This is the first of a series of blogs intended to begin synthesizing the key messages from Kakadu National Park floodplains research conducted as part of the National Environment Research Programme (NERP). When you put the many pieces together, the story that emerges is all about connections.

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This is part two 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 … The Great Barrier Reef Resilience Index … As part of a joint project of UMCES and Charles Darwin University, Jane Thomas, Bill Dennison and I traveled to Townsville, Australia to continue the development of the Great Barrier Reef Resilience Index.

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As a follow-on from the Gladstone Harbor Report Card, which IAN helped design last year, I had the chance to help Queensland Environment and Heritage Protection (EHP) develop a draft report card for the next region, in Mackay. I attended the workshop in Mackay on February 24, to facilitate the discussion about report cards, discuss issues related to report card development, and help sketch out the draft report card in a storyboard exercise.

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This is the second of two Blogs about the intersection of the Collective Impact approach and ecosystem health report cards. In Part 1, I discuss the principles of collective impact, and how our report card process can be a catalyst for engagement.

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This is the first of two posts about the application of report cards to enable a collective impact process. The collective impact model facilitates positive change … Collective Impact is a term used to refer to collaborative projects that create “needle-moving” changes to complex and intransigent problems. I ran across the term for the first time a few days ago, and it resonated strongly with me.

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As part of our ongoing project with Charles Darwin University to synthesize the research on the flood plains of Kakadu National Park, we review the fundamentals of the environment and characteristics of the region, specifically the coastal tropical areas in the northern part of the territory. The Northern Territory is the third largest state or territory in the country with about 17.5% (1.3 million km2) of the land area.

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In the spring of 2014, Charles Darwin University in Australia's Northern Territory signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that allows us to exchange staff for extended periods. The goal is to increase our shared capacity for synthesis and communication of river and coastal management science. To begin flexing the cooperative spirit of the MOU, I will be traveling to Darwin (with family in tow) this January 2015 for about 3+ months.

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Tracey Saxby and I were in Corvallis, Oregon this week for the "Within Our Reach" conference on Willamette River restoration. The conference is supported by the Myer Memorial Trust (MMT) and is the brainchild of Pam Wiley, the Willamette River Initiative Director for MMT.

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Jane Hawkey, Caroline Donovan, and I had a fantastic visit to Raleigh, NC, where we are working with the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (SALCC) develop a State of the South Atlantic Ecosystems Assessment. Over the last two years or so, the SALCC has been developing a set of indicators that reflect on conservation priorities for 11 ecosystems in the US South Atlantic region.

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I traveled to Kansas City, Missouri August 26, 2014 to facilitate a workshop in the Missouri River Basin, as part of the Mississippi River Report Card project with America’s Watershed Initiative. This meeting, held at the Kansas City Airport Hilton, was a follow-up to the May 23 meeting we had in Rapid City, South Dakota, where we got a good start on conceptualizing issues and concerns in the basin.

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