By: Bill Dennison … As part of the revised Marine Estuarine Environmental Science (MEES) graduate program curriculum, the Environment & Society foundation launched its foundational course, Environment & Society (MEES 620). The course is being co-taught by Dr. Michael Paolisso (Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland) and Dr. William Dennison (University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science; UMCES).

Killian Farrell … Last week’s class marked the final meeting for our course MEES620: Coupled Human and Natural Systems. Our class has gone through many different topics related to coupled systems, from resource assessment to cultural views of nature. This was reflected in the many topics and research approaches in the proposals reviewed on this last day.

Veronika Leitold … "In coupled human and natural systems, people and nature interact reciprocally and form complex feedback loops” (Liu et al., 2007). Through his comic strip of a tropical lagoon, cartoonist Jim Toomey explores many of the issues that we face daily in our world on dry land. (Source: blogs.nicholas.duke.edu)" width="500" height="438"> … Last week, in our Coupled Human and Natural Systems course, we continued the presentations of our final class projects:

David Miles … It's hard for a natural system to find a good partner in today's world; there are so many options. Even when a natural and human system do manage to couple, their relationship is often troubled and murky at best with so many questions left unanswered. Our class found this to be true as we tried to define a coupled human-natural system to study. In class, we presented condensed research proposals defining our coupled system of choice and potential methods to study it.

Alec Armstrong, David Miles … Nature is part or product of culture, as our class discussed last week. When we say “nature” we invoke some mixture of values, knowledge, experiences, and stories to order our relationships with things in our universe. But how can culture be described and measured? This week we discussed two anthropological approaches to study how people think about nature: consensus analysis and cultural modeling.

Krystal Yhap, Rebecca Wenker … In Ecuador, a young girl is studying marine life with artisanal fishermen. While on the beach, she found herself mesmerized by the rippling waves of the sea. Amidst the waves she notices a large red fish flapping to shore. A crowd surrounded this mysterious fish, intrigued about its possible identity. The girl and her professor proceed to join the circle. They both find joy in this discovery and hope to satisfy the curiosity of the locals.

Veronika Leitold, Alec Armstrong … An international activist, a fly fisherman, an NGO manager, a food & beverage consultant, a water quality researcher and an indigenous elder are all gathered around a table… Why? They have come together to make a decision: either approve or veto the construction of a new hydroelectric dam upstream in the river basin that is home to all of them.

Wilmelie Cruz Marrero … Imagine you are running to an elevator when you suddenly realize the top expert in your field is there. How can you catch her/his attention? How can you compress all of your knowledge and effectively communicate your research? What about a 3 minute elevator pitch? How can we reduce our 320 some page thesis into a 3 minute pitch!? Well . It's pretty hard!! That's what students in MEES Coupled human and natural systems completed this week.

Killian Farrell, Kelly Hondula … So you’ve just finished some amazing research that will bring great advancements in your field and opens many new avenues of study. This research could have big implications for how the people in your research area live their lives, but no one really knows about it (or wants to give you any more funding). How do you communicate your findings to other people, whether they are fellow experts in your field or the average person on the street?

Kelly Hondula, Natalie Yee … After learning about how to construct and interpret social network data sets the previous week, the MEES Coupled Human and Natural Systems class spent a week delving into understanding the types of questions that social and natural scientists investigate using network analysis.