Bill Dennison and Simon Costanza from the University of Maryland talk about the history and evolution of environmental report cards as a process for galvanising communities to improve environmental conditions.

Water quality monitoring can be done on lots of different scales. Great Barrier Reef monitoring is done on a catchment scale with the results reflecting what's happening over a very large area. While this is useful to give a big picture perspective on the reef it is less relevant to farmers and doesn't give them any information about what changes they need to be making on their particular paddocks. The Major Integrated Project is unique in that it provides local scale monitoring to farmers and then supports them to make changes.