As part of the Scaling Up: Future of Environmental Decisions workshop (2-7 June 2013), I wrote “Singing the Chesapeake Bay Blues”. Apologies to my colleague Howard Ernst, who wrote an excellent book “Chesapeake Bay Blues“, for adopting his book title into the song. This workshop was sponsored by the Ecological Society of America, with National [...]
Continue Reading »
Is it time to rethink our 19th century approach to dealing with human waste? The discovery of the cause of a cholera epidemic in London, in the mid 19th century, unleashed an international movement that improved sanitation in cities, and also altered the relationship between people and the environment. The result has been an increase [...]
Continue Reading »
New ways of looking at data promise to give a clearer picture of the effects of restoration in the ecosystem. People have worked hard to bring the Chesapeake Bay back to health. Yet, why is it so difficult to see the results? The IAN program’s Chesapeake Bay Report Card for 2011 gives the bay a [...]
Continue Reading »
I traveled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana for a two day workshop at the relatively new, The Water Institute of the Gulf (of Mexico). I have been to Baton Rouge several times over the past few years, most recently to work with the State of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority on the 2012 Master Plan. [...]
Continue Reading »
The management objectives for achieving ecosystem health can be divided into ecosystem objectives, water quality objectives, and human health objectives (Pantus and Dennison 2005). Different population sizes result in different environmental issues and ecosystem management objectives. Therefore, the way of approaching management objectives vary based on different population sizes. In this essay, we compare five [...]
Continue Reading »
A seminar entitled ‘Brisbane 2011: Living with Floods and Dancing with Dugongs’ was presented on 8 July 2011. The seminar was sponsored by the University of Queensland Global Change Institute, and delivered at the historic Customs House in downtown Brisbane, situated along the shore of the Brisbane River. The following fifteen part blog series captures [...]
Continue Reading »
This blog post discusses the seminar given by Howard Townsend, of the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office, at the IAN Seminar Series on June 24, 2010. Following Howard’s seminar, two short videos were aired. The first one depicted some of Howard’s hidden talents on the dance floor, and the second one was a 6 minute Computer [...]
Continue Reading »
The Chesapeake Bay Program has a long history of setting goals, and unfortunately an equally long history of NOT reaching these goals. The initial Chesapeake Bay Program goal, set in 1984, was for a 40% reduction in nutrient loads entering the Bay, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus. In spite of considerable investments in various nutrient reduction [...]
Continue Reading »
This blog post discusses the seminar given by Dr Heath Kelsey, of EcoCheck, at the IAN Seminar Series on April 22, 2010. A wide ranging discussion of bacteria, viruses and contaminants in water and shellfish followed the seminar. Typical of discussions of bacteria in water or shellfish, the issue of the different methods was raised. [...]
Continue Reading »
This blog post discusses the seminar given by Dr Bill Dennison, of the Integration and Application Network, at the IAN Seminar Series on January 28, 2010. Several lines of inquiry were discussed as a way of further analyzing the Chesapeake Bay trajectories. The issue of watershed geomorphology (e.g., watershed size, topography, shoreline length) was one [...]
Continue Reading »
Subscribe