Our paper “It’s Not Easy Going Green: Obstacles to Tree- Planting Programs in East Baltimore” has just been published in the journal Cities and the Environment (CATE). In 2006, government officials in Baltimore announced plans to double the city’s tree canopy over the next thirty years. While the effort has already produced positive results, many…
Baltimore City is in the process of conducting a series of public stakeholder meetings to support development of a Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP) to achieve targets under its MS4 permit related to the Chesapeake Bay TMDL (pollution diet). The Chesapeake Bay Program learned a long time ago that because of stormwater runoff, land cover has…
The US EPA, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and the Chesapeake Bay Trust recently partnered to provide $3.7 million in grants to 34 organizations through the Green Streets, Green Towns, Green Jobs Initiative (G3). The purpose of the G3 grant program is to help add green space and reduce stormwater runoff by using green…
Yesterday we facilitated a meeting hosted by USGS on water quality monitoring in the Baltimore region. USGS is the leader in this activity. They realized that counties, the state, researchers, NGOs and federal agencies are all monitoring water quality at various locations and frequencies for various reasons. This led to the question: are there opportunities…
Yesterday we held the quarterly meeting of the Baltimore Urban Waters Partnership. US Fish and Wildlife Service Fishery Biologist Julie Devers presented on the agency’s efforts to monitor and improve fish habitat in the Patapsco River, including fish stocking programs and removal of obsolete dams to improve fish passage. Later, U.S. Geological Survey MD-DE-DC Water…
Today as part of our work with the US Forest Service Northern Research Station, we met with experts from the US Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis program (USFS FIA). The USFS FIA program is the nation’s continuous forest census. It has historically taken the national census of trees on lands classified as forest land.…
Yesterday the Waterfront Partnership and EcoCheck issued the Healthy Harbor Report Card for 2013. While there are some signs of improvement, Baltimore’s streams, the Inner Harbor, and the Tidal Patapsco River all received failing grades. The overall grade for Baltimore’s waterways is an F. Of all sites sampled, two-thirds failed to meet the swimming standard…
Today we had the pleasure of participating in a great event at Humanim‘s offices at the historic American Brewery building. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced the launch of the Growing Green Initiative. A year and a half ago, the US Forest Service Northern Research Station funded development of the Green Pattern Book. The Baltimore Office…
Today was a school days throwback – we went on a field trip. We took a tour of habitat creation projects on industrial sites around Baltimore’s “Second Harbor”. If you’re from out of town and have visited Baltimore to eat crabs, take in an Orioles game at Camden Yards, or visit the National Aquarium, you’ve…
I had a pretty exciting Earth Day. I spent the morning on assignment for the US Forest Service Northern Research Station documenting installation of a treatment device that uses filters filled with tree bark to clean urban stormwater. The filter boxes were installed by the Parks and People Foundation under the guidance of their Green Infrastructure…
