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IAN Press is committed to producing practical, user-centered communications that foster a better understanding of science and enable readers to pursue new opportunities in research, education, and environmental problem-solving. Our publications synthesize scientific findings using effective science communication techniques.
Publications
Australia
Caribbean
Chesapeake Bay
Guam
War in the Pacific National Historical Park
Gulf of Mexico
Atchafalaya and Vermilion Bays
Mississippi and Atchafalaya Plume
Hawaii
Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail
Kalaupapa National Historical Park
Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park
Pu'ukohola Heiau National Historic Site
Maryland
Maryland Coastal Bays
Mexico
Mid Atlantic
Antietam National Battlefield Park
Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park
Integration and Application Network
Monocacy National Battlefield Park
Mid West
North Atlantic
Kennebec and Androscoggin River
St. Croix River and Cobscook Bay
Pacific Coast
Bellingham and Padilla and Samish Bays
Central San Francisco and San Pablo and Suisun Bays
Palau
Panama
Philippines
Samoa
National Park of American Samoa
South Atlantic
St. Andrew and St. Simons Sounds
St. Catherines and Sapelo Sounds
St. Marys River and Cumberland Sound
South Caucasus
Virginia
George Washington Memorial Parkway
Manassas National Battlefield Park
Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
West Virginia
agricultural aquatic assessment australia battlefield chesapeake bay chester climate change coastal coastal bays communication conceptual diagrams conference conservation coral creek dissolved oxygen document ecological ecosystem environmental estuarine federation fisheries flood forecast global habitat harbor harmful algal blooms health impacts indicators loading maps marine menhaden monitoring nitrogen nutrient ocean overall oyster park partners patuxent pollution predicted reef report card restoration river seagrass sediment solving spatially studies study threats tidal water quality watershed workshop zone
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National Capital Parks-East 
December 2006
National Capital Parks-East includes 14 major sites covering over 8,000 acres within Washington, DC and three nearby counties in MD. The parks lie entirely within the Coastal Plain physiographic region and are managed for a variety of natural, cultural, and recreational resources. Significant natural features of the parks include sand and gravel beaches, shoreline bluffs, flood plain and upland forest, shell marl ravine forest with its associated fossil outcrops, two large river systems, and numerous streams, seeps, and wetlands. Major threats include those associated with its urban setting: overabundant deer populations, exotic species invasion, and stormwater and boundary management issues.
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Prince William Forest Park 
December 2006
Prince William Forest Park is the largest protected example of Piedmont forest in the National Park System. The ~15,000 acre park in northern VA also protects the Quantico Creek watershed, and is a sanctuary for numerous native plant and animal species. Because the park includes two physiographic provinces (Piedmont and Coastal Plain) and lies in the transition zone between northern and southern climates, it has a wide range of vegetative communities, including rare seepage swamp habitat and remote stands of old-growth eastern hemlock. Major threats to park resources include adjacent land development, noise pollution, and the introduction of invasive species and disease.
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Rock Creek Park
December 2006
Rock Creek Park is one of the largest forested urban parks in the United States, containing a wide variety of natural, historical, and recreational features in the midst of Washington, D.C. The majority of the 3,000 acre park surrounds the lower watershed of Rock Creek and its tributaries as the drainage drops from the Piedmont Plateau to the Coastal Plain. The mixed deciduous forests, streams, and sensitive floodplain communities of the park represent a largely isolated natural system surrounded by urban areas, which impact park resources through traffic, flooding and pollution of park streams, introductions of invasive species, recreational demand, dumping, collecting, creation of unauthorized trails, and boundary encroachments.
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Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
December 2006
Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts is the only National Park dedicated to the performing arts. Performance structures on the 130 acre property include a 7,000-person main stage. The park includes protected stream, meadow, and forest patches in the urban Washington, DC landscape. Noise from the Dulles Toll Road threatens the primary function of the park as a performance venue and is a major management concern. Water quality degradation, exotic species introductions, deer overabundance, and the encroachment of development against park boundaries are also issues of concern.
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Ecosystem health report cards: an approach to integrated assessment
The coastal zone supports a large and increasing human population, as well as a significant fraction of the global biological productivity, including most global fisheries. The diversity of habitats in the global coastal zone is heavily impacted by anthropogenic trapping and modifying of water on its way to the ocean. Integrated ecological assessment of the world’s coastal ecosystems is essential for effective management and remediation. The integration of management, monitoring, and science is required to solve the major environmental problems that are occurring in coastal zones around the world. Effective monitoring requires a significant investment of resources. Field work is expensive, data analysis is time-intensive, data integration requires high level scientific input, and recurring costs are subject to inflationary pressures. Integrated ecological assessment provides feedback on these monitoring investments by measuring the effectiveness of management actions. Societal momentum can then be created by successes in assessment and communication. Effective integrated assessment of ecosystem health must: be hypothesis-driven; be spatially and temporally explicit; be adaptable to changing management needs and research findings; be linked to a communication program; have timely outputs; and be highly visible to stakeholders. This poster presents processes and approaches to performing integrated ecological assessments, using an example from the Coastal Bays of Maryland, U.S.A.
