This is the third blog post in a series which celebrates the Integration and Application Network (IAN) symbol library by highlighting some of the most interesting symbols. The first blogs were of marine flora and fauna and this blog depicts some of the beautiful birds in the IAN symbol library. 1) My favorite bird is the laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), a large raucous Australian bird with a distinctive call.

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This is the second blog post in a series which celebrates the IAN symbol library by highlighting some of the most interesting symbols. The first blog was top ten marine flora, since this was the focus of the Marine Botany group at the University of Queensland who began drawing vector symbols. The logical next group of symbols, depicted here, are some of the marine animals that live in and around marine flora.

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This is the first blog post in a series which celebrates the IAN symbol library by highlighting some of the most interesting symbols. There are currently 2660 symbols in the Integration and Application Network symbol library. This library has grown organically, with new symbols created by talented Science Communicators as they are needed. We have rarely stepped back and viewed this accruing library as a whole.

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I attended the 6th Annual Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth meeting at the Dorchester County Historical Society on January 27. It was a good gathering of people who live on or near the streams, rivers and Chesapeake Bay of Dorchester County. Dorchester County has a lot of wetlands and streams, with abundant wildlife. The event featured local oysters on the half shell and goose meat. There were two skipjack captains in the audience as well.

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We have long advocated "Raising the bar" for science communication products. We feel that complex ideas can be effectively communicated, as long as the language and visualizations are clear, concise and concrete. The communication specialists often advocate "Dumbing it down", reducing the complex to very simplistic terms, glossing over any complexities to form 'sound bites'.

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We said good-bye to Drs. Michael Douglas (‘Dougo’) and Samantha Setterfield (‘Sam’) from Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia last week. Dougo and Sam joined the Integration and Application Network in August 2012 as part of their sabbatical. Dougo was in the U.S. as a Fulbright Scholar and he and Sam spent a couple of months at Oregon State University before coming to Maryland.

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EcoCheck was formed in 2004 as a partnership between the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It was created by Drs. Bill Dennison (UMCES) and Bob Wood (NOAA) to develop ecological forecasting and environmental reporting capacity in the Chesapeake Bay.

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For nearly ten years the IAN symbol and image libraries have been provided completely free for any use, so long as the appropriate attribution was included. For many users this has not been a problem - all that was required was a short credit to IAN and a link to our website.

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Today I learned of the untimely death of my colleague Scott Nixon from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. There will be eloquent eulogies in the ensuing weeks and months, as Scott had a profound impact on many students and colleagues. While I will leave the eulogies to those former students and colleagues who knew Scott well, I did have a wonderful experience with Scott in October 2007 in Madrid, Spain that I am reflecting on.

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Organized by 350.org, the global climate action day Connect the Dots event at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Sat May 5 was a great success. In advance of the event on May 4, we had a little local press coverage - Maryland Daily Record and Baltimore Sun - via a telephone conference call arranged by Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. This was my statement:

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