Last month, several IAN staff members traveled to the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, to attend the Chesapeake Watershed Forum. The Forum is an annual regional conference hosted by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. This year IAN was represented by Caroline, Emily, Dylan, Vanessa, and Suzi. The 2017 conference theme was Healthy Lands, Healthy Waters, Healthy People.

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I drive regularly between Ottawa, Ontario, where I live, and Chestertown, Maryland , where I grew up. My family still lives on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay . Over the 30 years that I have been making this trip, the landscape has not changed, but recently my perception of it has. Susquehanna River at Great Bend. Image credit here … One of the landmarks that I look for is the bridge where I-81 crosses the Susquehanna River at Great Bend, Pennsylvania .

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Environmental literacy principles for the Tuul River, Mongolia … • The Tuul River in northcentral Mongolia is a tributary to the Orkhon River. The Orkhon River flows through Lake Baikal, Russia via the Selenga River and into the Yenesei River, which is the largest tributary into the Arctic Ocean. • Water from the Tuul River is heavily utilized, mostly for domestic and industrial use in their capital, Ulaanbaatar.

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Dr. Don Boesch, President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Image credit: Baltimore Sun … We had two very nice events to celebrate Don Boesch’s twenty seven year career as President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The first was held on June 1 at the Institute of Marine Environmental Technology in Baltimore with some 300 people attending. It featured many speeches and testimonials and was a grand event.

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The Biscayne Bay Marine Health Inaugural Summit was held at the Florida International University Biscayne Bay campus. I flew down at the invitation of Jim Fourqurean, my long time friend and seagrass colleague, who provided a very nice introduction. There were around two hundred people in attendance and my role was to provide a lunch time talk to relate some lessons from other locations that were relevant to Biscayne Bay.

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I was asked to speak at a ‘Data to Decisions’ workshop at the Wye Research and Education Center on the summer solstice (21 June 2017). The workshop was sponsored by the Maryland Water Monitoring Council (MWMC). Caroline Donovan, the Integration and Application Network’s (IAN) Program Manager, is on the MWMC board and is also the lead IAN representative on the Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative.

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8th World Water Forum Poster. Image credit: Bill Dennison … The Eighth World Water Forum is going to be held in Brazilia, Brazil in March 2018. As a lead up to the World Water Forum, a series of regional events are being held to initiate discussions and create enthusiasm for the World Water Forum. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Coca-Cola Company co-sponsored the Sharing Water event on 5 June 2017 as one of these regional events.

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The WWF-UMCES Partnership met at the UMCES Horn Point Lab Campus in Cambridge, MD on May 24 and 25 this year for our annual two-day retreat. This year’s agenda was, as usual, very ambitious, including the introduction of new people, discussions on branding the partnership, the incorporation of climate change indicators into the report card process, modeling for scenario development, and reviews of upcoming communication products.

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During the week of May 15th, I traveled to St. Paul, Minnesota, to attend and present at the 2017 Citizen Science Association Conference. Alex Fries and Suzi Spitzer from IAN also attended the conference. Check out Suzi’s awesome blogs on the conference. St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota and adjoins Minneapolis, which is the largest city in Minnesota. While the combined St. Paul-Minneapolis population is 3.52 million (Wikipedia), St.

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In a previous blog, I suggested six elements for science synthesis that we have employed in the Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Synthesis (SAV SYN) effort. These six elements were the following: • Experienced leadership … • Limited size … • Multiple immersive workshops … • Regular communication … • Flexibility … • Product focus … I also discussed the following enabling conditions:

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