The world’s waters are threatened by a host of problems. Impacts from human activities like development and overuse are exacerbated by changes in climate, and increased competition by different societal interests, putting vulnerable communities and ecosystems at risk. Creating a sustainable balance of water needs for both nature and people is challenging. It will require people that are competing for water resources to work together in new collaborations and partnerships.

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The first Yucatán Coast Report Card was released in April 2018, by the Laboratorio Nacional de Resiliencia Costera (LANRESC), in Sisal, Yucatán Mexico. The report card illustrates the unique connections of groundwater to important coastal resources and values through porous rock and a system of underground waterways. The report card scores indicators for biodiversity, habitat, and water resources.

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This newsletter summarizes outputs from an initial stakeholder workshop to develop the first Lower Kafue River Basin Report Card. The workshop took place on March 5–7, 2018 in Monze, Zambia.

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In past report card years, specific regions throughout Chesapeake Bay have shown improving trends, but this is the first year that the overall Chesapeake Bay is showing significant improvement. Overall Chesapeake Bay Health Scores have been variable in the past. However, since 2015, Chesapeake Bay Health Scores have consistently been in the high C range (53, 54, 54). These consecutive high scores have contributed to an overall positive trajectory for the first time.

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Ecosystem health report cards are being considered by the Ontario Minister of the Environment and Climate Change to evaluate performance measures for, and Ontario's contributions within, the Great Lakes basin community. IAN travelled to Toronto to lead an ecosystem health report card training workshop May 16–17, 2018. This newsletter summarizes the results of that training workshop.

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Small islands can guide visualization of the diverse information requirements of future context-relevant coastal governance. On small marine islands (<20 000 km2), negative effects of coastal challenges (e.g., related to population growth, unsustainable resource use or climate change) can develop rapidly, with high intensity and extreme impacts.

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In 2018, the Integration and Application Network partnered with OARS to initiate a river report card for the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers. This newsletter highlights two stakeholder workshops held at Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge on February 28 and March 1, 2018. The initial workshop elicited what stakeholders value about the rivers, and subsequent workshop focused on how to measure those values, and where to find data.

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To protect the aquatic living resources of Chesapeake Bay, the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership has developed guidance for state water quality standards, which include ambient water quality criteria to protect designated uses (DUs), and associated assessment procedures for dissolved oxygen (DO), water clarity/underwater bay grasses, and chlorophyll-a. For measuring progress toward meeting the respective states' water quality standards…

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The response of estuarine ecosystems to long-term changes in external forcing is strongly mediated by interactions between the biogeochemical cycling of carbon, oxygen, and inorganic nutrients. Although long-term changes in estuaries are often assessed at the annual scale, phytoplankton biomass, dissolved oxygen concentrations, and biogeochemical rate processes have strong seasonal cycles at temperate latitudes.

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Fort Monroe National Monument is located at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula in Hampton, Virginia. The site includes the largest stone fort built in the United States and was formally added to the National Park System in 2011, recognizing millennia of human interactions with this landscape. Natural resources within the 325-acre park boundary include an ecologically diverse and productive saltmarsh cordgrass wetlands within Mill Creek.

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