Dear Physiological Ecology Section Members,
It’s my pleasure to announce the winners and honorable mentions for the Billings award and the New Phytologist Poster award. Notice that the Section has renamed the “Best Poster award” to the “New Phytologist Poster award” in recognition of New Phytologist’s contribution to the Billings Fund, which provides a cash prize to both the Billings award winner for the best oral presentation and the New Phytologist award winner for the best poster. The winners and honorable mentions also receive a complimentary book of their choice from Elsevier. Thanks to both New Phytologist and Elsevier for supporting our Section’s awards competition. To learn more about these awards and their history, please visit our Section’s Web page, maintained by Rob Jackson at Duke:
http://biology.duke.edu/jackson/ecophys/
We had an excellent group of students that participated in this year’s awards competition at ESA. Eleven were considered for the Billings award, and six for the New Phytologist Poster award. The judges, including myself, were very impressed by the quality of work presented by each student. After some lengthy consideration, the following students emerged as the top presenters; all gave excellent, well-organized, and clearly presented talks and posters, and all addressed very interesting questions in creative ways. Please congratulate the winners when you have a chance!
Billings award:
Winner: Marnie Rout, University of Montana, gave an oral presentation on "Sorghum halepense and endophytic N-fixing bacteria: Ecosystem engineers altering soil biogeochemistry"
Honorable mention: Rob Salguero-Gomez, University of Pennsylvania, gave a presentation on "First evidence for hydraulic fragmentation in an herbaceous aridland perennial: Cryptantha flava"
New Phytologist Poster award:
Winner: Ava Howard, University of Georgia, presented a poster on "Stomatal conductance responses to changing vapor pressure deficit: Do daytime patterns of regulation apply at night?"
Honorable mention: Jessica Cruz de Osuna presented a poster titled "An in-depth study of the seasonal trends in photosynthesis in Q. douglasii in a Mediterranean savanna"
Sincerely,
Kiona Ogle
Secretary, Physiological Ecology Section
This goal of this conference is to explore the breadth of forest carbon science in the Lake States and Northeast regions and provide an opportunity for scientists to: (1) share and discuss research on carbon pools and cycling in temperate and boreal forests; (2) identify research needs in forest carbon science given natural and human disturbances and environmental change; and (3) highlight potential effects of management on carbon dynamics and suggest methods to increase carbon stored in forests and wood products.
Focus areas include:
- Disturbance Effects on Forest Carbon Pools
- Management Interaction with Forest Carbon Pools
- Valuing Carbon as an Ecosystem Service
- Bioenergy for Fossil Fuel Substitution and Carbon Sequestration
Abstracts for oral and poster presentations will be accepted until April 3, 2009. Additionally, presenters will have the opportunity to submit manuscripts for a special issue of the journal FOREST SCIENCE.
Additional information is available online at the conference website: www.forest.mtu.edu/cinf
This is a reminder that registration is open until Friday, October 4, 2008. This is a FREE event, but registration is required.
The symposium will occur on Saturday, October 18, 2008, 9 am to 6 pm. The annual UMass PB symposium is an initiative of the Plant Biology Graduate Program designed to highlight an exciting area of plant biology each year. We strongly encourage interested postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates to attend and present posters on any topic of their research in plant biology.
Online registration is available through the symposium webpage:
http://www.bio.umass.edu/plantbio/symposium08.html
We hope you can join us for the great talks and fall foliage!
Best Regards,
Ana Caicedo (caicedo@bio.umass.edu)
Lynn Adler (lsadler@ent.umass.edu)
For those of you who still trying to decide which session to submit your AGU abstract to I encurage you to consider this one (especially if you are using stable isotopes and are working in mountainous systems). We had a great oral and poster session last year on a similar topic.
