Anthony Kung wrote an interesting blog entitled “Conceptual diagrams or conceptual diagramming? Creating diagrams as a tool for stakeholder collaboration” which was posted on the Newsdrop enewsletter of the International Water Centre. Anthony recently spent 8 months embedded at the University of Queensland. His insights into the conceptual diagramming process were both thoughtful and thought-provoking.

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The IAN Press produced 33 products, 78 blogs were posted by 13 different IAN staff and by the 15 graduate students in the Science for Environmental Management course, and IAN staff were in various media reports 109 times. The IAN Facebook page posted 582 items. The IAN symbol library and image library continued to be downloaded by people from the entire globe (people who downloaded IAN symbols describe themselves as residents of 243 different countries).

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In December, Simon Costanzo, Bill Dennison, and I traveled to Fort Collins, Colorado for a workshop on ecological drought - part of an ongoing project with the USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center. This was the second in a series of eight workshops to be held at each of the nation’s eight Climate Science Centers, aimed at collating our existing knowledge of the ecological impacts, resistance, and recovery from drought.

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Jeff Morisette, Director of the North Central Climate Science Center, provided us with two amazing opportunities following our workshop on climate issues in the North Central region of the United States. First, we were treated to demonstrations of the VisWall, a bank of 24 computer monitors run by a series of networked computers. The VisWall facility was in the USGS Fort Collins Science Center adjacent to the Colorado State University campus.

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The Coastal Georgia Ecosystem Report Card was released November 13th, in Brunswick, Georgia. Heath Kelsey and I traveled to Georgia for the release event, which included both a media talk and a more detailed technical talk on the report card results. Coastal Georgia has a huge tidal range, as seen in this photo from St. Simon’s Island. This was one of the many things discussed in production of the report card.

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I had the privilege of attending the CERF Conference this year in Portland, Oregon. It was my first trip to Oregon, and visiting the Pacific Northwest was a really great experience. Before the Conference I had a few days to explore Portland including hiking in the Hoyt Arboretum, and visiting the Pittock Mansion.

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I made a presentation in the CERF 2015 session entitled "Successful Science Story-Telling for Coastal Resilience". My presentation was titled "Telling new stories about resiliences of Chesapeake Bay, Mississippi River and the Great Barrier Reef". My initial slide contrasted story-telling vs.

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Jane Thomas, Caroline Donovan, and I visited Ft. Lauderdale, FL to facilitate a workshop for the development of the Pilot Report Card for the Florida Reef Tract with our partners from NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program. The workshop and report card was a follow-up to the workshop for creation of the pilot report card for American Samoa.

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IAN hosted this year’s MEES Colloquium, offering students and faculty an opportunity to network and sharpen our science application and communication skills. The Colloquium sessions were previously described in more detail in the form of a poem blog post, written by Bill Dennison. NASA astronaut and MEES alumnus, Richard Arnold, served as our special guest speaker following the poster session and dinner on October 30th at the Banneker-Douglas Museum in historic downtown Annapolis.

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This poem was written on the last day of the 2015 Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Sciences (MEES) Colloquium held at Crowne Plaza Hotel in Annapolis, October 30-31, 2015, and hosted by the MEES goes to Annapolis … William C. Dennison … 31 October 2015 … A gathering of scientists of the MEES brand … From all over the state of Maryland … They developed a passion for understanding nature … For which there really is no cure.

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