Human activities and climate change are making tidal rivers and estuaries saltier. These salinity changes threaten drinking water supply, coastal infrastructure, agriculture, industry, and ecosystems. Currently, most people do not have the information they need to plan for and mitigate these potential impacts.

To facilitate watershed management, watershed models are often developed and used to assess the expected impact of scenarios of past and future management policies and practices and the impact of watershed conditions. However, the level of load reductions estimated using monitoring data often does not match with model predictions, leading to questions around the level of effort and investment being made in restoration activities and the reliability of the model.