A Guide to the Mid-Atlantic Tributary Report Cards

Recently, a number of groups concerned with the health of watersheds in the Chesapeake Bay region have begun to produce ecosystem health report cards much like EcoCheck's annual Chesapeake Bay report card. This newsletter highlights those local report cards as well as the efforts of the Mid-Atlantic Tributary Assessment Coalition (MTAC). MTAC emerged from the effort initiated by EcoCheck to bring members from watershed organizations and tidal monitoring networks together in order to identify core indicators that should be monitored by all groups and to develop standards for data collection, analysis, and reporting. Currently, MTAC participants are working to produce written protocols that will help ensure uniformity of monitoring, sample analysis, and data management that will in turn allow direct comparison of data and report card scores from each region.

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