South Caucasus region transboundary report card
The central Kura River basin is a large river basin in the mountainous South Caucasus region of Eurasia. It contains important water resources for three countries—Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—and has a combined population of some 17 million people. There are many threats to these shared water resources, including nutrient inputs, heavy metal pollution, and sediment erosion. Successful management of these shared resources is critical to the social, economic, and ecological prosperity of the region. This newsletter, produced in collaboration with USAID and their South Caucasus Water Program, details the first attempt at an integrated water quality report card for the central Kura River basin.
Regional ecosystem research and coastal management workshop
NOAA's Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research and the Integration and Application Network partnered on a workshop about connecting regional ecosystem research and coastal management application. The workshop brought together scientists and managers who work on regional scales and asked them to articulate lessons learned and gaps in knowledge. The workshop was held at NOAA Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland on May 18-19, 2009. A synthesis report will be released, which summarizes the workshop findings, in late August.
IAN interns head to graduate schools
Lucy van Essen-Fishman and Kim Kraeer finished their 10 month IAN internships in May. Both are headed to graduate schools in the fall—Lucy will be traveling to Oxford University, U.K. to study ancient Greek, while Kimmy will be moving to Washington, D.C. to study biology at American University after a summer working as a dolphin trainer at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. The two interns were instrumental in developing and testing the environmental negotiating game "Trade-Off!" and in creating hundreds of new symbols for the IAN symbol library. In addition, they made substantial contributions to the COSEE Coastal Trends website and aided IAN Science Integrators and Science Communicators in a variety of projects throughout their internships. Lucy and Kimmy were wonderful to work with and we wish them great success in graduate school.
Lisa Florkowski completes her Master's thesis
In April, Lisa Florkowski successfully defended her Master's thesis: "Development of a recommended analytical framework for environmental report cards: An example from Rock Creek Park, Washington DC and its watershed". Lisa presented a public seminar entitled "Missing the forest for the concrete: Assessing Rock Creek Park" at the Appalachian Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science as part of her thesis defense. Lisa then finalized her corrections and submitted her thesis in early May. Congratulations to Lisa!