This report card provides a transparent, timely, and geographically detailed assessment of Chesapeake Bay and its Watershed. While bay health focuses on ecological indicators, watershed health includes ecological, economic, and societal indicators. This is the first year that watershed water quality trends have been calculated. Overall, Chesapeake Bay scored 56%, a C+. This was the highest score ever for the Bay, and long-term trends continue to significantly improve.

Este informe ofrece una evaluación transparente, oportuna y geográficamente detallada de la Bahía de Chesapeake y su cuenca hidrográfica. Mientras que la salud de la bahía se centra en indicadores ecológicos, la salud de la cuenca incluye indicadores ecológicos, económicos y sociales. Este es el primer año en que se han calculado las tendencias de la calidad del agua en la cuenca. En conjunto, la Bahía de Chesapeake obtuvo una puntuación del 56 % (una calificación de C+).

Atlantic Canada, like other areas, is facing accelerating sea-level rise, stronger storms, decreasing sea ice, and accelerating, more extensive coastal erosion and flooding. Coastal adaptation reduces the risk from these processes—made more intense by climate change—but often requires difficult decisions, changes in human behavior, and agreement over shared principles to guide action.

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.