This research assesses Chesapeake Bay’s sustainability in four domains: environment, social, economy, and governance, using the Circles of Coastal Sustainability methodology. Each of the four domains has five categories, and each category is evaluated by the authors’ expert judgment using indicators related to the socio-ecological system and the definition of sustainable development.

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Eutrophication has been a major environmental issue in many coastal and inland ecosystems, which is primarily attributed to excessive anthropogenic inputs of nutrients. Restoration efforts have therefore focused on the reduction of watershed nutrient loads, including in the Chesapeake Bay (USA).

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Agricultural lands are an important part of the economy and heritage of the Chesapeake Bay watershed and are a focus of conservation activities. Streams and rivers around farms provide communities with drinking water and recreational opportunities, but these local benefits can be impaired by elevated nutrient and sediment concentrations.

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Reduction of total phosphorus (TP) loads has long been a management focus of Chesapeake Bay restoration, but riverine monitoring stations have shown mixed temporal trends. To better understand the regional patterns and drivers of TP trends across the Bay watershed, we compiled and analyzed TP load data from 90 Non-Tidal Network stations using clustering and random forest (RF) approaches.

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This study is a social-ecological analysis of eutrophication in the Chesapeake Bay, United States of America (USA). It uses an expanded DPSIR framework (Drivers/Pressures/State/ Impacts/Responses) methodology to analyze the issue. In addition, a typology of the social actors and stakeholders in the socio-economic part of the system is identified.

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The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) is launching the Chesapeake Global Collaboratory to develop solutions to the urgent environmental challenges facing the region, nation, and planet.

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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 fourth year the watershed has been scored, and one new ecological indicator has been added.

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For over three decades, Chesapeake Bay (USA) has been the focal point of a coordinated restoration strategy implemented through a partnership of governmen- tal and nongovernmental entities, which has been a classical model for coastal restoration worldwide.

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Global change has converted many structurally complex and ecologically and eco- nomically valuable coastlines to bare substrate. In the structural habitats that remain, climate-tolerant and opportunistic species are increasing in response to environmental extremes and variability. The shifting of dominant foundation species identity with climate change poses a unique conservation challenge because species vary in their responses to environmental stressors and to management.

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The Chesapeake Bay Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) and IAN have partnered to synthesize the contents of their latest publication on Rising Watershed and Bay Water Temperatures— Ecological Implications and Management Responses into a report summary outlining key management and research recommendations, the causes and effects of rising water temperatures, and actions for moving forward. This document also builds on the previous STAC Rising Water Temperatures Workshop newsletter.

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