The Sarasota Bay seagrass story: how regulatory targets drive innovation in redevelopment

Setting resource protection targets is a key component of effective watershed management. For Sarasota Bay, our management approach is based on protecting seagrasses, a critical natural resource. The strategy involves identifying and describing empirical relationships between nutrient (primarily nitrogen) inputs, chlorophyll concentrations, water clarity, and seagrass coverage. These relationships have been thoroughly explored over the last several years and from this effort, protective nitrogen concentrations and loadings have been established for the major segments of Sarasota Bay.

Major sources of nitrogen loading to the Bay are: atmosphere deposition, wastewater discharge, stormwater inputs, and baseflow. Of these, stormwater is the most manageable source remaining (since most remaining wastewater inputs to the Bay have been removed). Current watershed management plans are directing our efforts at curbing stormwater inputs (through implementation of BMPs) and ultimately telling us how effective our practices are at reducing nutrient loadings to the Bay.

Submitted by: Jay Leverone, Senior Scientist, Sarasota Bay Estuary Program