Engaging with the agricultural community in Fredericksburg
On June 1st, the COAST Card team and Global Sustainability Scholars attended the 2024 Community Ag Outreach event in Fredericksburg, VA. The event was hosted by the Tri-County/City Soil and Water Conservation District and Patawomeck Indian Tribe. Our table was interactive, following a listening session format which allowed attendees to identify watershed values, threats, visions, and actions, and to share their experiences with agriculture. This was an opportunity to engage with farmers, landowners, and local public and private organizations involved in conservation. The site also featured the Patawomeck Museum and Cultural Center, an outdoor Living History Village, and gardens.
Highlights from the 2024 Chesapeake Community Research Symposium
From June 10-12th, the 2024 Chesapeake Community Research Symposium was held in Annapolis, MD, and attended by Sidney Anderson, Veronica Malabanan-Lucchese, Lili Badri, and our summer Global Sustainability Scholars. The conference featured Chesapeake scientists, managers, and stakeholders who provided updates on Chesapeake Bay restoration and resilience progress through plenary talks, panel discussions, and special sessions. Our team presented on the final day during the session "Co-designing Solutions to Support Community Resilience in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed." The talks highlighted various aspects of the COAST Card project, including results from our previous listening sessions and social network analysis.
Highlights from the SRI Conference in Helsinki, Finland
Alexandra Fries, Heath Kelsey, Vanessa Vargas-Nguyen, and Bill Dennison attended Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress in Helsinki, Finland from June 10-14th. They facilitated several workshops on science communication and stakeholder engagement. They also collaborated with partners from University of South Carolina, University of Bergen, and Future Earth Coasts. The conference was a great venue to advance IAN’s thinking on sustainability and working to solve global challenges. Also, the synthesis and communication that IAN products accomplish was mentioned as an asset that is greatly needed to impact policy-making and improve natural resource management.
IAN attends Future Earth General Assembly meeting in Helsinki, Finland
As the Future Earth Coasts (FEC) US International Project Office lead, Heath Kelsey attended the Future Earth General Assembly meeting in Helsinki, along with FEC Executive Director, Dr. Xiaoyu Fang, from East China Normal University in Shanghai, China. Two full days of meetings addressed the science and research directions for Future Earth, along with business and management questions. Highlights were the discussion around science and research needs from a global perspective. Of special interest were discussions around the issue of scale—how can global research questions be translated into action at the local scale? And of course, meeting Xiaoyu in person for the first time was the highlight of the whole trip!
IAN showcases work at ISBW15
Two IAN staff, Dr. Katie May Laumann and Dr. Jon Lefcheck, traveled to Napoli, Italy, to showcase IAN’s work at the 15th International Seagrass Biology Workshop (ISBW15). Along with colleagues Dr. Bill Dennison, Dr. Lina Mtwana Nordlund (Uppsala University), and Dr. Judy O’Neill (UMCES Horn Point Lab), they led four workshops on Seagrass Futures, Science Communication, Stakeholder Engagement, and Avoiding Parachute Science. Dr. Lefcheck presented his novel work “Helping Eelgrass Adapt to Temperature through Assisted Migration.” Their workshops and talk reached hundreds of colleagues in seagrass research and marine science, and will hopefully lead to many collaborations.
Coming soon: 2024 Chesapeake Bay & Watershed Report Card
Our annual Chesapeake Bay & Watershed Report Card will be released on Tuesday, July 9th from 10am-12pm ET at the Susquehanna River Basin Commission in Harrisburg, PA. This will be our first-ever release event of this report card in Pennsylvania! The event will also be live-streamed on our Youtube page via a Zoom webinar. To attend, please RSVP here.
IAN Seminar Series: Level up your Scicomm
Please join us on July 10th at 12 pm ET to hear from our guest speaker, Dr. Sheryl Hosler, who will share her personal scicomm journey and a few tips and tricks to survive as a scientist on social media. Also known as “The Roving Naturalist,” Sheryl is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State investigating ecosystem service provisioning by cover crop mixtures in conventional row-crop agriculture systems. She also has over 10 years of experience in conducting science communication for non-expert audiences, including 8+ years of experience creating multimedia scicomm content and broad collaborative experience. Please RSVP here to attend via Zoom.