Fifteen students from four campuses met each week … After watching YouTube lectures and reading a lot … Our class time flew by, did it not … Facilitators led the discussion, insights they did seek. And the rapporteur provided the discussion summary … So that the author could draft up a synthesis blog … Clarifying the topic by avoiding intellectual fog … And posting as many blogs as the Internet could carry.

Read more

At a recent roundtable discussion of approaches for accelerating Chesapeake Bay restoration, one of the participants used the phrase "We the people..." which provoked me to think of the preamble to the United States Constitution, the beginning of an amazingly robust document that still resonates today. I hope that the 2014 Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Agreement will also have longevity and resonance, so I adapted the agreement into constitutional language as follows:

Read more

Joseph "Jay" C. Zieman (1943-2015), my seagrass ecology colleague, died recently. I first met Jay in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1980 when my Master's thesis advisor C. Peter McRoy organized a workshop associated with the Seagrass Ecosystem Study, funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the International Decade of Ocean Exploration.

Read more

Celebrating 90 years of UMCES series … Reginald V. Truitt (1890-1991) was the founder of Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in 1925, the forerunner of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES). As part of the 90th anniversary of UMCES, I have been learning about Reginald Truitt and made a visit to the Maryland Room in Hornbake Library to peruse his archived papers.

Read more

I spent an enjoyable day in Chesapeake Beach overlooking the Bay in a workshop entitled 'Webstock 2015: One day of Peace & the Internet". Guy Stephens, one of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science at the Chesapeake Bay Program (UMCES @ CBP) staff organized this amazing event. I knew something was different when I heard strains of rock music as I approached the workshop site.

Read more

This blog is part of the Basin Report Card Initiative: a partnership between the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) Simon Costanzo, Alex Fries and I travelled into Washington D.C. for a brainstorming session with colleagues at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The brainstorming took place in a cozy room located in one of the far corners of the WWF office suite.

Read more

This is part three of a three part series of blog posts about developing a reef resilience index for the Great Barrier Reef at a workshop in Townsville in March 2015 … Reef Resilience in Townsville … William C.

Read more

This is part one of a three-part series of blog posts about developing a reef resilience index for the Great Barrier Reef at a workshop in Townsville in March 2015. 'Resilience Based Management' was one of the concepts that arose during our workshop with resource managers at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Townsville, Australia on 2 Mar 2015.

Read more

Celebrating 90 years of UMCES series … As I was looking through the newspaper clippings and photographs of Reginald V. Truitt, founder and first director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, I was intrigued by a photograph of Truitt standing in a metal hatch protruding from the water and shaking hands with another gentleman. On the back of this photograph, the following words were inscribed "R.V. Truitt & Gilbert Klingel" and "Developers of the Bentharium" along with the year "1935".

Read more

Bob Simon's untimely death is a cause for sadness. I had the good fortune of spending some time with him when I was living in Australia and Bob was there to film a story on the Great Barrier Reef. I know the exact day I met Bob Simon: 10 April 1999. The reason I remember this day so well was that my second child, Laura, was born at 2:30 am on 10 April.

Read more