This conference report synthesises the discussions and lessons learnt from a workshop with international and local experts and practitioners held in Noum´ea, New Caledonia (France, Oceania) from 17th to 21st of October 2022. The workshop was part of a larger transdisciplinary process aimed to anticipate and react to marine heatwaves, coastal erosion and sea level rise as well as ocean deoxygenation and acidification in Fiji and New Caledonia.

Many agricultural watersheds rely on the voluntary use of management practices (MPs) to reduce nonpoint source nutrient and sediment loads; however, the water-quality effects of MPs are uncertain. We interpreted water-quality responses from as early as 1985 through 2020 in three agricultural Chesapeake Bay watersheds that were prioritized for MP implementation, namely, the Smith Creek (Virginia), Upper Chester River (Maryland), and Conewago Creek (Pennsylvania) watersheds.

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.

Nutrient pollution from agriculture and urban areas plus acid mine drainage (AMD) from legacy coal mines are primary causes of water-quality impairment in the Susquehanna River, which is the predominant source of freshwater and nutrients entering the Chesapeake Bay.

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).

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.

UMCES and America's Watershed Initiative held two workshops in Oklahoma City to examine Transportation and Flow Management in the Arkansas-Red River Basin. This document summarizes the results of the workshops and addresses next steps in the Mississippi River watershed.

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.

Restoring vegetation in degraded ecosystems is an increasingly common practice for promoting biodiversity and ecological function, but successful implementation is hampered by an incomplete understanding of the processes that limit restoration success. By synthesizing terrestrial and aquatic studies globally (2594 experimental tests from 610 articles), we reveal substantial herbivore control of vegetation under restoration.

The James Tributary Summary outlines change over time for a suite of monitored tidal water quality parameters and associated potential drivers of those trends for the period 1985 – 2021 and provides a brief description of the current state of knowledge explaining these observed changes.