A report card on the health of the Chesapeake Bay released today looks beyond the traditional indicators of nitrogen, phosphorus and water, and reviews what’s going on with the people in the bay’s massive watershed.

On ecological indicators the new report card by UMCES, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, finds the bay is making progress, though the watersheds of some of the rivers that feed the Bay are not as healthy.

Later in the show, Maryland Secretary of Natural Resources Josh Kurtz joins us to discuss the invasive and indigenous creatures in the bay. After years of falling numbers, are crab populations moving in the right direction?

Bill Dennison, UMCES vice president for Science Application, joins us first to discuss the report card's new findings. Dennison is a professor of marine science and will become UMCES interim president in September.

The UMCES report includes a new component; environmental justice. It finds marked disparities. Suburbs tend to show lower impacts of environmental stress than cities and rural areas.

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