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April 5, 2012

Assessing the vulnerability of the Great Barrier Reef to climate change

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation is an organization which funds research that protects and preserves the Great Barrier Reef, particularly in the face of climate change. The Foundation convened a workshop to develop a synthetic publication that charts the vision for assessing the vulnerability to climate change. The Great Barrier Reef components used in this [...]

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April 3, 2012

Environmental report card workshop in Surfers Paradise, Australia

Sponsored by the Australian Water and Environmental Research Alliance (AWERA), a workshop on environmental report cards was held near Brisbane, Australia. This workshop focused on how environmental report cards have emerged as a technique to integrate data and provide feedback to a wide range of stakeholders as to the ecosystem health of a particular region. [...]

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March 28, 2012

Innovations in Environmental Synthesis, Reporting and Governance: Part 12 – Questions From the Seminar

QUESTION: Hi, Adam from the Department of Environment. Thanks for the presentation. One of the key messages I got which was really cool was that you think that it’s important to synthesize as you go through the research. I want to know the challenges in terms of synthesizing and sharing knowledge and data before publishing. [...]

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March 26, 2012

Innovations in Environmental Synthesis, Reporting and Governance: Part 11 – Conclusion

One of the things I would like to leave this conference with is some ideas about how we can collaborate between Chesapeake Bay and Australia. Let’s figure out how we can collaborate and work together.  I’ll give you an example that I’ve thought up with some other folks at the University of Queensland. We can [...]

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March 23, 2012

Innovations in Environmental Synthesis, Reporting and Governance: Part 10 – Innovations in Governance/BaySTAT

This is where Governor O’Malley came in and he created BayStat. This was based on tracking nutrient and sediment reductions. Our eutrophication problem is over-enrichment of nutrients creating dissolved oxygen “dead zones”. O’Malley puts together an interesting assortment of people. We sit on a monthly basis with the Secretary of Natural Resources, the Secretary of [...]

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March 21, 2012

Innovations in Environmental Synthesis, Reporting and Governance: Part 9 – Innovations in Governance

The last thing I want to talk about is innovations in governance. This is a story I want to start in New York City, where there was a guy called Jack Maple. He always had a bow-tie and a bowler. He was a transit cop, policing the subways and buses in New York. He started [...]

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March 19, 2012

Innovations in Environmental Synthesis, Reporting and Governance: Part 8 – Environmental Report Cards

Report cards are also a great way to bring together disparate groups. An extreme example is that the US State Department was trying to mediate some dialog between Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan when Armenia and Azerbaijan were technically still at war. So we got together with them, and we put up this first map of [...]

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March 16, 2012

Innovations in Environmental Synthesis, Reporting and Governance: Part 7 – Innovations in Environmental Reporting

I want to talk about innovations in environmental reporting. One of the things we stumbled upon in Southeast Queensland is environmental report cards, and I got to thinking why they are so powerful. I have two teenage children, who you can definitely see are driven by peer pressure in their everyday life. Peer pressure is [...]

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March 14, 2012

Innovations in Environmental Synthesis, Reporting and Governance: Part 6 – Using press and video in science communication

Another thing that we did was create IAN Press. We’ve created a self publishing kind of approach and what’s cool about it is that this can be full color, 230 pages, and we can sell it for $20 US, and not lose money. We finally have the technology of tablet computers. The tablet version really [...]

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March 12, 2012

Innovations in Environmental Synthesis, Reporting and Governance: Part 5 – Innovations in Science Communication

I distinguish science communication from science writing. If you think about a science paper, you provide lots of references, which is the scientific context for that study. Science communication provides societal examples, because it’s all about context, to make the message translate to a broader audience. In scientific literature, there is usually just text, while [...]

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