On 4 Oct. 2018, NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold returned to Earth following his 197-day stint aboard the International Space Station (ISS). After watching Ricky’s Soyuz launch on March 21, 2018, the Soyuz docking with the ISS, various space walks, and various interviews that Ricky made with various groups on earth, it was exciting to finally watch the live-stream of Soyuz capsule landing on the Kazakhstan steppe.

Read more

Jamie Currie and I had an exciting meeting with experts on Texas coastal water quality, birds, seagrass, oysters, and fisheries on November 1 and 2 to create the first Texas Coast Ecosystem Health Report Card. We met at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, Texas, which was a great venue for the meeting.

Read more

I’m new to IAN, Horn Point Laboratory, and the East Coast. I came here from the west. The other day my co-worker, Emily, and I took a break to walk around outside a bit. She was telling me a little about what folks do here on campus, which includes “recycling” oyster shells. I didn’t ask follow-up questions and thought she meant that you could take oyster shells and put a new oyster baby in them and the baby would grow up and use those shells as its own shells.

Read more

On October 28th, 2018 Simon Costanzo and I arrived in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, for the beginning of a busy week of workshops and trainings. Healthy Rivers for All (a collaborative effort between the UMCES Integration and Application Network and the World Wildlife Fund) has been facilitating the creation of a river basin health report card for the Tuul River Basin, the major river running through the capital of Mongolia.

Read more

This October 2018, I attended the 21st International Riversymposium, continuing a long-standing tradition of presIANce at this meeting on river science and management. In fact, I recall the very first Riversymposium held in Brisbane in 1998 way back when I was still a student studying the very river system that is the namesake of the annual conference. Since those days much has changed for the conference, the Brisbane River, and Moreton Bay…. all for the better.

Read more

As part of the 21st International Riversymposium, a study tour of the Parramatta River was organized by the Parramatta River Catchment Group. The Parramatta River is the major river feeding into Sydney Harbour from the west. They were deserved finalists for the Bert and Vera Thiess Foundation Australasia Riverprize. Sarah Clift, Executive Director of the Parramatta River Catchment Group (PRCG), and her capable staff organized a great study tour.

Read more

It was just before 8am on a Saturday, a phrase that should never be said out loud. I was standing in Starbucks, waiting for the employees to hand me a slice of lemon cake. Why I had to wait in a drink line for a piece of cake is one of the great mysteries in life that I will never know, but I had a bigger question on my mind:

Read more

The 21st annual International Riversymposium was held in Doltone House, Sydney, Australia 14-18 October 2018. I enjoyed the location right on the shore of Sydney Harbour and the food was superb. The theme of this year’s Riversymposium was ‘Embracing Innovation’.

Read more

Figure 1. The Bund area of Shanghai. Many of the buildings in this area are constructed on filled wetlands, much of which was built in the 1980’s. Photo credit: Heath Kelsey.

Read more

Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” When it comes to the environment, this is a test that many of us have not passed yet. On the one hand, humans introduce massive amounts of nitrogen into ecosystems (think fertilizers and animal manure). As a result, we see runaway algae production and low-oxygen dead-zones worldwide.

Read more