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.

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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.

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

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Nutrient point sources such as wastewater treatment plants and non-point sources including agricultural runoff degrade the water quality of Maryland's Coastal Bays through excessive nutrient loading. Identifying specific sources is difficult due to their variety and mixture. Biological indicators can identify nitrogen sources, integrate nitrogen from these sources over time, and detect biologically important nutrients.

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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.

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Resource managers in South Florida recognize that they need to address threats to natural resources by taking action to restore and sustain ecosystems. The attention and resources formerly directed toward basic ecosystem research in South Florida are increasingly directed toward broader goals of a region-wide restoration effort.

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This newsletter is based on the findings of the Conceptual Ecological Model Focus Group—March 2006 and considers restoration options in the context of the valuable national ecosystem services supplied from Coastal Louisiana. Ecosystem goods & services provided to Louisiana & the nation by coastal landscapes include wildlife & fisheries habitat, support for petrochemical production,improved water quality & flood protection, ecotourism & aesthetic appeal.

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In collaboration with the University of Maryland's Cooperative Extension Service at the Wye Mills Research and Education Center, EcoCheck (NOAA - UMCES partnership) has produced a newsletter on the history and current trends of benthic communities in Maryland's Coastal Bays. Aquatic grasses and shellfish are important components of a healthy ecosystem because they provide a variety of ecosystem services, improve water quality, and are commercially valuable.

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Although many studies measure the abundance of benthic microalgae (BMA), at the meters squared scale, comparing these studies is difficult due to the variety of sampling, extraction, and analysis techniques. This difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that BMA abundance has high spatial and temporal variability, at all spatial scales.

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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.

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