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| Maryland Coastal Bays - Methods
Ecosystem health report cards are an effective means of tracking and reporting the health of a waterway at both local and regional scales. A report card has been developed by the Coastal Bays science and management community in order to provide a transparent, timely, and geographically detailed annual assessment of Coastal Bays health.
Development of a Spatially-Explicit Health Index for the Coastal Bays of Maryland and Virginia
This technical document provides a more detailed of the methodology employed in generating the Coastal Bays Health Index. Click thumbnail to download.
Coastal Bays health has been affected by elevated nutrient inputs from sources such as agricultural and urban runoff, resulting in water quality and biotic (biological) degradation. For the report card, Coastal Bays health is defined as the progress of six indicators towards established ecological thresholds. The four water quality indicators are chlorophyll a, dissolved oxygen, total nitrogen and total phosphorus, and the two biotic indicators are seagrass and hard clams.