As part of our Belmont Forum synthesis workshop, we sang a song at the end of each day. At the end of the first day after we had listened to the descriptions of diverse and fascinating projects, it was quite apparent that we were dealing with real research stars. This led to the adaptation of the 1999 song "All Star" (Music video) by the rock band Smash Mouth. Heath Kelsey and Martin LeTissier, my fellow workshop facilitators, were good sports about the disparaging lyrics attributed to them.

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Participants at the San Francisco Belmont Forum Workshop … Bill Dennison, Vanessa Vargas, and I traveled to San Francisco, California from 10 to 12 of December 2016 to help our partners Martin LeTissier, and Shona Paterson at Future Earth’s Coasts, to facilitate a meeting of a select group of Belmont Forum project leaders.

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On December 6th to 7th 2016, Heath Kelsey and I represented the Integration and Application Network (IAN) at the 2nd International Marine Science Communication Conference (CommOcean) in Bruges, Belgium. The conference took place at the Provincial Court on the Market Square in the heart of the medieval Bruges, a historic UNESCO heritage site. It was my first trip to Europe, and my first conference to attend as both an IAN graduate student and session speaker.

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The 2016 Upper Mississippi River Basin Conference in Moline, Illinois had a special theme of “Raising the Grade” this year, which was shaped by the Mississippi River Watershed Report Card which UMCES developed with America’s Watershed Initiative last year. The Upper Mississippi River got a “C” grade in the report card, and although the grade was the highest of all the basins, it is not good enough in the eyes of the regional stakeholders.

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On October 13th, Caroline Donovan and I traveled to Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA for the Prioritization Workshop. This workshop was held as part of the Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative (CMC) project that UMCES is a partner of as well as Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Izaak Walton League of America, and the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM). The workshop was hosted by ALLARM at Dickinson College.

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"Growing governance in Guanabara Bay" (Portuguese translation by João Paulo Coimbra) Em 4 de Outubro, Dave Nemazie e eu viajamos para o Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, para a terceira sessão de reuniões para o desenvolvimento do Boletim de Saúde Ambiental da Baía de Guanabara.

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In September, Simon Costanzo, Caroline Donovan, and I traveled to Edmonton, Alberta for a science communication course sponsored by the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI). Participants had a diverse range of backgrounds and expertise, including researchers, planners, GIS analysts, communicators, and managers.

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Similar to a good Halloween costume, you want any map you create to convey a clear and understandable message that it doesn’t take long for the viewer to digest. Someone viewing your map should not need to take more than a minute or two to understand it’s purpose. Also similar to a Halloween costume, the big winners in map creation pay very close attention to detail. Halloween Google Maps costume. Credit:

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The Basin Report Card Initiative, a partnership between the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the World Wildlife Fund, worked closely with game developers from the Engagement Lab at Emerson College to produce a fun, interactive and thought provoking game, “Get the Grade!” . “Get the Grade” was successfully launched at three signature events across the globe:

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Future Card: a report card that forecasts future ecosystem health grades based on alternate management strategies. The holy grail right? Well hopefully. This idea of a “future card” began 18 months ago while I was attending a meeting held by the Luc Hoffman Institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the LIVES’s project (Linked Indicators for Vital Ecosystem Services).

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