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:

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:

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.

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.

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).

Brianne Walsh, Simon Costanzo and I traveled to Portland, Oregon to talk about climate change with the USGS Northwest Climate Science Center. This workshop was the sixth in our series of eight workshops we are conducting across the entire United States.

A new paper on Chesapeake Bay Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) was published last week by colleagues from the Virginia Institute of the Marine Science (VIMS) and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, led by Jon Lefcheck (VIMS). This paper, entitled "Multiple stressors threaten the imperiled coastal foundation species eelgrass (Zostera marina) in Chesapeake Bay, USA" was published in Global Change Biology.

We recently completed our third SAV SYN workshop, which is an effort to synthesize (SYN) data related to the submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) of Chesapeake Bay. We have been analyzing a variety of data sets to better understand how SAV are responding to changes in the Bay and to understand what we can infer about the progress of Bay restoration activities. This effort is proving to be a productive collaboration among 15 scientists from 5 different institutions.

At the end of the Ecodrought workshop in Raliegh, North Carolina, I sang the song 'Carolina in my Mind', adapted from song of the same name written by a North Carolina native, James Taylor. The people named in my version of the song are Cari Furiness, North Carolina State University, Ryan Boyles and Jerry McMahon, US Geological Survey. The lyrics to the song are the following:

Simon Costanzo, Brianne Walsh and I traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina to meet with scientists associated with the USGS Southeast Climate Science Center to talk about ecological drought on 16-17 November 2016. Fittingly, there were forest fires raging in the Great Smoky Mountains as a result of a prolonged drought as we held the workshop. Forest fires are not common, particularly in November, in the Great Smoky Mountains, in spite of their name.