This is the first of a series of blogs intended to begin synthesizing the key messages from Kakadu National Park floodplains research conducted as part of the National Environment Research Programme (NERP). When you put the many pieces together, the story that emerges is all about connections.

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Fifteen students from four campuses met each week … After watching YouTube lectures and reading a lot … Our class time flew by, did it not … Facilitators led the discussion, insights they did seek. And the rapporteur provided the discussion summary … So that the author could draft up a synthesis blog … Clarifying the topic by avoiding intellectual fog … And posting as many blogs as the Internet could carry.

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Joseph "Jay" C. Zieman (1943-2015), my seagrass ecology colleague, died recently. I first met Jay in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1980 when my Master's thesis advisor C. Peter McRoy organized a workshop associated with the Seagrass Ecosystem Study, funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the International Decade of Ocean Exploration.

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Celebrating 90 years of UMCES series … Reginald V. Truitt (1890-1991) was the founder of Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in 1925, the forerunner of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES). As part of the 90th anniversary of UMCES, I have been learning about Reginald Truitt and made a visit to the Maryland Room in Hornbake Library to peruse his archived papers.

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Celebrating 90 years of UMCES series … This year is the ninetieth celebration of the formation of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) in 1925. The origin of UMCES can be traced back to an amazing Marylander, Reginald Truitt, who founded the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.

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As the final element of launching Phase 2 of the USAUS-H2O virtual environmental exchange program between eight high schools in Australia and eight high schools in the U.S., we held a teacher workshop for U.S. teachers in Annapolis and Washington, D.C. Judy O'Neil is the lead investigator of this project, assisted by Cindy Heil from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine, Simon Costanzo and Brianne Walsh from IAN.

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"Scientists who made a difference" series … Earlier this month, Bill Dennison, Heath Kelsey and I attended a meeting at the headquarters of The Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia, which is located just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. We were there to discuss what will happen next after the Mississippi watershed report card is launched this spring. This project has challenged us to expand the report card format in two ways.

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Seagrass science was largely influenced by the seminal book "Seagrass of the World", written by Cornelis den Hartog in 1970. Professor den Hartog is a spritely Dutch botanist, now in his 80s, who also was the founding editor of the journal Aquatic Botany in 1975. This 270 pp. book was published by North-Holland Publishing Co.

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As part of our involvement in the New York Harbor. I read "The Great Bridge: The epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge" by David McCollough. It was a wonderful read, providing historical context and delving into the fascinating story of the three Roeblings who were key to the effort:

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As part of our collaborative Harbor School project with the Billion Oyster Project--Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) team, I visited the New York Aquarium in December 2014, two years following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. The Aquarium is run by the Wildlife Conservation Society who also run four New York City zoos (Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, Queens Zoo and Prospect Park Zoo).

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