Manassas National Battlefield Park was established to preserve the scene of two major Civil War battles. Much of the landscape retains its wartime character with a patchwork of open fields and woodlots scattered across gently rolling hills. The 5,073 acre park is located within the northern VA Piedmont, approximately 45 miles southwest of Washington, DC. Many surrounding lands are becoming residential and industrial developments.

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Monocacy National Battlefield is managed as a cultural resource commemorating the Civil War battle that took place along the Monocacy River south of Frederick, MD. The 1,647 acre park is dominated by active farms with some mixed hardwood forests and field/edge habitat. Like other battlefield parks, it has the challenge of combining the preservation of a historic landscape with natural resource management.

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National Capital Parks-East includes 14 major sites covering over 8,000 acres within Washington, DC and three nearby counties in MD. The parks lie entirely within the Coastal Plain physiographic region and are managed for a variety of natural, cultural, and recreational resources.

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Prince William Forest Park is the largest protected example of Piedmont forest in the National Park System. The ~15,000 acre park in northern VA also protects the Quantico Creek watershed, and is a sanctuary for numerous native plant and animal species.

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Rock Creek Park is one of the largest forested urban parks in the United States, containing a wide variety of natural, historical, and recreational features in the midst of Washington, D.C. The majority of the 3,000 acre park surrounds the lower watershed of Rock Creek and its tributaries as the drainage drops from the Piedmont Plateau to the Coastal Plain.

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Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts is the only National Park dedicated to the performing arts. Performance structures on the 130 acre property include a 7,000-person main stage. The park includes protected stream, meadow, and forest patches in the urban Washington, DC landscape. Noise from the Dulles Toll Road threatens the primary function of the park as a performance venue and is a major management concern.

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This brochure summarizes what are seagrasses, their role in the productivity of ecosystems, their importance to humans as well as a collection of fun facts.

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This newsletter describes current and future directions of Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM). While the standard approach to fisheries management has been to focus on one species at a time, EBFM characterizes a greater number of ecosystem components, including the physical and chemical properties of systems. The newsletter explores the current and potential applications of the ecosystem-based approach.

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This newsletter addresses the extreme weather conditions that the Bay area experienced during the spring and summer of 2006 and how these weather conditions affected the summer ecological forecast that was released in May 2006 and other aspects of Bay health. The forecast focuses on dissolved oxygen in the mainstem, harmful algal blooms in the Potomac River and aquatic grasses in three locations in the Bay.

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This report was published by the Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) project with the support of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). It provides new assessment tools for coastal management programs and discusses the key science outputs of the project. Science communicators at IAN worked with authors and designers to create nine figures for the 40-page report.

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