2009 - COAST was used to employ adaptive management for water-quality decisions making related to agriculture, forested, and urban lands. Here are a few examples:

• The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is using COAST to identify priority agriculture areas within the Chesapeake Bay watershed to enhance funding from the 2008 Farm Bill.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and states in the Bay watershed are using information from COAST to help select projects to reduce nutrients from urban areas utilizing funds from the 2009 Stimulus Bill.
• The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Maryland Bay Trust Fund are also using information from COAST to help identify areas in which to focus and assess efforts to reduce nutrients from agricultural and urban areas.

2010 - COAST includes information on preserving and restoring forested areas to meet the Healthy Watershed Goal in the Executive Order. This information was derived by developing a COAST forest test case group which consisted of state and federal level riparian forest buffer specialists working at the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program.

• The information was presented to the CBP Forestry Workgroup and further refined to ensure its usefulness to the preservation community.

Learn More:

• Maryland Baystat
• Adaptive Management Case Studies