SAE, or supervised agricultural experience, is required for the magnet programs students. Being in the magnet program, it is required to do some sort of internship or volunteering, for agricultural experience. Natural resources teacher Mrs. Laura O’Leary helped assign a particular SAE to two sophomores, Emma Konopacki and Max Diegel. This supervised agricultural experience is one regarding the health of a stream off of the HaHa River in Abingdon, right off of Abingdon Road.

     Diegel says that this stream was offered to them because, “It was a stream that was being studied already, the stream health dictating exactly what is being studied at the current moment.” For this SAE, the students have to research a question and do research on it.

      For this particular stream, there was a clearcut just next to it that was done by companies Logistics Center LLC and Harford Investors LLC. Clear cutting refers to when most or all trees in an area are uniformly cut down, removing all or mostly all of an ecosystem for development purposes. 

     In Maryland, “The cutting or removal of natural vegetation in the Buffer is not allowed unless a property owner obtains approval of a Buffer Management Plan from the local government,” according to Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources. Making this clear cut illegal has also sparked a court case against the companies and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation or CBF. 

     Konopacki and Diegel are “studying the effect of the clear cut on the stream heath and the effect from the area that is closest to and above it,” according to Konopacki. 

     Diegel shares the data they are monitoring, which includes turbidity, dissolved oxygen, temperature and phosphate, and nitrate. From above the cut to next to the cut, there was an increase in Nitrate of over 14 Mg/L, constant increasing in turbidity, and an increase in phosphate.  

     Increase in phosphorus concentration can increase levels of algae, including cyanobacteria. High levels of Nitrate  causes a dense growth of plant life and death of animal life from lack of oxygen, and is mainly caused from fertilizer runoff and wastewater. The damage the cut has done to the land and the water has shown its effects on the ecosystem.