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Quantifying Fisheries Management Effort in Chesapeake Bay
Author(s): Wood RJ and Longstaff BJ
This poster describes a semi-quantitative approach to measuring the progress towards the Chesapeake Bay 2000 agreement goal of implementing ecosystem based fisheries management. The method is based on transitioning from single species management to multi-species management and finally ecosystem based fisheries management.
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Interaction between Atlantic menhaden and striped bass in Chesapeake Bay
Author(s): Zhang X, Wood RJ, Houde ED and Townsend H
This poster presents the preliminary results of an investigation into the factors affecting the recruitment of Atlantic Menhaden in Chesapeake Bay. Using both menhaden spawning stock and striped bass predation potential, the model successfully predicts most (~70%) of the variability seen in Chesapeake Bay menhaden recruitment. The poster was presented at the 2006 Ocean Sciences meeting in Hawaii, USA.
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An Eye Opening Approach to Integrated Environmental Assessments
February 2006
Environmental management is not practiced in a vacuum. Effective stewardship of natural resources requires the adoption of multiple objectives set forth by diverse groups of stakeholders with varied perspectives and interests. Within this management landscape, integrated environmental assessments provide a useful framework for evaluating resources and directing management efforts. We provide a case study using examples in mid-Atlantic region national parks in which visual elements (conceptual diagrams, maps, graphs, tables, and photographs) facilitate these activities and provide an eye opening approach to more effective environmental decision-making.
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Seagrasses of Southwest Australia
Southwest Australia has warm temperate water with a mixture of tropical influences from the Leeuwin Current and cool southern waters. This mixing of tropical and temperate water results in diverse seagrass communities occurring in a wide variety of coastal habitats. Almost half of the world's ~60 seagrass species can be found along this 1,500 km of coast. Seagrasses are important to the marine environment as they stabilise sediments and trap nutrients, helping to maintain water quality. They provide key nursery habitats for invertebrates and fishes, including commercially important species. Southwest Australian seagrass meadows are unique and are both regionally and globally significant.
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Seagrasses of Southwest Australia: Estuaries
Estuaries are transition zones where rivers meet the ocean, creating an environment with large seasonal fl uctuations in temperature, salinity, and light. These difficult growing conditions provide some unique challenges for seagrasses. In southwest Australia, estuaries are usually closed by a sand bar at the mouth, cutting them off from the ebb and fl ow of the tide for long periods. Winter rains flow down-river into the estuaries, raising the water level until it breaks through the sand bar. Seawater then starts to fl ow in and out with the tide until movement of sand along the beach by waves will once again close the sand bar, usually in late summer. Because of these seasonal changes, only a few types of seagrass such as Ruppia, Halophila, and Zostera grow in these estuaries. However, they are very important as they provide shelter and food for many species of fish, crabs, shellfish, and prawns.
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About
"Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action." Paul J. Meyer
Goals
A goal of IAN Press is to empower scientists to directly communicate their ideas and concepts. Publications from IAN Press are designed to transform the uninterested to interested; the interested to involved and the involved to engaged.
IAN Press products are designed to be examples of good science communication principles, and the hope is that others will employ these principles so that scientific understanding can be disseminated widely as possible. The production of IAN Press communication publications involves experimentation with communication techniques and, as such, provides various ideas for science communication that can be emulated.
The comparisons and contrasts that IAN Press provides on environmental subjects intend to stimulate scientists, managers, practitioners, policy makers, students and other readers to think more broadly and expansively about the region and issues that they face. The extensive use of visual elements accesses a broader cultural diversity as well, which allow for more global perspectives.
The conclusions and recommendations presented in IAN Press publications are crafted to empower actions, plant seeds of ideas and provide justification for people to take appropriate action to find solutions to environmental problems. The conclusions are made as explicit as possible by employing active titles and featuring them prominently (e.g., front section of books or back cover of newsletters).
On costs
IAN Press does not provide author royalties and the design and layout of the publications conducted by a talented team of Science Communicators is underwritten by various grants and contracts. Marketing is limited to the internet and word-of-mouth, also reducing costs. Thus, the price of IAN Press publications is solely to reimburse the actual printing costs entailed. The intent is to provide the broadest possible readership, thus keeping costs as low as possible is paramount. Typically, full color is used, virtually on every page, which does increase print costs, however, the use of color is a key element in providing accessible information to a wide audience and the lack of author royalties or design/layout charges.
