Dave Helweg and Christian Giardina organized a field trip on the Big Island of Hawai'i immediately following our workshop on Oahu. When the plane that Simon Costanzo and I were on landed in Hilo, Christian contacted us to inform me that his wife, Ingrid Dockersmith, had sailed with me aboard the R/V Westward as part of Sea Semester. I was the Chief Scientist and Ingrid was an Assistant Scientist when we left from Maine and sailed to Barbados, Bequia and eventually St.

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I enjoyed the University of Hawaii campus. We used the food trucks for lunch on the first day, and ate at the campus food court on the second day. After the first day of the workshop, we enjoyed sitting outside at the campus pub, drinking local Kona Longboard beer and listening to the mynah birds in the trees. The sound of the mynahs and the sight of pandanus trees made me recall my stint at the University of Queensland.

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On 7-8 March, Simon Costanzo and I facilitated an ecodrought workshop at the University of Hawaii at the main campus in Manoa, a suburb of Honolulu. Our host was the Pacific Islands Climate Science Center, headed by Dave Helweg. This Climate Science Center has a huge swath of territory to cover, including American Samoa, the Marshall Islands, Guam, Palau and a host of isolated atolls (e.g., Johnstone, Palmyra).

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Guam is in the western Pacific Ocean, approximately equidistant from Tokyo (north), Manila (west), and Papua New Guinea (south). And, on January 28th, Heath Kelsey, Alex Fries, and I traveled to Guam from Hawaii. Guam is a U.S. territory and is one island in the chain of islands that make up the Mariana archipelago. Guam has a population of approximately 165,000, but with several military bases and a strong tourism business, the number of people on the island can fluctuate significantly. Top:

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I attended a 'Transdisciplinary Research Meeting', sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU), which is part of UNESCO, and is based in Paris. The meeting was at the ICSU facility near the Arc de Triomphe. Our local host was Vivi Stavrou, from the International Social Science Council (ISSC). Participants came from four continents (North and South America, Europe and Africa), and they all had a keen interest in transdisciplinary research. The following people attended the meeting:

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On February 1st 2017, Heath Kelsey, Caroline Donovan, and I traveled from Guam to our last stop on the Pacific Islands trip, Saipan. Saipan is an island in the Mariana Archipelago, and is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US territory. Saipan, Rota, and Tinian are the only islands currently inhabited in the Marianas. Flying from Guam to Saipan, we passed over Rota. Photo credit:

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Following a three day meeting on transdisciplinary research, I had a day to explore Paris in search of the trails of three of my scientific icons. My eighteenth century science icon from Paris is Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743-1794); my nineteenth century icon is Louis Pasteur (1822-1895); and my twentieth century icon is Marie Curie (1867-1934). Lavoisier:

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Following a three-day workshop on transdisciplinary research training, held 15-17 Feb 2017 in Paris, France, I reflected on the essential elements of transdisciplinary research. We spent much of our three days talking about what constitutes transdisciplinary research, and many concepts were discussed. This blog attempts to distill some of this discussion and to put forward a version of what constitutes transdisciplinary research.

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As part of the NOAA Coral Reef Report Card Project, Alex Fries, Caroline Donovan, and Heath Kelsey facilitated two workshops in Honolulu to create report cards for the Hawaiian Archipelago and the Remote Islands of the Pacific where NOAA has responsibility for coral reef management and assessment.

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Simon Costanzo, Brianne Walsh and I traveled to Boise, Idaho for a second workshop with scientists from the Pacific Northwest Climate Science Center. Our first workshop, held in Portland, Oregon, focused on the issues west of the Cascades, and this second workshop focused on issues east of the Cascades. We heard about the three 'W's (wounded wetlands and water rights), the three 'F's (forests, fires and fish) and the three 'A's (acclimation, adaptation and assemblages).

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