UMCES grad, Ricky Arnold, heads back to the International Space Station for NASA

Ricky Arnold heads back to the International Space Station on March 21, 2018. Ricky is an UMCES alumnus (1992) who has already completed more than 12 hours in spacewalks and worked on board the STS-119 Discovery shuttle flight while it traveled over 5.3 million miles. Good luck and godspeed, Ricky!

UMCES releases the Tennessee River Basin Report Card

Cover of the Tennessee River Basin Report Card showing a forested waterfall and a grade of C.IAN and Appalachian Laboratory teamed up with the Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative and the Tennessee River Basin Network to produce the first ever Tennessee River Basin Report Card. The Tennessee River Basin received an overall grade of C. The report card took a pressure, state, response approach to assessing the health of the region, finding the biggest threats to be aquatic and forest habitat fragmentation and land based sources of pollution. Read more about the report card process in Bill's blog here, and dig into the methods of the report card here.

UMCES holds workshops for the Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative

21 members of the data interpretation workshops pose for a group photo in a lobby near stairs.In the last month, IAN held two workshops for Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative (CMC) members and interested parties that focused on interpreting and visualizing data. The first workshop was hosted at the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase, MD and was a two-day introduction to data interpretation and visualization. UMCES developed a Data Interpretation and Synthesis Methods Manual for this workshop in order to assist students with the concepts introduced. The second two-day workshop, held in Annapolis, MD, provided advanced data interpretation to CMC groups and helped them to better communicate their monitoring data.

IAN team gathers for 2017 IAN Report Card Re-vamp Workshop

15 members of the IAN team pose for a group photo in front of cedar trees. The entire IAN team met on February 20, 2018 in Annapolis, MD for the 2017 IAN Report Card Re-vamp Workshop. Staff received a brief history of the IAN report card initiative as well as priorities for the future informed by UMCES and IAN strategic plans. The goal of the workshop was to discuss ways to improve our IAN report card scores and to revise and update indicators. External evaluators from the College of Exploration, Tina Bishop and Peter Tuddenham, were there with a fresh and objective perspective. Based on the recommendations made at this workshop a revised and updated report card will be drafted for staff to review at the next IAN Staff Retreat in May or June of 2018. You can view IAN Report Cards from 2015 and 2016 here.

IAN welcomes PhD student Natalie Peyronnin

Natalie Peyronnin smiles in front of a forest background.Natalie joins IAN as a part-time Phd student, also working full-time as the Director of Science Policy at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), focusing on the Mississippi River Delta Restoration and Natural Infrastructure. Natalie is currently conducting research at EDF on the complex operations and adaptive management of large-scale sediment diversions off the Mississippi River. Previously she was with the Louisiana Coastal Protection & Restoration Authority as well as the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. Natalie graduated from Louisiana State University with a B.S. in Wildlife and Fisheries Management and a M.S. in Oceanography and Coastal Sciences. Natalie is a lifelong Louisianan who moved to the DC-MD area 4 years ago. When she's not doing science, you can find her hitting the arts-museums, ballet, Kennedy Center-or a dive bar for a game of pool.