Abstract or Summary
On October 6, 2022, Maryland Sea Grant and the Chesapeake Bay Sentinel Site Cooperative hosted the Large-Scale Marsh Persistence and Restoration in the Chesapeake Bay Workshop. The hybrid (in-person and virtual) workshop had 99 total participants. The goal of this workshop was to advance planning and implementation of large-scale marsh conservation in the Chesapeake and Coastal Bay regions with particular focus on both environmental justice and outreach strategies for involving communities and private landowners in management decisions. Workshop deliverables include a series of ideas developed by attendees for research and restoration projects to advance the workshop goal. The workshop had three lectures and four discussion breakout sessions to help workshop participants develop these ideas (for more information regarding the workshop structure, see Appendix A). Provided below (Table 1) is the matrix that participants completed to work through relationships between marsh geomorphology types and marsh ecosystem services (breakout session I). Additionally, outlined below is a summary of marsh project ideas generated and refined in breakout sessions III and IV. This preliminary report will be supplemented later with more detailed findings on site characteristics, recommended actions, and key ecological and socioeconomic factors that inform large-scale marsh project criteria. Maryland Sea Grant encourages continued dialogue among participants and is committed to helping connect people and build teams around these project ideas to move toward planning and implementation of large-scale marsh restoration. If you are interested in connecting with others on a particular project, please contact Maryland Sea Grant.