B41: The World Is Not Flat: Isotopic Tools for Understanding Mountainous Terrain
Mountains cover twenty percent of the earth’s surface, including much of the western United States. They contain many of the world’s most productive ecosystems and provide essential ecosystem services (e.g., as “water towers” to lower-lying, urban areas). However, we have a very poor understanding of ecological processes in mountainous areas, especially as they relate to climate. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, ecological processes differ distinctly in mountainous terrain compared with “flat ground." These differences result partly from downslope movement of sediments and partly from rapid gravitational drainage of water and cold air. Second, many of the large-scale integration tools available for ecosystem studies, including especially flux measurements, are difficult to employ in complex terrain. It is sobering to consider that sites selected for the entire Ameriflux network, and more recently for NEON core sites, have been biased deliberately in favor of flat terrain.
What else can we use as integrative measurements of ecosystem function in the mountains? Stable isotope measurements can integrate over space and time. For example, isotopic composition of stream water provides information on hydrologic processes over entire watersheds. In addition, the isotopic composition of dissolved ions in the water provides new opportunities to assess biogeochemical cycles upslope. Recent studies have demonstrated that a similar approach may be applied to nocturnal cold-air drainage systems, focusing on the carbon isotope composition of respired CO2 collected from the upslope airshed. These integrative measurements provide new opportunities to parameterize and test simulation models in the absence of eddy-flux data. This session welcomes contributions that discuss isotopic tools for the analysis of ecosystem processes in mountainous terrain.
AGU Abstract Submission: http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm08/ Deadline: September 10, 2008.
Dear Open Source Remote Sensing and Geospatial Colleagues,
Please consider submitting an abstract for this open source remote sensing session at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting December 15-19, 2008 in San Francisco. It will be a great opportunity to promote and learn about open source remote sensing in a vibrant international earth science community (estimated 15,000 attendees).
Session: IN24: Open Source Remote Sensing for Environmental Mapping and Analysis
AGU Abstract Submission URL: http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm08/ (Please reference session IN24, and note the abstract submission deadline: September 10, 2008)
Session Abstract:
Anthropogenic and natural pressures on ecosystems and environments threaten human and ecological health at many levels. Remote sensing analysis of aerial photography and satellite imagery provides views of the environment necessary for sound environmental stewardship. Unprecedented amounts of earth imagery are now available on our desktops through data portals and virtual earths, and many open source geographic information system (GIS) applications are available. However, there is a great need for free or low cost, easy to use remote sensing software tools to help non-geospatial-experts make better use of these image resources to enhance environmental mapping and analysis.
The goal of this session is to highlight open source remote sensing tools and applications in environmental analysis. How are open source remote sensing tools being used in environmental analysis (e.g., land cover mapping; change detection; disaster recovery; habitat analysis; impervious surface mapping)? Are remote sensing mapping algorithms incorporated in virtual earths to expand their analytical capability? Can we develop easy to use open source decision support tools to help guide environmental decision making at the national, regional, local and citizen levels? How can we better harness the observations of citizens informed about their local environments in a geospatially-enabled manner?
Thank you for your kind attention, and please forward this announcement to any interested colleagues.
Sincerely,
Drew Pilant, Ph.D.
US Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Research and Development
Landscape Characterization Branch
tel: 919.541.0648
fax: 919.541.9420
pilant.drew@epa.gov
Proposed Session Title: "Climate, Wildfire, and Woodland Dynamics in the Great Basin of North America".
Organizers: Franco Biondi (University of Nevada, Reno) and Jason Sibold (Colorado State University).
We are organizing a paper and poster session dedicated to the interaction between environmental patterns and processes in the Great Basin of North America, with a special emphasis on comparing pre- and post- EuroAmerican settlement periods. Research at all spatial and temporal time scales is welcomed, with a preference to papers based on natural archives of climate, wildfire, and woodland dynamics.
Please contact Franco Biondi (fbiondi@unr.edu) or Jason Sibold (Jason.Sibold@colostate.edu) by October 5, 2008 if you are interested in participating in the proposed session. You will then need to register for the conference and submit your abstract to provide us with your program identification number, or PIN. We will use the PIN numbers to add each participant to the session (there are also new tools available this year to session organizers, and we are planning to explore them, but the traditional way still works!).
Note: The registration deadline for submitting the organized session is October 16, 2008. Details about the meeting can be found at http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/2009/.
