This report provides an assessment of eutrophic conditions for 141 U.S. estuaries. The report was based on data and information provided by scientists and experts from around the country. Results from the assessment show that two-thirds of the estuaries evaluated exhibited moderate to high levels of eutrophication. Report production was a collaborative effort between Suzanne Bricker (NOAA NCCOS), EcoCheck (NOAA-UMCES Partnership) and IAN. More information is available from the NEEA website.

This newsletter describes forecasts of Chesapeake Bay 2007 summer ecological conditions. Forecasts of three important Bay health indicators are provided–dissolved oxygen (DO), harmful algal blooms (HABs), and changes in aquatic grass distribution.

This newsletter describes why dissolved oxygen is an important indicator of ecosystem health. It focuses on dissolved oxygen in Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries and describes the factors that affect dissolved oxygen. Additionally, the management decisions and actions that are being taken to reduce the amount of low dissolved oxygen in the Bay are described.

This poster addresses the history, theory, and practical approach of ecosystem-based fisheries management.

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 is being developed within the Chesapeake Bay science and management community in order to provide a transparent, timely, and geographically detailed annual assessment of Chesapeake Bay habitat health. This newsletter summarizes the methods and data used to calculate the report card scores for 2006.

This report card provides a transparent, timely, and geographically detailed annual assessment of 2006 Chesapeake Bay habitat health. A report card will be released each year, in early to mid April, providing an assessment of the previous year’s habitat health. 2006 is the first year that the report card has been released. This report card rates 15 reporting regions of the Bay using six indicators that are combined into a single overarching index of habitat health.

This technical document provides a detailed of the methodology employed in generating the Bay Habitat Health Index used in the Chesapeake Bay Report Card.

A Mid-Chesapeake Bay Marshlands Restoration project is being developed by the Integration and Application Network, the US Army Corps of Engineers, Maryland Port Administration, US Fish & Wildlife Service, and Maryland Department of Natural Resources. This newsletter discusses the ecological, economic, and engineering issues associated with using dredged material to restore the eroding marshes of the mid-Chesapeake Bay.

This paper proposes a neural network (NN)-embedded genetic algorithm (GA) approach for solving inverse water quality modeling problems to overcome the computational bottleneck of inverse modeling by replacing a water quality model with an efficient NN functional evaluator. An existing one-step, NN-embedded GA approach is found incapable of solving an inverse water quality modeling problem because it tends to fail in guiding the global search process to converge toward the near optima.

SINCE ITS INCEPTION, the National Park Service (NPS) has been charged with preserving the natural and cultural heritage of the United States for future generations. It is only recently, however, that the NPS has fully embraced the need to understand and describe the ecology of parks. The infusion of an ecological perspective into the natural resource management of the national parks is what separates today's park management from much of that which preceded it (Sellars 1997).