IAN offers new course for developing report cards
Drs. Heath Kelsey, Simon Costanzo, and William Dennison will teach a course titled "Healthy Rivers for All: setting the course for sustainability with river basin health report cards" beginning 5 October 2017 and running through 14 December 2017. Participants will learn the complete process of report card generation, including stakeholder mapping and engagement, conceptualization of ecosystem function, selection of indicators and benchmarks, data analysis, communication of results, and leveraging the report card to make real change. Check out the course page for more details.IAN and WWF release "Using indicators for improved water resources management: Guide for basin managers and practitioners"
IAN co-authored the recently released "Using indicators for improved water resources management: Guide for basin managers and practitioners". Simon Costanzo, Heath Kelsey and Jane Hawkey collaborated with the UN Environment-DHI Centre on Water and Environment, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, Global Environment Facility and the Luc Hoffman Institute in writing, designing and laying out this guide which was developed to help basin managers, decision makers and other water resource management practitioners navigate this increasingly complex 'jungle of indicators'. It provides scientific, technical and communication guidance on use of indicators for better basin resource planning and management.
Everglades regional workshops following Everglades newsletter
In August, IAN held three regional workshops in Florida to lay the foundations for the Everglades Report Card and 2019 System Status Report. These workshops brought together scientists and managers from four unique regions throughout the Everglades: Greater Everglades, Northern Estuaries, Southern Coastal Systems, and Lake Okeechobee. The next step to creating these documents will be to work with Everglades scientists over the next year to compile and assess data. The final Everglades Report Card and System Status Report are expected to be completed by January 2019. More about this project can be found in the March 2017 newsletter.
IAN starts a project on the Tuul River in Mongolia
Simon Costanzo and Bill Dennison from IAN went to Mongolia with Michele Thieme from WWF to work with WWF Mongolia colleagues as part of the Healthy Rivers for All partnership. Field trips to the Mongolian steppe and workshops in the capitol, Ulaanbaatar, were conducted in collaboration with staff from the WWF Mongolia and the Tuul River Basin Authority on July 2017. A Tuul River report card will ultimately be produced and this initial workshop provided the training and tools for the Mongolian team to lead this effort. A series of blogs was posted to chronicle this initial visit.
IAN and UMCES staff engage stakeholders at Tennessee River Basin Network meeting
Heath Kelsey, Bill Dennison, and Dylan Taillie of the Integration and Application Network and Eric Davidson and Andrew Elmore of UMCES Appalachian Lab traveled down to Chattanooga in mid-August to engage Tennessee River Basin Network members in the report card process. During the workshop, participants identified values and threats to the Tennessee River Basin and drafted the regions of the basin so local stakeholders would feel empowered by the report card results. The Tennessee River Report Card will be released in the late Fall of 2017. Read more about the Chattanooga trip here.