This publication serves as a summary of Gordon et al. (2022) and was prepared in collaboration between the USGS and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Integration and Application Network. The summary touches on key findings of the study along with management implications and applications. Please feel free to download the summary here or check it out on the USGS website:

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Understanding shallow water biogeochemical dynamics is a challenge in coastal regions, due to the presence of highly variable land-water interface fluxes, tight coupling with sediment processes, tidal dynamics, and diurnal variability in biogeochemical processes.

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This publication serves as a summary of Fanelli et al. (2022) and was prepared in collaboration between the USGS and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Integration and Application Network. The summary touches on key findings of the study along with management, monitoring, and reseach applications. Please feel free to download the summary here or check it out on the USGS website:

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Synthesizing large, complex data sets to inform resource managers towards effective environmental stewardship is a universal challenge. In Chesapeake Bay, a well-studied and intensively monitored estuary in North America, the challenge of synthesizing data on water quality and land use as factors related to a key habitat, submerged aquatic vegetation, was tackled by a team of scientists and resource managers operating at multiple levels of governance (state, federal).

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This paper develops a barometer that indexes water quality in the Chesapeake Bay and summarizes quality over spatial regions and temporal periods. The barometer has a basis in risk assessment and hydrology, and is a function of three different metrics of water quality relative to numerical criteria: relative frequency of criterion attainment; magnitude of deviation from a numerical criterion; and duration of criterion attainment.

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This report card provides a transparent, timely, and geographically detailed assessment of Chesapeake Bay and its Watershed. Since 2016, UMCES has engaged stakeholders throughout the watershed to transform the report card into an evaluation of the Chesapeake Watershed health. Watershed health includes traditional ecological indicators, but also economic and societal indicators. This is the third year the watershed has been scored, and four new economic indicators have been added.

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Understanding drivers of water quality in local watersheds is the first step for implementing targeted restoration practices. Nutrient inventories can inform water quality management decisions by identifying shifts in nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) balances over space and time while also keeping track of the likely urban and agricultural point and nonpoint sources of pollution.

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Anthropogenic nutrient inputs have led to nutrient enrichment in many waterbodies worldwide, including Chesapeake Bay (USA). River water quality integrates the spatial and temporal changes of watersheds and forms the foundation for disentangling the effects of anthropogenic inputs.

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In Chesapeake Bay in the United States, decades of management efforts have resulted in modest reductions of nutrient loads from the watershed, but the corresponding improvements in estuarine water quality have not consistently followed. Generalize additive models were used to directly link river flows and nutrient loads from the watershed to nutrient trends in the estuary on a station-by-station basis, which allowed for identification of exactly when and where responses are happening.

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Nitrogen, a critical element in all forms of life, is continuously being passed from nonliving to living matter and then back again, but an excess of this nutrient can have adverse effects on aquatic environments. An understanding of the past, present, and future sources, movement, and fate of nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay watershed can help inform efforts to bring this cycle back into balance (fig. OV.1).

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