This document provides guidelines for the successful production of tidal ecosystem health report cards. Specifically, this document serves as an addendum to the Sampling and data analysis protocols for Mid-Atlantic tidal tributary indicators which develops a clear and consistent protocol for the identification, collection, and analysis of the indicator of bacteria.

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Channel heads are the beginning of river networks and thus knowing their location is important in assessing water resources and health threats to fluvial ecosystems. Despite their importance, most channel heads are unmapped. Remote sensing technologies have not yet proven effective under forested canopies, suggesting that predictive models of channel head locations are the best solution to the impracticality of field-mapping the millions of these features that exist in the U.S. alone.

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Residents of the Chesapeake Bay watershed depend upon a healthy Bay for food, recreation, and commercial enterprises. But the ways in which we use the watershed’s lands—from driving our cars to spreading fertilizers—impact the health of the Bay’s waters. Wastewater treatment plants, agricultural operations, and urban runoff are major sources of the nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment pollution that threaten the Bay’s health.

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This Monitoring Strategy was designed to identify nutrient reduction efficiencies of best management practices (BMPs) and provide information to determine what type of monitoring is needed by Trust Fund recipients to evaluate the effectiveness of BMP implementation. The main objective is to provide a comprehensive protocol that serves all water quality assessment needs when monitoring urban and agricultural non-point nutrient and sediment fluxes.

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This document provides guidelines for the successful production of tidal ecosystem health report cards.

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This report card provides a transparent, timely, and geographically detailed assessment of 2010 Chesapeake Bay health. The overall health of Chesapeake Bay, assessed using water quality and biotic indicators, declined slightly in 2010. The overall grade decreased from a C in 2009 to C- in 2010. Only two reporting regions (James River and York River) had improved grades in 2010, three were unchanged, and nine declined.

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Since the 2006 release of the first EcoCheck Chesapeake Bay report card, environmental report cards have gained increasing popularity and recognition as a public-friendly and scientifically sound method for reporting the health of a waterway. Recently, a number of watershed organizations in the Mid-Atlantic region have begun producing their own tributary-specific report cards.

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Blue crabs are one of the best-known and most celebrated symbols of the Chesapeake. Their populations in the Bay have hovered near historic lows for much of the last decade, but have recently begun to show signs of improvement. This newsletter reviews the current status of the blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay as well as the management systems in place to monitor and protect this iconic species.

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Nitrogen pollution has been a primary cause of a degraded Chesapeake Bay ecosystem for over a century. Since the Clean Water Act of 1972, Bay monitoring programs have measured the amount of nitrogen coming from human activities and on land (urban, suburban, rural, and industrial) and from natural cycling in the water column. This information is used to evaluate management actions for nutrient reduction.

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This report card provides a transparent, timely, and geographically detailed assessment of 2009 Chesapeake Bay habitat health. The overall health of Chesapeake Bay, assessed using water quality and biotic indicators, was the best it has been since 2002. The overall grade improved from C- in 2008 to C in 2009. Eight reporting regions had improved grades in 2009, four were unchanged, and two had slightly worse grades.

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