Our Work

A group of volunteers pose behind several bags of trash on a trail at Crooked Branch Ravine Park.

Project Clean Stream Kick Off Events Remove 1,940 Pounds of Trash from the Watershed!

The Alliance kicked off yet another year of Project Clean Stream. So far, we’ve held 23 events and collected over 6,500 pounds of trash from the Chesapeake Bay watershed!

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Knowledge is Power; Know Your Flowers (Part 2) – Flower Parts

Remember our Inflorescence Story from this past March? Take another deep dive into flowers with us in Part 2 and learn more about flower anatomy.

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A person crouched next to a creek placing a pole into the water

Putting Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative Data to Use

What good is data if it never gets used? The Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative (CMC) is here to make sure that doesn’t happen! Each group within the CMC network is monitoring to achieve their own unique and individual goals for education, advocacy, outreach, and communication and have made enormous impacts on their communities.

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Move Over Miscanthus, Three Native Grasses to Plant Instead

Non-native species aren’t inherently bad, and not all non-native species become invasive. However, we should thoughtfully consider our landscaping choices, particularly when heading to our local garden center.

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Circle around katydid eggs on a small branch.

What’s Poppin’? Phenological Fun: Katydids

You can find lots of cool things if you look in the right places! The place this time was the branch of a young black locust tree in one of our riparian buffers. This twig looks like it’s turning into a scaly lizard! But this isn’t a reptile, it’s an insect.

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Tulip poplar flower.

Knowledge is Power; Know Your Flowers (Part 1) – An Inflorescence Story

Have you ever noticed how vastly different and complicated flowering plants can be? Learn more about how botanists identify the different types of patterns in flowers.

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Where Trash Hides

During cleanup events, there is usually a plethora of visual litter that is quite easy to collect. However, at second glance, you can discover just how much trash is camouflaged within the environment!

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Underwater view of the top of a fairy shrimp swiming in a creek.

What’s Swimmin’? Phenological Fun! Fairy Shrimp

What’s swimming right now? Fairy shrimp! These small crustaceans live in vernal pools and lakes and are an important food source for both fish and birds.

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GSI Maintenance: Connecting with the Community

DC’s Department of Energy and Environment has partnered with The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay to maintain over 350 public Green Stormwater Infrastructure practices otherwise known as Best Management Practices, or BMPs for short.

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Front view of a wood frog

Surviving Winter: The Amphibian Way

How do amphibians survive winter? These cold-blooded critters have unique methods for staying alive during the frigid winter months.

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