Jeff Morisette, Director of the North Central Climate Science Center, provided us with two amazing opportunities following our workshop on climate issues in the North Central region of the United States. First, we were treated to demonstrations of the VisWall, a bank of 24 computer monitors run by a series of networked computers. The VisWall facility was in the USGS Fort Collins Science Center adjacent to the Colorado State University campus.

IAN hosted this year’s MEES Colloquium, offering students and faculty an opportunity to network and sharpen our science application and communication skills. The Colloquium sessions were previously described in more detail in the form of a poem blog post, written by Bill Dennison. NASA astronaut and MEES alumnus, Richard Arnold, served as our special guest speaker following the poster session and dinner on October 30th at the Banneker-Douglas Museum in historic downtown Annapolis.

This poem was written on the last day of the 2015 Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Sciences (MEES) Colloquium held at Crowne Plaza Hotel in Annapolis, October 30-31, 2015, and hosted by the MEES goes to Annapolis … William C. Dennison … 31 October 2015 … A gathering of scientists of the MEES brand … From all over the state of Maryland … They developed a passion for understanding nature … For which there really is no cure.

On October 14, 2015, in St. Louis, Missouri, I unveiled the Report Card for the Mississippi River Watershed, a project that almost everyone on the IAN Science Communication team has worked on at some point since 2012. The event was on the roof top patio of at the Hyatt Regency at the Arch in Downtown St. Louis, with great views of the river and the St. Louis Arch.

Caroline Donovan and I were invited to speak at the joint meeting of the Long Island Sound’s Citizens Advisory (CAC) and Science and Technical Advisory Committees (STAC). After completing the Long Island Sound Report Card in June, they asked us to give some wrap up and next steps information for where the report card is going in the future. Overall, the Long Island Sound report card included water quality, human health, and ecosystem/habitat indicators.

Heath Kelsey, Caroline Donovan, and I traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii to conduct a workshop to kick off the development of a report card for the coral reefs of American Samoa.

Coastal scientists have an important role helping communities become more resilient by telling people what changes can be expected from climate change and sea level rise. But, how can you tell people about change that is coming, in a way that makes it tangible for people and motivates them to act, when the extent of that change goes beyond what many can even imagine.

This blog is part of the Basin Report Card Initiative: a partnership between the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) On August 9th, 2015, Simon Costanzo and I traveled from Bogota, Colombia to Puerto Carreño, Vichada, Colombia for the Bita River Report Card Workshop. This was the second of three workshops that will occur in Colombia, to develop report cards for three tributaries of the Orinoco River.

Caroline Donovan and I participated in the Mid-Atlantic Volunteer Monitoring Conference in Winchester, Virginia last month. This conference focused on volunteer monitoring efforts in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia. The theme was bridging the water quality data gap, and the way to do this proposed as expansion and improvement of volunteer monitoring efforts.

This summer, I was given the great opportunity to be involved in the development of the first IAN report card in my home country. Last June 1-3 2015, Dave Nemazie and Simon Costanzo joined me in the Philippines to help facilitate the Second Workshop on the Development of Ecosystem Health Report Card for Laguna de Bay.