Deadline for Submission: September 25, 2008
The theme for the ESA Annual Meeting in 2009 is "Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society". With fossil fuels waning, a public awareness of global warming and biodiversity issues increasing, and new green technologies breaking into public markets, the world is poised for planning sustainability of a global society. While ecologists continue to be on the forefront of research examining anthropogenic effects on biodiversity and ecosystem function, interdisciplinary studies incorporating ecological knowledge into sustainable planning are lacking. Growing fields of agro-ecology and urban ecology are attempting to develop interdisciplinary links, but all fields of ecological study can offer information toward sustainability, as evidenced in recent books of sustainability and societal collapse. Symposia and Organized Oral Session proposals related to this year’s theme are highly encouraged. Please visit the homepage for next year’s ESA Annual Meeting for additional information: http://www.esa.org/albuquerque.
SYMPOSIA are the scientific centerpiece of the meeting. They are limited to half-day sessions (3 ½ hours). Individual talks in symposia range from 15 to 30 minutes in length at the discretion of the symposium organizer. Time devoted to synthesis, summary, and discussion is strongly encouraged. This meeting will include 24 symposia, and all proposals will be peer-reviewed. For additional information and to begin the submission process, please visit http://www.esa.org/albuquerque/call_symposium.php.
ORGANIZED ORAL SESSIONS are organized around a specific topic with most of the speakers invited by the organizer. These sessions are distinguished from symposia in that 1) there is less emphasis on breadth of appeal and overall synthesis; 2) they may be comprised largely of related case studies; 3) talks are set at 15 minutes each, with 5 minutes following for discussion (as in contributed oral sessions); and 4) at least 2 time slots out of the 10 available in an organized oral session are reserved for placing related talks from the contributed abstracts by the Program Chair. Organized oral sessions also are limited to half-day sessions (3 ½ hours). There is no set number of accepted Organized Oral Session proposals, and all proposals will be peer-reviewed. For additional information and to begin the submission process, please visit http://www.esa.org/albuquerque/call_oos.php.
If you have any questions, please contact Program Chair, Scott Franklin, at Scott.Franklin@unco.edu, or Program Assistant, Aleta Wiley, at Aleta@esa.org.
Registration is now open to attend the 6th Annual Ecological Genomics Symposium on November 14 - 16, 2008, at the InterContinental Hotel in Kansas City on the Country Club Plaza. The Genes in Ecology, Ecology in Genes Symposium will begin on Friday evening, November 14, and conclude at noon on Sunday, November 16. For more complete information regarding poster abstract submission, registration and hotel reservations, please visit our Symposium website, www.ecogen.ksu.edu/symp2008.
Poster Abstracts:
Please submit your poster abstract online before Tuesday, October 14, 2008. A limited number of submitted poster abstracts will be selected for oral presentation.
If you have questions, please contact us at (785) 532-3482 or ecogen@ksu.edu. Additional information about this interdisciplinary research initiative is available at www.ecogen.ksu.edu.
The conference will be held in Mérida, Mexico in the Yucatan Peninsula, 8–12 January 2009. Invited symposia will feature talks on the biogeography of disease, patterns and processes in biotic interchanges, disjunct distributions in Asia and America, and the biogeography of species extinction. Attendees are invited to submit abstracts for oral and poster presentations. The conference will also include workshops, field excursions, and social events. Registration, contact, and additional information may be found at http://biogeography.org. Registration is now open.
Contact Information:
Matthew Heard, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, (401) 863-2789, Fax: (401) 863-2166, Email: heard.m@gmail.com
PolarTREC is currently accepting applications from researchers for the third year of teacher research experiences. Researchers are invited to submit an application to host a PolarTREC teacher in the Arctic or Antarctic during the 2009 and/or 2009/2010 field seasons. More information and application forms are available at: http://www.polartrec.com.
Researcher Application Deadline: Monday, 8 September 2008.
PolarTREC, a program of the Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS), is a three-year (2007-2009) National Science Foundation-funded International Polar Year (IPY) project in which K-12 teachers participate in polar research, working closely with scientists as a pathway to improving science education. The program integrates research and education to produce a legacy of long-term teacher-researcher collaborations, improved teacher content knowledge, and broad public interest and engagement in polar science. PolarTREC projects focus on a wide variety of research activities occurring in both the Arctic and Antarctic during and after the IPY, providing an outstanding opportunity for researchers to share their passion for polar science through topics that naturally engage students and the wider public.
