The International WaterCentre, formed as a consortium of four Australian universities, offers a Master's degree program in water management. As part of the 18 month (full time) course, a field trip to North Stradbroke Island is included. I attended two of the three days, and led a field trip to the seagrass beds in One Mile Harbor, near the town of Dunwich. The Moreton Bay Research Station in Dunwich was used in the course.

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A 2011 Flood Science Taskforce was convened on 20 January 2011 to coordinate flood monitoring efforts and to discuss potential environmental impacts in the catchment and the waterways, including Moreton Bay. At the task force meeting, aerial and satellite images were displayed, the hydrodynamic model was run and available data were presented.

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The mayor of Moreton Bay Regional Council, Councillor Allan Sutherland, invited me and Eva Abal, the scientific coordinator for several Brisbane based organizations, Healthy Waterways, International Water Centre, Great Barrier Reef Foundation (and my first PhD student) for lunch in Redcliffe. Allan was Deputy Mayor of Redcliffe City Council when I first met him.

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I had the opportunity to catch up with Steven Walker, the Executive Dean of the newly formed Faculty of Science at the University of Queensland. Years ago, Steven and I worked on an interesting project which was to assess the health of the 1000+ Australian estuaries as part of the National Land and Water Resources Audit. The estuary project was divided into three components, 1) a concept mapping and initial assessment of each estuary (summarized in the book "Where River Meets Sea:

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The 2011 floods in Queensland provide a societal learning moment. The intense media attention and the personal experiences that touched so many people have made a broad swath of society receptive to learning more about flooding and flood impacts. The key from the science communication perspective is to generate timely and synthetic products that are targeted to a broad audience.

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Just as Randy Alberte served to get the Alberte laboratory together in Chicago, his recent death has provided the impetus to get us together via the emails that we have exchanged recently. I think that he would have appreciated these enduring connections. Randy Alberte snorkeling over Bill Dennison's seagrass research site … A major factor in my decision to come to The University of Chicago was the cohort of Alberte graduate students, as well as the students in other lab groups.

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Queensland Parks and Wildlife rangers conduct regular surveys of seagrasses and Lyngbya majuscula (a cyanobacterium that has been blooming in Moreton Bay for over a decade). I was able to tag along for a look at the Bay and the benthic communities of the Eastern Banks. The Eastern Banks of Moreton Bay are very special--they support large populations of green sea turtles and dugong, a relative of the manatee.

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The Queensland floods touched something deep within the Queensland residents. The term 'Queenslander' has been used as a rallying cry for the State of Origin rugby league football team from Queensland since 1995 when Billy Moore called for team unity and spirit when they were underdogs against their arch rivals from New South Wales.

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We arrived in Brisbane on January 9, 2011 and were surprised at the green and lush vegetation. It was raining and our friends informed us that it had been raining for weeks, and that the dam was at 120% capacity, compared with the 13% capacity on one of our previous visits.

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This blog post discusses the seminar given by Bob Hirsch of the US Geological Survey (USGS), at the IAN Seminar Series on November 23, 2010. Bob Hirsch speaking at the IAN Seminar Series … The analytical method used by Bob Hirsch was clarified. Bob explained that he used nutrient concentrations that were estimated daily every day over a 31 year period, and these concentrations were converted to fluxes by multiplying nutrient concentrations by discharge (water flow) rates.

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