Peer review
IAN Press undertakes a rigorous review process by both peer scientists and resource managers. In addition, Integration and Application Network Science Integrators and Science Communicators read, edit and review all aspects of IAN Press publications, including text, conceptual diagrams, photographs, maps, figures and tables. Many IAN Press publications are multi-authored, and each author contributes to the review and editing of the entire publication. This is not the classical peer review system of a limited number of anonymous reviewers working with an editor to recommend changes, rather a larger number of non-anonymous reviewers that develop consensus on each word, visual element and recommendation. The review process is often accelerated by IAN Press to accommodate timely publication.
Authorship
IAN Press attempts to be as authorship inclusive as possible and to provide attribution to each visual element. Authorship is not ranked or ordered, and the credibility of the IAN Press product should be based on the scientific data presented and the collective effort of a multiple of contributors, both with and without formal academic training.
Science Communicators are the key element in the production of IAN Press documents. They design the layout of the document, obtain and edit the visual elements, designate the amount and style of text, and orchestrate the review and editing process. IAN Press documents are produced using a 'storyboard' approach, in which the central message(s) are identified and various visual elements selected to support the central message(s). This is in contrast to the more traditional method of writing text and adding in visuals subsequently. In video and film production, storyboards are used and the producer is key to assembling the visual elements. Science Communicators serve in an equivalent role in terms of assembling all the pieces that go into the publication.
Color
IAN Press relies extensively on color for photographs, maps, conceptual diagrams, figures and even text and tables to a limited degree. The use of color allows for an increased data density and provides a bigger visual impact considering the amount of the human brain devoted to visual discrimination of colors. Color allows for greater discrimination of visual elements and in data presentation, a closer juxtaposition of different elements and greater comparative utility. The preponderance of color printers and the ability of electronic versions to be displayed in color promote the inexpensive dissemination of full color documents. In order to help color-blind people compensate, an effort is made to provide other visual clues in graphics, such as symbols with different shapes or map delineations with different shading or texture, but some of the visual impact will be compromised.
Audience
IAN Press does not target a narrow, specific audience, rather attempts to be as inclusive as possible. As the world becomes more specialized, with marketing forces that promote highly targeted advertising campaigns, IAN Press products attempt to reach the broadest audience possible. IAN Press attempts to raise the bar rather than dumb down the message by using non-technical language, defining all terms and reducing acronym use. By providing synthesis, visualizations and context, we feel that relatively sophisticated concepts can be grasped by a non-technical audience. In fact, science has become highly specialized and often the language, tools and approaches used in various scientific disciplines are relatively incomprehensible to specialists in other disciplines. Thus, one audience of IAN Press is scientists from other specialties to encourage inter-disciplinary thinking and approaches.
Why use print media?
With the growing popularity of electronic media, the carbon footprint involved in producing and distributing paper products, and the ability to provide infinite resources via the web, it could be argued that IAN Press should disseminate entirely via electronic means. While IAN Press provides downloadable, web accessible materials, IAN Press continues to produces written products for the following reasons:
- There is rigor and discipline required in producing science communication products that have limited 'real estate', that, is limited amounts of space to convey a message. A paper product maintains focus, while web links can lead to tangential issues. The priority setting required to establish the final layout and include various communication elements is important in conveying information. Fixed 'real estate' forces condensation, synthesis and integration. Every visual element is uniquely created for the purpose of conveying the specific information intended, rather than repurposed from other sources.
- The written product invites non-linear reading, and a quick scan allows readers to delve into the visual elements most interesting to them. If a reader is most attracted to photographs, maps, conceptual diagrams, or figures, they can migrate to these elements and the figure legends should be self explanatory. Alternatively, if reading text is the preferred way of obtaining information, the text is designed to be self sufficient. The juxtaposition of text and various visual elements also conveys important information, something that can be lost via hyperlinks on the web. In addition, electronic books with the current technology do not support color graphics.
- Since various IAN Press products are intended to inform a broad community from policy makers to the general public, the weight of scientific support that can be marshaled can be a factor in empowering people to action. In order to make an impact, the difference between hundreds of web pages and hundreds of printed pages is one reason to provide print versions of IAN products. In addition, internet access is not equally applied globally or socially, and in some societies and sectors of society, a written product provides a more accessible source, particularly through libraries and schools.
- Printed materials provide a 'time stamp', a fixed point of time when the data are assembled and the conclusions are reached. Rather than constantly updating the data and conclusions, drawing the line in the sand as to what is known at a particular time point is what printed products do. The shelf life of science communication products should be somewhat limited due to the increased scientific understanding based on ongoing research, yet the record of what is known, and when it is known, provides an important archival body of information.
- "The product drives the collaborative process"; in that the science communication product forces an intensely collaborative process of obtaining and refining visual elements, drafting and editing text, and experimenting with layout and design. While this collaborative process can be conducted with the production of web materials, print deadlines are a good way to insure timely delivery. In addition, to obtain buy-in from many scientists whose training and experience are in producing printed papers and books, printed copies are often necessary.