diversity in age, structure, and species composition of forest stands to meet the unique needs of different wildlife species across the landscape. Some key species in decline, like the cerulean warbler, wood turtle, and Delmarva fox squirrel, require later-successional forest habitat. Others, such as American woodcock and golden-winged warbler, rely on young or early successional forest habitat.

Maps showing forested and mixed-open acreage by county based on 2013 high-resolution land use data. (Courtesy data and maps by Peter Claggett (USGS) and Nora Jackson (Chesapeake Research Consortium))

Left: The golden-winged warbler requires early successional habitat, which is in limited supply., Middle: The Cerulean warbler requires forest interior habitat and has been in decline. Photo credit: Bill Hubick,  www.billhubick.com , Photo credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Right: Berries in Florence Shelly Preserve. Photo credit: Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program. 

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Forest Management

Forest management plans can help guide landowners in selecting restoration strategies that will help them improve the ecosystem services and habitat their forest provides over the long-term. A well-planned timber harvest can help maintain forest health, so restoration goals can often be achieved while generating forest products. Thinning can provide important benefits for forest health by freeing up space, nutrients and light which allows the remaining trees to grow larger. This can in turn increase carbon sequestration and carbon storage within forests. Management practices should also address local species of concern.

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Abating Stressors

Forest restoration is a long-term process. Foremost is the need to slow fragmentation which can be addressed by land use and natural resource conservation policies. In the meantime, many biological stressors that impact forest health can be managed. For example, controlling invasive species, pests, disease outbreaks, and deer populations can help minimize changes to natural species compositions and support forest regeneration.

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Support Local Markets

Local markets for forest products can help provide an economic driver for restoration activities by supporting the generation of revenue from the biomass removed during thinning. Providing strong markets for renewable forest products not only helps avoid forest loss-- it also supports resilient rural economies by ensuring forests remain profitable for landowners. In addition to timber markets, improving markets for other forest products, such as biochar and biomass for energy production, can support rural economic development.

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Forests are an important carbon sink. Forests sequester carbon dioxide –CO2--from the atmosphere and store it in multiple places within forest ecosystems. In many forests, the majority of carbon is stored in above-ground live trees, soil organic carbon or on the forest floor. It is estimated that watershed-wide, Chesapeake forests are storing 1.9 billion short tons (3.8 trillion pounds) of carbon both above and below the ground, with the majority of that carbon storage occurring on private lands. Many forest restoration activities, including reforestation and natural forest management, can further increase carbon sequestration and storage.

Carbon storage in Chesapeake Bay watershed forests based on U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis data. (U.S. Forest Service analysis by Tonya Lister)

Carbon and land use changes. (U.S. Forest Service illustration by the Office of Sustainability and Climate)

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Forest Restoration for Resilient Communities

Many forestry best management practices used to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay can help ecosystems and communities become more resilient. For example, as the temperature warms, planting trees can provide important cooling benefits for people and wildlife alike. In the urban environment, tree planting in low canopy cover areas can help minimize the negative human health impacts that can result from the urban heat island effect.

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Cooling Streams

Many economically and culturally important species like brook trout, require cool water temperatures. Conserving forests and planting and maintaining riparian forest buffers to shade streams will help increase available habitat for aquatic species that need cool water. 

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Mitigating Flooding

Strategically restoring forests can help protect communities, infrastructure and ecosystems from the damaging impacts of flooding. Forests have high rates of infiltration and evapotranspiration, which helps them reduce the amount of stormflow that reaches streams and communities. Forests can also protect soils from eroding away during floods and minimize stream sedimentation.

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The Path Forward

Conserving and restoring forests are among the best investments that can be made for the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem and its inhabitants. Chesapeake forests are essential for clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat, and a host of community benefits, yet they continue to be lost. The ambitious restoration goals set forth in the Chesapeake Bay TMDL and the 2014 Watershed Agreement will only be met through robust efforts to both conserve and restore forest cover. Fortunately, forest restoration can be a simple, cost-effective way to improve water quality and habitat while also creating vibrant, sustainable communities.

Forest restoration is a long-term endeavor. From planting and caring for trees, to improving the management of existing forests, forest restoration is advanced through fundamentally local, grassroots actions. It is carried out in private yards and public lands, along city streets and rural streams, by the many hands that recognize the innumerable gifts that trees return to us. Community-based efforts are bolstered by strong local, state, and federal programs that promote forest restoration. These important programs should be prioritized in agency budgets and expanded in years to come as a central, cost-effective strategy to meet restoration goals in the Chesapeake Bay TMDL and the 2014 Watershed Agreement.

The vision reflected in the Chesapeake Forest Restoration Strategy was developed with significant collaboration from partners across the watershed and sets forth broad actions to guide forestry partnership efforts in the Chesapeake Bay watershed in the years ahead. We look forward to working together to plant and restore Chesapeake forests.

For more information and key actions to advance forest restoration in the watershed, please refer to the complete  Chesapeake Forest Restoration Strategy . For additional questions, contact Katie Brownson, U.S. Forest Service (katherine.brownson@usda.gov).

Storymap credit: Michelle Hawks, U.S. Forest Service

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Map of the Chesapeake Bay Area

Forests and marsh at the Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge in Kent County, MD. (Photo courtesy of Will Parson Chesapeake Bay Program)

Signature page from the 2014  Chesapeake   Bay Watershed Agreement 

Benefits of trees in communities. (U.S. Forest Service illustration by Cheryl Holbrook)

Impervious acreage and turfgrass acreage by county, based on 2013 high-resolution land use data. (Courtesy data and maps by Peter Claggett (USGS) and Nora Jackson (Chesapeake Research Consortium))

Equation for calculating Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) change. (Luley and Bond 2002, A Plan to Integrate Management of Urban Trees into Air Quality Planning. Naples, NY: Davey Resource Group), Graphic by John Damm Graphics)

Benefits of trees on farms. (U.S. Forest Service illustration by Cheryl Holbrook)

Left: Pasture acreage by county based on 2013 high-resolution land use data. Right: Number of farms practicing agroforestry by county. (Map by Nora Jackson, Chesapeake Research Consortium)

Maps showing forested and mixed-open acreage by county based on 2013 high-resolution land use data. (Courtesy data and maps by Peter Claggett (USGS) and Nora Jackson (Chesapeake Research Consortium))

Carbon storage in Chesapeake Bay watershed forests based on U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis data. (U.S. Forest Service analysis by Tonya Lister)

Carbon and land use changes. (U.S. Forest Service illustration by the Office of Sustainability and Climate)