Through PolarTREC, teachers spend two to six weeks in the Arctic or Antarctic, working closely with the researchers in the field as an integral part of the science team. PolarTREC teachers and researchers are matched based on similar goals and interests and teachers are trained to meet the program requirements prior to the field season. While in the field, teachers and researchers communicate extensively with their colleagues, communities, and students of all ages across the globe, using a variety of tools including satellite phones, online journals, podcasts, and interactive "Live from IPY" events and web-based seminars.
PolarTREC researchers must be at U.S. Institutions and applications from researchers on NSF-funded projects will receive priority in the selection process. Researchers should have secured funding for their research project prior to applying; if funding is pending and you would still like to host a teacher, please contact PolarTREC at info@polartrec.com to discuss your situation. PolarTREC will provide training to the teacher before the deployment and assist in arranging field logistics. If you are interested in participating in PolarTREC but unable to apply during this initial application period, please contact us to discuss opportunities for future participation.
We expect that researchers will be notified of selection decisions in December 2008.
Funding for PolarTREC is provided by the National Science Foundation (Award Number: 632401).
I'd like to bring your attention to the session "Environmental Consequences of the Changing Global Food System" being held at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, December 15 -19th, 2008. Abstracts must be submitted by Sept 10th at http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm08/
Union 14: Environmental Consequences of the Changing Global Food System
Producing agricultural products, whether for food, animal feed or biofuels, is a primary driver of global environmental change. The pressure on terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems worldwide is increasing due to rises in the global population, the demand for diets rich in meat and fish protein, and the demand for biofuels. At the same time, globalization and the commodity trade are creating linkages between demand, land use change and environmental degradation in different, distant regions of the planet. This session will examine recent changes in the production of food, feed and fuel around the planet, the social, cultural and economic forces driving those changes, and the global implications for ecosystems, biodiversity, food security, water resources and the climate.
Emphasis will be places on the following issues: i) appropriation of planetary resources (land, water, estuaries, fisheries) for food, feed and biofuel production; ii) environmental "teleconnections" caused by globalization and the international food trade; iii) the consequences of changes in food demand and diet on nutrient cycling, water resources, biodiversity, and air quality; iv) the effect of global change on agricultural production. Conveners: Simon Donner, Jonathan Foley, Navin Ramankutty, Mutlu Ozdogan
I'd like to call your attention to an ecohydrology session at the 2008 AGU Fall Meeting: H24: Hydrologic Controls on Ecosystem Function. A full session description can be found below. If this topic is in your field, I would like to strongly encourage you to submit an abstract to the session.
Session H24: Hydrologic Controls on Ecosystem Function
The feedbacks between surface hydrology and ecosystem function are of critical importance for both the water and nutrient cycles, yet the interactions among these concurrent processes remain poorly understood. Episodic hydrologic events such as moisture pulses, or conversely, periods of water stress, make many ecosystems particularly sensitive to hydrological change, as seasonal and inter-annual variability of plant and ecosystem function can be especially dependent on the magnitude and timing of moisture inputs. This session invites papers from the hydrological, physiological, and biogeochemical communities to bridge traditional scientific disciplines in order to further our holistic understanding of how moisture inputs propagate into eco(hydro)systems. Topics of interest include investigations of the role that topography, complex terrain and moisture inputs (e.g., rainy season, snowmelt, intermittent water table) play in the interaction between surface hydrology and the exchange of mass, energy and momentum across the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. Studies employing field-based data collection and innovative methods of analysis and modeling, and papers that consider the complications of working across a range of spatial and temporal scales are encouraged. We seek contributions that take an integrative approach to exploring coupled ecological-hydrological processes from hillslope to basin scales. This session is intended to stimulate discussion, comparison, and context of hydrologic controls on ecosystem function across moisture-controlled ecosystems.
