IAN helping to plan and establish multiple Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Indonesia
Jane Thomas from IAN has been in Bali working with The Nature Conservancy (TNC). Together with Conservation International and World Wildlife Fund, TNC has been helping the Indonesian government to plan and establish multiple Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Bird's Head/Raja Ampat region of Indonesia's West Papua province. This region is in the heart of the Coral Triangle, which is the center of the highest coral diversity in the world. Surveys around Raja Ampat show that this area has the highest marine biodiversity on earth. IAN has been working with TNC to develop a series of conceptual diagrams depicting the benefits of MPAs for the reefs and wildlife, and the communities that depend on them for sustenance and livelihood. The major threats to the Bird's Head/Raja Ampat region are unsustainable fishing (including longlines, shark finning, dynamite and cyanide fishing), logging (causing erosion), and mining.
Altered ecological flows blur boundaries in urbanizing watersheds
The relevance of the boundary concept to ecological processes has been recently questioned. Humans in the post-industrial era have created novel lateral transport fluxes that have not been sufficiently considered in watershed studies. In this new paper, Ecology and Society 14(2): 10, we describe patterns of land-use change within the Potomac River basin and demonstrate how these changes have blurred traditional ecosystem boundaries by increasing the movement of people, materials, and energy into and within the basin. We argue that this expansion of ecological commerce requires new science, monitoring, and management strategies focused on large rivers and suggest that traditional geopolitical and economic boundaries for environmental decision making be appropriately revised. Effective mitigation of the consequences of blurred boundaries will benefit from a broad-scale, interdisciplinary framework that can track and explicitly account for ecological fluxes of water, energy, materials, and organisms across human-dominated landscapes.
Resource Assessment and Science Communication with National Parks in Hawaii
Continuing work with the National Parks of the Pacific Island Network, IAN staff Tim Carruthers and Jane Hawkey are currently in Hawaii working with three National Parks. At Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park on the big island of Hawai'i, a week-long workshop with park staff initiated a report to assess the current condition of natural marine, aquatic, and terrestrial resources within the park. A two-day workshop at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park focused on developing brochures on invasive species for local and visitor audiences. Finally, at Kalaupapa National Historical Park on the island of Moloka'i, meetings with staff will develop syntheses of key natural resource features and threats for this unique region.
New Chesapeake Bay Program Office Database Manager
Sucharith Ravi joined the UMCES team last week as a Database Manager for Chesapeake Bay Program Office in Annapolis. He worked as a Database Developer in New Jersey where he gained his experience in relational database management systems and web designing. His educational background includes a Master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University Of Missouri, and a Bachelors of Technology in Electrical and Communications Engineering from JNTU, India. He just moved to Annapolis a week ago and is looking to find some nice places to network and ready to make some new friends.