Characteristics Of The Chesapeake Bay

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The Chesapeake Bay is a very large estuary that holds more than eighteen trillion gallons of water (“The Bay Watershed”). This large estuary is part of six of the different states of Maryland, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia (“Chesapeake Bay Program”). Some characteristics of the bay are salinity, temperature, and circulation. The bay watershed is home to seventeen million people and gains more people each year, so it is no wonder why there are pollution problems (“Chesapeake Bay Program”). The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and is diverse with life. Though the bay is filled with life, it faces many problems caused by humans.
The three most important physical characteristics of the Chesapeake Bay are salinity, temperature, and circulation. Salinity is the measure of the amount of dissolved salts in the water and matters because certain types of fish and bay grasses need a certain amount of salt in the water (“Physical Description”). In general, the lower parts of the Chesapeake Bay are salty and the upper bay is mostly fresh, which means that the fish that need salt like to stay in the lower part of the bay. The fish that cannot survive in salt water will stay in the upper bay (Chesapeake Bay Program”).
Change in water temperature changes the places where grasses are able to grow, when fish and crab feed, reproduce, and migrate ("Chesapeake Bay Program"). The temperature in the bay goes from high in the summer to very low in the winter. During summer, the surface water is warmer than the deeper water which creates two different temperature layers that actually separate surface waters from deeper waters (“Chesapeake Bay Program”). The temperature layers change th...

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... The Alliance for the Chesapeake bay is now trying to investigate the impact of human activities on The Chesapeake Bay. This proves that humans can make a difference to help save the Chesapeake Bay.
In conclusion, the Chesapeake Bay is the largest Estuary in the United States. It is diverse with many different plants and animals. The bay is made up of salinity, temperature, and circulation (“Chesapeake Bay Program”). The Alewife and the Atlantic Croaker are different, unique, and interesting fish with many interesting characteristics. Humans can have a great or terrible impact on the bay by forming groups to help protect the bay, and polluting the bay with agriculture, urban and suburban runoff, and air pollution from all the cars. The Chesapeake Bay has a very big area of information to learn about. That is what makes the Chesapeake Bay such a unique estuary.

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