Let us start this blog by saying that whenever … we travel to India, we are met with the warmest of hospitality from our … colleagues at the National … Center for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM). Dr Ramesh … Ramachandran, Dr Purvaja Ramachandran, Dr Ajit Pattnaik, and their wonderful team … always go above and beyond to ensure we have a wonderful and rich experience. So, thank you NCSCM!

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This October 2018, I attended the 21st International Riversymposium, continuing a long-standing tradition of presIANce at this meeting on river science and management. In fact, I recall the very first Riversymposium held in Brisbane in 1998 way back when I was still a student studying the very river system that is the namesake of the annual conference. Since those days much has changed for the conference, the Brisbane River, and Moreton Bay…. all for the better.

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This April, I was fortunate to work with The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) China Program on options for assessing watershed health. The project, sponsored by the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau in Shaanxi Province, aims to develop a tool to assess the health of small watershed areas restored by the Bureau in Shaanxi Province. Shaanxi is located in Northwest China and is home to tributaries of the Yangtze River to the South and Yellow River to the north and east.

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This April, I was fortunate to work with my Chinese colleagues and visit a number of locations along the Chishui River, a major tributary of the Yangtze River in China. This new project, funded by the Asian Development Bank, is aimed at strengthening the “River Chief” system and improving the overall health of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

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In April I travelled to China to discuss report cards with WWF China. Following the workshop (outlined in a previous blog), I was extremely lucky to be taken on a guided tour of the Three Gorges Dam that spans the Yangzte River in Hubei Province. Now this ain’t just any dam, it’s the biggest hydroelectricity generating dam in the world with a capacity of 85 terrawatt hours per year, or a 10th of China’s whole energy budget! Can you imagine?!

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In April I travelled to China with Michele Thieme and Judy Takats from the World Wildlife Fund U.S. (WWF). The trip was planned to discuss with WWF China whether our report card process would work within the Chinese context. It was my first trip to China, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I discovered was a truly different, yet amazing country with friendly people, great food and amazing sights (I’ll talk more about my trip to the Three Gorges Dam in a following blog).

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Future Card: a report card that forecasts future ecosystem health grades based on alternate management strategies. The holy grail right? Well hopefully. This idea of a “future card” began 18 months ago while I was attending a meeting held by the Luc Hoffman Institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the LIVES’s project (Linked Indicators for Vital Ecosystem Services).

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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) In October 2015, I made the great journey back to Cambodia for my second time that year. I love the trip there as you get to fly right over the North Pole and see icebergs! I think I mentioned that already in my previous blog about Cambodia.

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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) Our partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was officially launched at World Water Week this past August 2015. This new partnership aims to widen the audience and uptake of report cards as an environmental management tool for river basins around the world.

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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) The King of Cambodia is an elected monarch, making Cambodia one of the few elected monarchies of the world. Credit: Simon Costanzo … Wow, my travel adventures through our new partnership with WWF continue in 2015 with a trip to Cambodia in south-east Asia.

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