The Choptank River always scores poorly in the Chesapeake Bay Report Card in terms of water quality and biotic integrity, with evidence that nutrient inputs (particularly nitrogen) are primarily responsible for degraded water quality. This has prompted the requirement for a monitoring approach that can distinguish the distribution and impacts of these various sources of nitrogen.

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Forest Trends (FT) is a Washington D.C.-based international non‐profit organization whose mission is four‐fold: to expand the value of forests to society; to promote sustainable forest management and conservation by creating and capturing market values for ecosystem services; to support innovative projects and companies that are developing these markets; and to enhance the livelihoods of local communities living in and around those forests.

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The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation established a Hurricane Sandy Wildlife Response Fund to conduct a rapid assessment of the ecological impacts of Hurricane Sandy from North Carolina to Rhode Island, with emphasis on habitats and associated wildlife.

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In 2009, Governor Martin O’Malley and Maryland’s General Assembly charged the State with developing a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan that will reduce greenhouse gases 25 percent by the year 2020. Working closely with staff at Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), IAN's first task was to produce a 14-page executive summary to provide an overview of Maryland’s Plan…

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The Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) funds research that protects and preserves the Great Barrier Reef, particularly in the face of climate change. In April 2012, GBRF hosted a workshop to chart a vision for assessing the vulnerability of the Great Barrier Reef to climate change through the development of a climate vulnerability index. Major climate impacts already being manifested include:

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Native to the Gulf of Mexico, Karenia brevis is a toxic dinoflagellate that blooms almost annually off the west coast of Florida. K. brevis blooms are not a new phenomenon on the west Florida shelf, and ships' logs suggest bloom-related events (fish kills) dating back to the 1500s. Coastal regions of Florida have experienced some of the most rapid population growth and development in the United States.

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For this project, IAN staff collaborated with the authors of a UNEP publication, "Taking Steps toward Marine and Coastal Ecosystem-Based Management - An Introductory Guide." Our role was to produce several key conceptual diagrams for the publication: to help define the five core elements of Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM), it's geographic scope, and to illustrate how planning with an ecosystem perspective works.

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The Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, along with its partners Harwell Gentile & Associates, LC, and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, proposes to develop a comprehensive framework for a Report Card on the health of the Gulf of Mexico.

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The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is developing a new transparency standard for marine waters that will protect the seagrass species found throughout the state. The current standard does not sufficiently protect seagrasses, and the new standard will help DEP identify waters in which transparency is too low for healthy seagrass beds.

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Coastal management in the U.S. is in transition toward a stronger, ecosystem-based approach implemented at the regional scale and supported by strong scientific synthesis and prediction. The division of ecosystem components among different agencies, scientific disciplines, and political boundaries, as well as the complexities of conducting Regional Ecosystem Research (RER) make effective ecosystem management very challenging.

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