The submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) can be used as sentinels for the health of Chesapeake Bay. A working group of scientists has been formed to analyze three decades of water quality data and annual surveys of submerged aquatic vegetation. Bob Orth, a researcher based at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), and I are leading this effort.

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At the conclusion of a 9-11 Nov. 2016 workshop in Annapolis titled "Integrating systems modeling and report card development to improve basin health & manage trade-offs". I was able to convince the participants to act out a play that I wrote for the occasion. The play was entitled "Scrooge and the Report Card", loosely based on the classic "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. The list of actors was the following:

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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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Last weekend I attended a workshop that gave me a different perspective on communicating through story telling and on the stories that scientists tell among ourselves. The workshop was Building Skills for Change put on by the Institute for Change Leaders. Olivia Chow, who led the workshop, is well-known in Canada for her work in municipal and national politics. Currently, she is a professor in the School of Social Work at Ryerson University where the institute is located.

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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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On October 4th, Dave Nemazie and I traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the third set of meetings to work on the Guanabara Bay Report Card. We presented the draft report card and report card website at the INEA (State Environmental Institute) offices to Andre Correa, the Secretary of the Environment for the State of Rio. On October 5th, we met with the secretary and his cabinet as well as other groups working on Guanabara Bay Restoration.

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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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