Holly Barnard, Oregon State University
In recent days there have been several announcements about different Biogeosciences sessions arranged for the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting this December in San Francisco. Please be aware that this year Biogeosciences received around 50 sessions on a wide range of topics, including those relevant to ecology, biological, hydrological, biogeochemical, marine, remote sensing sciences, amongst other topics.
Before submitting your abstract, please view the information associated with each session. This can be found at: [http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm08/?content=program] under “Session Search” with the Sponsor selected as “Biogeosciences”.
Please try and avoid submitting to B01: General Contributions as the organizing committee tries to ultimately allocate these abstracts to a specific session.
The abstract submission deadline is 10 September 2008, 2359 UT (Universal Time) – with no extensions possible for whatever reason.
Thanks and we Hope to See you all in San Francisco!
Biogeosciences - AGU Fall Meeting Organizing Committee
Alistair M.S. Smith
University of Idaho
Phone: +1-208-885-1009
E-mail: Alistair@uidaho.edu
Lara Kueppers
University of California Merced
Phone: +1-209-228-4054
E-mail: lkueppers@ucmerced.edu
Anne Hartley
Florida Gulf Coast University
Phone: +1-239-590-7654
E-mail: ahartley@fgcu.edu
We invite you to contribute your abstract to the special session focusing on phenology and seasonality at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, December 15-19, 2008!
B07: Shifts in Phenology and Seasonality? Recent Evidence from Multiple Taxa, Ecoregions, and Models
In the wake of the IPCC AR4, questions arise about extents, magnitudes, and directions of shifts in the phenologies of species and species interactions as well as the seasonalities that compose their host environments. We are casting a wide net to gather multiple perspectives across spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales to explore the evidence for significant shifts in the timing of biogeophysical phenomena. This session constitutes the fifth year of a phenology focus at the AGU Fall Meeting.
The session is sponsored by the Biogeosciences section and co-sponsored by the Atmospheric Sciences, Global Environmental Change, Hydrology-Ecohydrology sections.
Confirmed Invited Speakers:
Elsa Cleland, UC San Diego
Joerg Kaduk, University of Leicester
Eric Post, Pennsylvania State University
Mike White, Nature and Utah State University
AGU allows only one contributed presentation at the meeting (whether poster or talk). The deadline for submission of presentations is 10 September 2008 at 2359 UT. When you submit your abstract online, be sure to select the Special Session entitled "Shifts in Phenology and Seasonality? Recent Evidence from Multiple Taxa, Ecoregions, and Models". (At the moment, the session is assigned the code B07, but this code can change during the abstract submission period.)
In case you are not familiar with the AGU way, there is no guarantee at this stage that this special session will be allocated one or more oral sessions. Most of the presentations at AGU are posters and oral sessions are allocated proportionally to the number of abstracts submitted directly to that session. However, the track record for phenology sessions is good: one oral session in 2004; two oral sessions in 2005, 2006, 2007.
If you have questions or you are not an AGU member and need to have your abstract submission sponsored by a member, please do not hesitate to contact us!
We look forward to receiving your abstract and your participation in this session!
Conveners:
Geoff Henebry, South Dakota State University
Kirsten de Beurs, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Julio Betancourt, USGS Mark Losleben, USA National Phenology Network
Dear Carbon Cycling Scientists:
We would like to call your attention to a soil carbon session sponsored by the Biogeosciences Section at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, CA, this winter, December 14-19, 2008.
Session B21: "Toward Large Scale Assessments of Soil Carbon Turnover and Vulnerability: Measures, Models, and Networks"
Description: Soil is a crucial natural resource and soil carbon is an integral component of soil structure and function. Although the global stock of soil carbon is immense, it is not static: about 120 Pg of carbon moves annually between soil and the atmosphere and vegetation. Soil carbon may thus play a singular but uncertain role in climate forcing during the coming decades, with significant net losses contributing to positive feedbacks, or significant sequestration helping to mitigate climate forcing. The loss of soil carbon or disruption of its cycling may also impair the ecosystem services it provides, with consequent negative impacts on society. Given the critical role that soil carbon plays in the climate cycle and ecosystems services globally, there is a strong need to conduct large scale, spatially explicit assessments of soil carbon turnover and vulnerability. Recent advances in measurement technologies, statistical applications, modeling approaches, and geographic information systems have made it possible to develop stand-to-landscape scale information in support of carbon sequestration decisions by both land managers and policy makers. This session invites researchers to discuss measurement, modeling, and networking of soil carbon turnover and vulnerability studies.
