National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Conservation Program supports the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) in the United States Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico.

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The Orinoco river basin is the third largest river in the world by volume. Its catchment encompasses 27 major sub-basins including the Bita with a catchment area of about 825,000 ha, which originates in the Colombian high plains in the Llanos ecoregion.

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Human activities can elevate coastal levels of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN). As macroalgae readily absorb and accumulate DIN, the elemental (total N and C:N ratio) composition of their tissues is less affected by temporal fluctuations compared to more direct measures of DIN concentration. Additionally, their isotopic (δ15N) composition can reflect that of the source, which could potentially be used to identify between multiple effluent sources.

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Early ecosystem health report cards focused on assessing the health of natural ecosystems, producing a “snapshot” of ecosystem health at one point in time. Ecosystem health report cards are used to guide efforts that improve ecosystem health through natural resources manage- ment and stakeholder engagement. Common themes among Report Cards include water quality and quantity and habitat. These indicators are not strictly environmental concerns, though.

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Aerial surveys of coastal habitats can uniquely inform the science and management of shallow, coastal zones, and when repeated annually, they reveal changes that are otherwise difficult to assess from ground-based surveys. This paper reviews the utility of a long- term (1984–present) annual aerial monitoring program for submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) in Chesapeake Bay, its tidal tributaries, and nearby Atlantic coastal bays, USA.

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Nutrient reduction efforts have been undertaken in recent decades to mitigate the impacts of eutrophication in coastal and estuarine systems worldwide. To track progress in response to one of these efforts we use Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) to evaluate a diverse suite of water quality constituents over a 32-year period in the Chesapeake Bay, an estuary on the east coast of the United States.

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Over the past century, the environment of the Gulf of Mexico has been significantly altered and impaired by extensive human activities. A national commitment to restore the Gulf was finally initiated in response to the unprecedented Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Consequently, there is a critical need for an assessment framework and associated set of indicators that can characterize the health and sustainability of an ecosystem having the scale and complexity of the Gulf.

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Guanabara Bay, a natural tropical embayment in Southeast Brazil adjacent to Rio de Janeiro, is important to the Brazilian economy as it provides areas for shipping, industry, recreation, and tourism. But commercial and residential urban development in the watershed results in water quality degradation. In Guanabara Bay, strong water quality gradients as a function of inputs and tidal flushing were evident.

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Chesapeake Bay has long experienced nutrient enrichment and water clarity deterioration. This study provides new quantification of loads and yields for sediment (fine and coarse grained), organic carbon (total, dissolved, and particulate), and chlorophyll-a from the monitored nontidal Chesapeake Bay watershed (MNTCBW), all of which are expected to drive estuarine water clarity.

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Low dissolved oxygen (DO) conditions are a recurring issue in waters of Chesapeake Bay, with detrimental effects on aquatic living resources. The Chesapeake Bay Program partnership has developed criteria guidance supporting the definition of state water quality standards and associated assessment procedures for DO and other parameters, which provides a binary classification of attainment or impairment.

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