These National Park Service Resource Briefs are the next iteration of Natural Resource Condition Assessments. They analyze and present the condition of important natural resources in 11 National Capital Region National Parks to guide local and regional management of these resources.

These National Park Service Resource Briefs are the next iteration of Natural Resource Condition Assessments. They analyze and present the condition of important natural resources in 11 National Capital Region National Parks to guide local and regional management of these resources.

The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Integration and Application Network has partnered with Council Fire, LLC, the Clinton River Watershed Council, Friends of the Detroit River, Huron River Watershed Council, River Raisin Watershed Council, and Friends of the Rouge to create socio-environmental report cards for five rivers in southeast Michigan. An overall report card that integrates the results into an assessment of the southeast Michigan region will also be produced.

The Darwin Harbour Integrated Report Card has been developed through extensive consultation with stakeholders from the Darwin Harbour region and relies heavily on their knowledge and expertise. Initiated by the Darwin Harbour Advisory Committee, a series of workshops were held in March 2020, representing the first step in this report card journey.

The Chesapeake Bay ecosystem is a national treasure that provides almost $100 billion annually of goods and services. The Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP), is one of the largest federal-state restoration partnerships in the United States and is underpinned by rigorous science. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has a pivotal role as a science provider for assessing ecosystem condition and response in the Chesapeake watershed.

This companion document to the 2020 Mississippi River report card contains information about data sources for all indicators, summary of analysis methods, and scoring details for each of the six America’s Watershed Initiative goals, and for two watershed wide indicators. Additional information regarding the goals is included to provide greater detail and discussion than is possible in the report card document.

The Chesapeake Bay Program maintains an extensive nontidal monitoring network, measuring nitrogen and phosphorus (nutrients) at more than 100 locations on rivers and streams in the watershed. Data from these locations are used by USGS to assess the ecosystem’s response to nutrient-reduction efforts.

Coastal wetlands, such as saltmarshes and mangroves that fringe transitional waters, deliver important ecosystem services that support human development. Coastal … wetlands are complex social-ecological systems that occur at all latitudes, from polar … regions to the tropics. This overview covers wetlands in five continents. The wetlands … are of varying size, catchment size, human population and stages of economic … development.

This report card provides a transparent, timely, and geographically detailed assessment of Chesapeake Bay. Since 2016, UMCES has engaged stakeholders throughout the watershed to transform the report card into an evaluation of the Chesapeake Watershed health. Watershed health includes traditional ecosystem indicators, but also social, economic, and cultural indicators. This is the first year the watershed has been scored, using five indicators of ecological and socioeconomic health.

New York Harbor is a complex of interconnected waterways that have supported the rapid development of a thriving megacity and metropolitan region. The water quality of New York, a partner city in the World Harbour Project, is a reflection of the combined impacts of this metropolitan region. Water quality health and trends were assessed between 1996–2017 in 9 different reporting regions using publicly available data.