DELMARVA - The Chesapeake Bay Program has a mixed bag of data to report about the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.
The positive news comes in the form of a historic effort to plant more trees. In 2024, across the bayside portions of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, the program claims communities planted 5,743 acres worth of trees. That number is not only an improvement, but it is more than double the number of trees that were planted just one year earlier in 2023.
“It is remarkable to see how federal, state, and local investments in urban and community forestry have paid off in the Chesapeake Bay watershed with these record-breaking planting rates," said Katherine Brownson, liaison for the U.S. Forest Service to the Chesapeake Bay Program and coordinator of the Forestry Workgroup. “These trees will be critical to provide clean water, shade, air, and recreational opportunities for local communities throughout the watershed.”
The good news, however, does not outweigh the bad news. Despite the record-setting effort of bay communities, the updated High-Resolution Land Use/Land Cover Data released in June 2025, shows a net loss of more than 28,000 acres of tree canopy in the watershed between 2013-2014 and 2021-2022. Those losses are so detrimental that the Chesapeake Bay Program says they will not meet their 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement Tree Canopy Outcome to expand urban tree canopy by 2,400 acres by 2025.
According to the Chesapeake Bay Program, planting trees in and around the Chesapeake Bay watershed is one of the most cost-effective practices for reducing nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment runoff from entering the Chesapeake Bay and local waterways. The program claims that not only is this project environmentally friendly, but it also provides major economic benefits.