The National Park Service is carrying out assessments of the natural resource condition (NRCA) for nearly 300 of the National Parks throughout the country deemed to have significant natural resources. This project, to assess condition of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, is a synthesis project aimed at collating and synthesizing all available data to assess current status and trend for key indicators, combining these into an overall framework.

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The primary objective of this project is to collate data, review indicators, and synthesize both to effectively report the health of Old Woman Creek in north-central Ohio. Old Woman Creek, on the south-central shore of Lake Erie, is one of Ohio’s few remaining examples of a natural estuary and is designated as a National Estuarine Research Reserve and a Ohio State Nature Preserve.

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The primary objective of this project is to collate data, review indicators and synthesize both to effectively report the health of Pipe Creek. Pipe Creek is a small tributary to Sandusky Bay on the south-central shore of Lake Erie. The Pipe Creek watershed is largely developed by a combination of urban and agricultural land uses.

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The Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) funds research that protects and preserves the Great Barrier Reef, particularly in the face of climate change. In April 2012, GBRF hosted a workshop to chart a vision for assessing the vulnerability of the Great Barrier Reef to climate change through the development of a climate vulnerability index. Major climate impacts already being manifested include:

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A workshop was held with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE) in Apia, Samoa in April 2012 to develop the initial stage of assessment for Samoa's State of Environment (SoE), which is currently underway. Key experts from MNRE and SPREP defined six key habitats in Samoa: cloud forest and uplands, lowlands, coastal strand, nearshore marine, offshore marine, and rivers and streams.

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The burden of global, regional, and project reporting has been a longstanding concern of Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs), particularly on Smaller Island States (SIS). Following a workshop that was jointly convened by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) in March 2012 in Fiji, a vision was created for more effective and streamlined reporting in the Pacific Region.

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Worldwide, marine protected areas (MPAs) are often declared by governments to fulfill national or international commitments. However, after being legally declared, MPAs remain in a status referred to as “paper parks”, without any management authority or without any conservation measures in place.

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The National Oil Spill Commission, tasked by President Obama, to determine the root causes of the April 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and to make recommendations on how to prevent such disasters in the future. Contracted by the Oil Spill Committee Action group, the staff at IAN worked closely with them to design and layout this important report.

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Local watershed monitoring groups use different methods for data analysis and reporting, which results in data that are of variable quality and report cards that are challenging to compare. This project seeks to create uniform sampling and data analysis protocols for non-tidal indicators, by developing consensus among members of the Mid-Atlantic Tributary Assessment Coalition (MTAC).

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In partnership with the University of South Carolina and SECOORA, we first developed a mobile app that displays predictions of water quality at 31 locations along the beach at Myrtle Beach, SC. Daily predictions are created using statistical models that incorporate data from remote sensing and ocean observing system sensors.

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