Assessment of Natural Resource Condition, Assateague Island National Seashore
Wednesday, December 17 was the kick-off meeting for the Assateague Island National Seashore assessment project. The meeting was attended by staff from IAN (Bill Dennison, Tim Carruthers, Michael Williams, and Jane Thomas) and Horn Point Laboratory (Tom Fisher and Greg Radcliffe), as well as National Park Service personnel, with the aim of categorizing habitats within the park and identifying appropriate data sets and sources to begin the assessment.
Florida Bay and Adjacent Marine Systems Science Conference
Drs. Bill Boicourt, Ed Houde and Bill Dennison from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science served on the Scientific Oversight Panel for the Florida Bay and Adjacent Marine Systems Science Conference in Naples, Florida in Dec. 2008. Other Scientific Oversight Panel members included Drs. John Hobbie (chair), Hans Paerl, and Steve McCutcheon. The conference, organized by the Florida Bay Program Management Committee, provided updates and syntheses of research progress since the last meeting in 2005. The focus of the conference was to increase the understanding of the connectivity and ecological dynamics and relationships among south Florida estuarine and coastal ecosystems.
Coastal Louisiana Ecosystem Assessment and Restoration (CLEAR) - New Website
Coastal Louisiana Ecosystem Assessment and Restoration (CLEAR) is based at the Louisiana State University's School of the Coast & Environment and is a collaborative effort among state, federal, and university scientists and engineers. CLEAR provides scientific evaluation for restoration management. IAN staff have collaborated on various CLEAR science communication products, including a series of newsletters. Most recently, IAN staff have contributed to the development of their new website, which highlights their modular approach to restoration and provides a searchable database of their extensive publication list.
Trophic transfers from seagrass meadows
This minireview published in Ecosystems is the latest publication from a synthesis effort at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in which IAN staff participated. The review found that seagrass ecosystems provide a large subsidy to both near and distant locations through the export of particulate organic matter as well as living plant and animal biomass. Therefore, the consequences of continuing seagrass decline extend far beyond the areas where seagrasses grow.