New ways of looking at data promise to give a clearer picture of the effects of restoration in the ecosystem. People have worked hard to bring the Chesapeake Bay back to health. Yet, why is it so difficult to see the results? The IAN program’s Chesapeake Bay Report Card for 2011 gives the bay a D+.

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Hurricane Sandy was a wake-up call. More and more, people are asking, "What can be done to sustain coastal communities in the face of climate change and accelerated sea level rise?" The story of Holland Island, a once-thriving fishing community, reveals the importance of maintaining social infrastructure to sustain communities. The last house on Holland Island (credit: Wikipedia). Coastal communities must be resilient to cope with changing conditions served up by a sometimes harsh environment.

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Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, physicist, was born in Paris on September 18, 1819, and he died there on February 11, 1868. Foucault was a gifted experimentalist.

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Summary: Perhaps the best way to solve the problem of linking ecosystem science and management is to recognize the social dimensions of ecosystem science. There were enough pachyderms parading around the Florida Keys Science Conference, last October, to fill center ring at the Ringling Brothers Circus. They were all over the place.

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Responding to environmental changes driven by forces outside of our control presents a challenge for the management of regional ecosystems. It is challenging enough for managers to understand the links between human activities within a region and their impacts on the regional ecosystem. It is even more challenging to establish monitoring programs, policies and regulations capable of regulating the direct effects of human activities on conditions in the ecosystem.

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