UMCES hosted an environmental summit on November 30, 2018, which marked the official inauguration of our new president, Dr. Peter Goodwin. The event attracted attendees from all UMCES campuses and several other institutions within the University System of Maryland, as well as from outside of the academic community.

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The Arctic Ocean, its surrounding land masses, and the people and animals that depend on arctic ecosystems are changing rapidly. Global climate change is particularly acute in the arctic, with large scale biophysical changes evident, leading to ecological and social impacts. One of the Collaborative Research Actions (CRA) initiatives by the Belmont Forum is addressing the changing arctic.

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The UMCES Environmental Summit. Photo credit: UMCES Flickr. On November 30, 2018 the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) community gathered at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET) in Baltimore to discuss environmental science and application to resource management and policy with our new president, Dr. Peter Goodwin.

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The Integration and Application Network (IAN) had an eventful and exciting year. We were able to report some really good news in the improvements in the health of Chesapeake Bay and Maryland Coastal Bays with our annual report cards. In addition, the publication of a scientific synthesis paper that IAN staff helped generate was able to reach a broad audience. This paper identified that the nutrient reductions into Chesapeake Bay were leading to ecosystem health improvements.

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Class logo. In the revised Marine Environmental and Estuarine Science (MEES) curriculum, the Environment and Society Foundation is the only track that expressly incorporates social sciences. With my marine ecology background, I combined efforts with Michael Paolisso, an environmental anthropologist, to co-teach the Foundation course. Michael and I had a lot of help from our excellent teaching assistant, Suzi Spitzer, a variety of superb guest lecturers (Drs.

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Satellite image of mangroves in the Sundarbans, Bangladesh, and India. Darker hues represent higher levels of mangrove canopy cover per-pixel. Photo credit: Dr. Stuart Hamilton. “The web of life ….” “The evolutionary tree ….” These are phrases used so often they approach cliché, but they also capture, in living metaphor, a fundamental truth: that all life exists in relationship.

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Dice clatter on a plain table in a quiet room. The truncated, cacophonous collision of plastic and faux wood laminate foretells the destiny of a densely populated urban area. The game master considers the exposed numbers reflected in the light of a computer screen before inputting the next fated event: Power station 3, grid section 6 fails. Pump 617 offline.

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Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” When it comes to the environment, this is a test that many of us have not passed yet. On the one hand, humans introduce massive amounts of nitrogen into ecosystems (think fertilizers and animal manure). As a result, we see runaway algae production and low-oxygen dead-zones worldwide.

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The final meeting of the Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (CCERS) project--which the Integration and Application Network, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science was a partner on--took place on 27 Sept 2018. The meeting included a visit to the New York Aquarium to view a new exhibit under construction. This exhibit will feature results from our CCERS project and the Billion Oyster Project (BOP), based at the Harbor School on Governors Island.

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The Integration and Application Network (IAN) has been trying to evolve its work so that its societal impact can go beyond science communication and integration. Our recent delve into transdisciplinary science necessitates that we not only incorporate its concepts into our work but that we explore and adapt tools currently being used in the field.

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