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:

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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.

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The Maryland Coastal Bays include Chincoteague, Sinepuxent, Isle of Wight, Assawoman, and Newport Bays, as well as St. Martin River. These coastal lagoons behind Assateague and Fenwick Islands were once known as the "Forgotten Bays", dwarfed in stature by the nearby majestic Chesapeake Bay. But the Coastal Bays have been discovered, in a large part due to the efforts of Jane "Jano" Thomas.

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On 12 January 2017, I visited Beau Ranheim, the Section Chief of Marine Sciences, New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Beau was a graduate student in the Ed Carpenter/Doug Capone laboratory at Stony Brook University when I was a postdoc in the same laboratory. After Beau finished his Master's program at Stony Brook, he has been working for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

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The submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) can be used as sentinels for the health of Chesapeake Bay. A working group of scientists has been formed to analyze three decades of water quality data and annual surveys of submerged aquatic vegetation. Bob Orth, a researcher based at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), and I are leading this effort.

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At the conclusion of a 9-11 Nov. 2016 workshop in Annapolis titled "Integrating systems modeling and report card development to improve basin health & manage trade-offs". I was able to convince the participants to act out a play that I wrote for the occasion. The play was entitled "Scrooge and the Report Card", loosely based on the classic "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. The list of actors was the following:

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On 9-11 November 2016, a workshop entitled "Integrating systems modeling and report card development to improve basin health & manage trade-offs" was held in Annapolis, Maryland. The systems modeling and the report card approach have a shared philosophy of stakeholder engagement as being the foundation to improving river health globally. Both approaches are also driven by synthesis of scientific data.

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As part of our Belmont Forum synthesis workshop, we sang a song at the end of each day. At the end of the first day after we had listened to the descriptions of diverse and fascinating projects, it was quite apparent that we were dealing with real research stars. This led to the adaptation of the 1999 song "All Star" (Music video) by the rock band Smash Mouth. Heath Kelsey and Martin LeTissier, my fellow workshop facilitators, were good sports about the disparaging lyrics attributed to them.

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The Basin Report Card Initiative, a partnership between the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the World Wildlife Fund, worked closely with game developers from the Engagement Lab at Emerson College to produce a fun, interactive and thought provoking game, “Get the Grade!” . “Get the Grade” was successfully launched at three signature events across the globe:

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"Environmental Literacy for Guanabara Bay, Brazil" (Portuguese translation by João Paulo Coimbra) Série ‘Aprendizado Ambiental' (Environmental Literacy Series) • A Baía de Guanabaraé uma formação costeira tropical (22°S) com uma abertura restrita e que forma um porto natural no sudeste do Brasil com clima de monções.

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