Which state is chesapeake bay in

Plus the District of Columbia. It loops around 11, miles of shoreline. And where does all that water come from? Try the or so rivers and streams that dump into the Chesapeake. Also the Atlantic Ocean, which flushes salt water in through the mouth of the Bay. But there are many more storied tributaries, too, including the Patuxent, Choptank, and Pocomoke rivers in Maryland. More than 17 million people lived in the Bay watershed in At least 2, species live in the estuary itself.

Many animals, including fish, bivalves, and shellfish, are caught for commercial purposes on the Chesapeake — totaling around million pounds of seafood every year. This list was adapted from one published by the U. West Virginia's far-reaching panhandles and rugged terrain provide ecological diversity beyond its size. Large blocks of forest and sparse human population across much of the state provide refuges for plants and animals that are declining rapidly elsewhere.

Use the interactive map to zoom smoothly from a national view to state and local perspectives anywhere across the country. About LandScope Contact Us. Sign in to your account Sign in with your username email address and password Email Address. Chesapeake Bay States. At its widest point, just south of the mouth of the Potomac River, it is 30 miles 50 km wide. The Bay and its tributaries contain an astounding 11, miles 18, km of shoreline.

Much of the Bay is quite shallow; more than 24 percent of the Bay is less than 6 feet 2 m deep. The average depth is 21 feet 7 m. The deepest channel in the Bay is feet 53 m. A watershed is an area of land that drains into a particular river, lake, bay, or other body of water. The Chesapeake Bay watershed is about seven times larger than the state of New Hampshire, encompassing approximately 64, square miles , sq km.

It takes six days for water to flow from the farthest corner of the watershed—the head or source waters of the Susquehanna River in New York—to Havre de Grace, Maryland, where it empties into the Chesapeake. Each year, the Susquehanna River transports more than a million tons of sediment to the Bay. See a map of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Chesapeake Bay has the largest land-to-water ratio of any coastal water body in the world.

More than , streams and rivers thread through the watershed and eventually flow into the Bay. Everyone within the Chesapeake Bay watershed is just minutes from one of the streams or rivers. These tributaries are direct conduits carrying runoff and pollution into the Bay. The Bay receives about half its water volume from the Atlantic Ocean in the form of saltwater. The other half is freshwater that drains into the Bay from its enormous watershed.

Salinity is the primary physical and ecological variable that changes through the length of the Bay. Brackish water, a combination of saltwater and freshwater, fills most of the Bay.

The mingling of the freshwater with ocean water creates an estuary. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in North America, and one of the largest in the world. The Bay contains two distinct layers of water. Warmer, less dense freshwater flows near the surface of the Bay from the north to the south and into the Atlantic Ocean. Denser, colder, and saltier ocean water flows near the bottom of the channel from the ocean up into the Bay. A zone of intensive mixing called the pycnocline separates these two layers.

This stratification, or layering, of water varies depending on the season and weather conditions. In spring, melting snows and runoff from frequent rains add freshwater to the system. In autumn, the freshwater cools faster than the deep saltwater. The freshwater layer sinks as it cools, usually resulting in rapid mixing. As the freshwater sinks and the saltwater rises, nutrients from the Bay's bottom are pulled nearer to the surface where phytoplankton and other organisms can utilize them.

The sinking freshwater carries much-needed dissolved oxygen to deep waters. Where mixing occurs, nutrients and sediment are suspended. The available nutrients and minerals in the water create ideal breeding and nursery areas for fish and other Bay dwellers. Humans prefer to eat corn on the cob rather than marsh grasses, of course, so few of us normally think of salt water marshes as more valuable than corn fields. Humans may be picky eaters, but the decaying grasses are a great food source for the microscopic zooplankton in the water.

Decaying marsh grasses provide the organic material at the base of the detritus food pyramid. Big fish at the top of the food chain eat little fish. Lower down on the food chain, little fish eat invertebrates, and invertebrates eat detritus - the decomposing plant material with microorganisms consuming the vegetation, at the bottom of the food chain. The submerged grasses create especially valuable habitat, and are sensitive to pollution. The zooplankton, snails, small fish, birds, and larger fish that feed on each other in a hierarchy of life and death can not exist if the Submerged Aquatic Vegetation SAV , the meadows of underwater grasses, disappear.

The biological productivity of the bay is enhanced by its shape. Lawrence in Canada. The Chesapeake Bay is about miles long and very shallow, averaging only 21 feet in depth when including the tidal portion of its tributaries. The bay has an extraordinary amount of shoreline - over 11, miles, more than the Pacific Ocean shoreline on the entire West Coast of the United States from Canada to Mexico.

The vast amount of life in the bay was triggered in part by that large amount of ecological "edge" where the land meets the sea, plus the ability of sunlight to reach the bottom across much of the shallow bay. The depths at which Submerged Aquatic Vegetation will grow in the tidal waters of Virginia and Maryland is limited by wave action in the shallow end the roots can't hold the plants in one place, if the water is sloshing around with too much energy and by light penetration in the deep end the deeper the water, the less light at the bottom.

Submerged aquatic vegetation provided food and shelter for microscopic zooplankton, blue crabs, and other wildlife while oysters grew in such quantity that their old shells piled up into bars that obstructed navigation.

The Chesapeake Bay is a recent feature in the Virginia landscape. When the glaciers started to melt faster than they grew at the end of the last ice age 18, years ago, the volume of liquid water on earth increased significantly.