Last December 10, 2015, Bill, Vanessa, Dylan, and I traveled to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Appalachian Laboratory in Frostburg, MD to release our new Upper Potomac Headwaters Report Card. This report card assessed stream health in the Upper Potomac Headwaters region upstream of Harpers Ferry, WV, and was developed as part of a new graduate class in the Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences program within UMCES.

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I recently posted a blog about Randy Olson's new book, "Houston, we have a narrative: Why science needs story". I contacted Randy about his book and learned that he is experiencing push back from some quarters, including some scientists. I would like to point out that Randy is not the only person to promote the importance of narrative in science communication.

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Randy Olson has really knocked a home run with his latest book, “Houston, we have a narrative: Why science needs story”. Randy’s previous book, “Don’t be such a scientist: Talking substance in an age of style” does a good job defining the problem that most scientists have in communicating complex ideas to wide audiences.

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Anthony Kung wrote an interesting blog entitled “Conceptual diagrams or conceptual diagramming? Creating diagrams as a tool for stakeholder collaboration” which was posted on the Newsdrop enewsletter of the International Water Centre. Anthony recently spent 8 months embedded at the University of Queensland. His insights into the conceptual diagramming process were both thoughtful and thought-provoking.

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The IAN Press produced 33 products, 78 blogs were posted by 13 different IAN staff and by the 15 graduate students in the Science for Environmental Management course, and IAN staff were in various media reports 109 times. The IAN Facebook page posted 582 items. The IAN symbol library and image library continued to be downloaded by people from the entire globe (people who downloaded IAN symbols describe themselves as residents of 243 different countries).

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In December, Simon Costanzo, Bill Dennison, and I traveled to Fort Collins, Colorado for a workshop on ecological drought - part of an ongoing project with the USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center. This was the second in a series of eight workshops to be held at each of the nation’s eight Climate Science Centers, aimed at collating our existing knowledge of the ecological impacts, resistance, and recovery from drought.

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Jeff Morisette, Director of the North Central Climate Science Center, provided us with two amazing opportunities following our workshop on climate issues in the North Central region of the United States. First, we were treated to demonstrations of the VisWall, a bank of 24 computer monitors run by a series of networked computers. The VisWall facility was in the USGS Fort Collins Science Center adjacent to the Colorado State University campus.

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The Coastal Georgia Ecosystem Report Card was released November 13th, in Brunswick, Georgia. Heath Kelsey and I traveled to Georgia for the release event, which included both a media talk and a more detailed technical talk on the report card results. Coastal Georgia has a huge tidal range, as seen in this photo from St. Simon’s Island. This was one of the many things discussed in production of the report card.

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I had the privilege of attending the CERF Conference this year in Portland, Oregon. It was my first trip to Oregon, and visiting the Pacific Northwest was a really great experience. Before the Conference I had a few days to explore Portland including hiking in the Hoyt Arboretum, and visiting the Pittock Mansion.

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IAN hosted this year’s MEES Colloquium, offering students and faculty an opportunity to network and sharpen our science application and communication skills. The Colloquium sessions were previously described in more detail in the form of a poem blog post, written by Bill Dennison. NASA astronaut and MEES alumnus, Richard Arnold, served as our special guest speaker following the poster session and dinner on October 30th at the Banneker-Douglas Museum in historic downtown Annapolis.

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