An account of the January 2020 Chesapeake Watershed Report Card workshop, a convening to discuss development of a comprehensive new report card. Includes a song by Bill Dennison!

"It's Still Flowing;" a song and video created by Bill Dennison and voiced by Kat Parsons. Click for link to video

In late 2019, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley published a book through Esri Press entitled, “Smarter Government: How to Govern for Results in the Information Age”. I had been anticipating the book’s release ever since Gov.

An account of the 2019 Verde River Workshop by Bill Dennison. A poem by Bill is included as well.

Andrew Elmore and I traveled to Toledo, Ohio to facilitate a workshop focused on indicators and thresholds for the Western Lake Erie report card project. The workshop was held on 24-25 April 2019 in the Lake Erie Center, a beautiful facility run by the University of Toledo. Sandy Bihn, the Lake Erie Riverkeeper, was our sponsor and Tom Bridgeman, University of Toledo was our host. Prior to the workshop, Andrew and I drove around the Maumee River mouth to get a feel for the region.

Lake Erie is one of five Great Lakes between the United States and Canada. The Great Lakes form the largest freshwater system on the planet, containing approximately 1/5 of the world's freshwater supply. Lake Erie is the southern most Great Lake located downstream of Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron, but upstream of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway. The great lakes at night from above. Photo National Weather Services.

My first reaction to being invited to talk about Integration and Application Network (IAN) as a boundary organization was to ask, “What is a boundary organization?”. I looked up some definitions and liked the one that described a boundary organization in the following manner: “Organizations that facilitate collaboration and information flow between diverse research disciplines and between the research and public policy community”.

As part of the “Rounding the Curve on Adaptive Management” meeting in Richmond, VA, I gave the opening plenary talk. Kristin Saunders told me that the title and topic of the talk should be “We are Trailblazers”. The term “trailblazer” is described well by Ralph Waldo Emerson who said “Do not follow where the path may lead.

The Chesapeake Bay Program held a biennial retreat in Richmond, Virginia on March 13-14, 2019. This retreat was organized by Kristin Saunders, with help from Dave Goshorn and many others. The goal of the retreat was to review the progress of the adaptive management cycle after the initial two years of its implementation.

The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (formerly American Society of Limnology and Oceanography; ASLO) held its winter meeting in the San Juan, Puerto Rico convention center. The theme of the conference was “Planet Water: Challenges and Successes”. The session that I contributed to was on “Ecosystem Based Management: Holistic Approaches to Effective Management of Regional Ecosystem”.