We offer the following history of the Chesapeake (Figure 
7). The Chesapeake was discovered in 1607. Across the bottom 
of the illustration are depicted historic events or times to 
provide a reference point. 
The population of the northern Chesapeake Bay area at the 
time of the colonists arrival was on the order of 100,000 in the 
entire watershed. 
Just prior to the Revolutionary War, there was a significant 
population upheaval in the Chesapeake watershed. That popula¬ 
tion grew rapidly until about 1880 or 1890 when it became 
stable. After World War II, the population increased dramati¬ 
cally again. The projection is that it will continue to 
increase rather dramatically. 
Subsistance agriculture, lumbering, tobacco farming, and 
eventually agribusiness resulted in the improvement of fully 50 
percent of the Chesapeake watershed by 1850. Since that time, 
fields have been going back to forests or have been converted to 
urban or residential areas. Sedimentation rates and metal loads 
are also depicted and have been described earlier. 
When was the first Bay-wide synoptic nutrient cruise ever 
conducted? The first Bay-wide historical nutrient cruise that 
attempted to cover the entire Chesapeake Bay and the major tribu¬ 
taries was conducted by the Chesapeake Bay Institute, Johns 
Hopkins University, in 1963. Note that by 1963, the metal loads 
appear to have already been declining. 
Agricultural activity had peaked a hundred years prior to 
that; the population was almost what it is today; and metal 
loads had already started to decline. From a direct historical 
perspective from a day on Chesapeake perspective, it's difficult 
to look back at existing data and try to understand what changes 
have occurred to date. 
Whether by geochemical or paleontological methods, we think 
that the stratigraphy of selected cores from the Chesapeake Bay 
can be used to determine what's happened to the system as the 
population of diatoms versus dinoflagellates changes 
dramatically; as the contribution of organic matter to the 
system changes dramatically; as periods of persistent anoxia 
seem to occur; do any of these have precedence in the past or 
are they unprecedented? 
Perhaps by understanding the stratigraphy of some of these 
cores, whether geochemically or paleontologically, we can get a 
feeling for how the Chesapeake has changed in response to 
natural and anthropogenic influences that have occurred there. 
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