Freshwater streams in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are home to numerous aquatic organisms (like fish, amphibians, mussels, and insects) and provide drinking water and recreational opportunities to people living in or visiting the watershed. Land-use changes, such as urban development and increased activities in certain agricultural sectors, have degraded water quality and altered conditions in these streams, thereby affecting their health and function.

Parachute science is the problematic and extractive practice of non-local researchers taking data, knowledge and information from communities of which they are not members, failing to engage the local community and local scientists, marginalizing them in most aspects of the research, and using the results to their own benefit.

In October 2024, the COAST Card team made their final site visit to the Chesapeake Bay. There, they participated in field trips, a workshop on the Chesapeake Global Collaboratory, and discussed the final year of the COAST Card Project. This trip marked the end of the site visits for the project and the final of four countries visited for the project.

In 2022, IAN staff and the interning Global Sustainability Scholars began hosting community Listening Sessions in the Potomac River Watershed. These Listening Sessions were designed to gather data on the values, concerns, and future characteristics that are important to each town's residents.

Following the first-ever Maryland Coastal Adaptation Report Card in 2021, IAN collaborated with the Charles County Resilience Authority to develop a county-level assessment of coastal adaptation. Following in-person and virtual stakeholder engagement workshops, a suite of eighteen resilience indicators and nine vulnerability indicators were identified and assessed. Dividing adaptation indicators into two categories highlights areas that are doing particularly well or require extra attention.

The 1925 Chesapeake Bay Report Card was produced to celebrate the UMCES Centennial. Inspired by 1920s design, this report card offers a glimpse of what a Chesapeake Bay Report Card might have been like in 1925, when UMCES was founded. The state of the Bay in 1925 is not an accurate scientific assessment, but an estimation based on informed opinions and broad historical generalizations.

This report card provides a transparent, timely, and geographically detailed assessment of Chesapeake Bay and its Watershed. 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 ecological indicators, but also economic and societal indicators.

El Reporte de Salud de la bahía de Chesapeake de 1925 se elaboró ​​para celebrar el centenario de la UMCES. Inspirado en el diseño de la década de 1920, este informe ofrece una visión de cómo habría sido un Reporte de salud sobre la bahía de Chesapeake en 1925, cuando se fundó la UMCES. El estado de la bahía en 1925 no es una evaluación científica precisa, sino una estimación basada en opiniones fundamentadas, y generalizaciones históricas generales.

Este informe proporciona una evaluación transparente, oportuna, y geográficamente detallada de la bahía de Chesapeake y su cuenca. Desde 2016, UMCES ha involucrado a las partes interesadas de toda la cuenca para transformar el informe en una evaluación de la salud de la cuenca de Chesapeake. Los indicadores de la bahía evalúan la salud del ecosistema acuático, mientras que los indicadores de la cuenca hidrográfica cubren las condiciones ecológicas, sociales, y económicas.

On April 1, 2025, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) co-hosted the first joint Chesapeake Bay Report Card Networking Meeting at CBF’s Annapolis headquarters. Over 30 stakeholders from nonprofits, government, academia, and community groups gathered to advance a shared vision for more inclusive, responsive, transparent, and collaborative socio-environmental reporting across the watershed.