Abstracts due: 10 September 2008, 2359 UT (Universal Time).
Please contact one of us if you have any questions.
Mark Waldrop, United States Geological Survey
Chris Swanston, United States Forest Service
Julie Jastrow, Argonne National Labs
I would like to call your attention to four events directed at scientists from undergraduate institutions that will take place at the Ecological Society of America meetings in Milwaukee:
1. Monday, August 4, 2008: 11:30 AM-1:15 PM, Wright C, Hilton - ESA Researchers at Undergraduate Institutions Section Business Meeting and Mixer - Bring your lunch and enjoy some complimentary desserts while you mingle with your colleagues who balance science with a substantial teaching load. The mission of this new section is to support faculty at smaller institutions as scientists and encourage networking and collaboration within this group.
2. Monday, August 4, 2008: 8:00 PM-10:00 PM, 203 C, Midwest Airlines Center SS 12 - Research Grants for Ecologists at Undergraduate Institutions: A Conversation with Funding Agencies This Special Session will be a conversation between ecologists at undergraduate institutions and representatives of funding agencies.The National Science Foundation (NSF) would like to increase the number of successful grant applicants from smaller, more teaching-oriented schools. Challenges to this proposition include a lack of administrative and professional support for proposal preparation at smaller institutions, lack of experience in proposal writing among undergraduate faculty, and a mismatch between research expectations at NSF and the time and resource realities of the smaller academic environment. We hope to establish a productive discussion about how these issues might be successfully addressed. Specific topics will include particular funding opportunities, suggestions for writing successful proposals, research challenges at teaching-oriented institutions, and possible initiatives by both colleges and funders to address the problems mentioned above. Our goal is to not only provide information for scientists who want to obtain research funds, but also to educate funding agencies about the kinds of resources, support systems, and expectations that are appropriate for the undergraduate environment. We invite scientists at all career stages to come and share their success stories and experiences on funding panels, ask questions, express concerns, and gather information.
3. Tuesday, August 5, 2008: 8:00 PM-10:00 PM, 203 C, Midwest Airlines Center SS 16 - How to Get and Keep a Job at a Small College After two years of this session at past ESA meetings, we think we have a good formula for 2008. It was very successful to implement small "break-out" groups, in which nine to eleven audience members could talk directly with a few faculty members after a short (~10 minute) panel discussion. Several graduate students felt that these small-group interactions were among their most valuable experiences during the 2007 Meeting in San Jose. We feel that this session is particularly appropriate for the Milwaukee Meeting, because the theme - "Enhancing Ecological Thought by Linking Education and Research" - is exactly what faculty at small colleges accomplish during their careers
4. Friday, August 8, 2008: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM, 202 A, Midwest Airlines Center OOS 23 - Mentoring Future Ecologists at Small Liberal Arts Colleges Through Research This organized oral session will present successful strategies for enhancing undergraduate ecology teaching and learning, and for engaging students in ecological research, while providing mechanisms for developing long-term faculty research programs at small liberal arts colleges. This collection of presentations will illustrate how various ecological systems (watershed, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, butterflies, bean beetles, forest soil nutrient cycles) are used to engage students from diverse ethnic and educational backgrounds to learn ecology, appreciate nature, and develop into effective scientists, researchers, and published authors. The research systems are of great public concern, in terms of water and air pollution control, spread of diseases, and biodiversity conservation. The faculty will show how they use these systems to develop research programs that engage students over several years, building a database that will help future ecology classes understand how ecology research is done, while developing in these students the sense that they are building a legacy for future students through their collective work. The session will include ecologists from underrepresented groups, and highlight the experience of our presenters in engaging students from all ethnic backgrounds in learning ecology and conducting ecological research. The diversity of perspectives, regional locations, and research training of the presenters will illustrate the importance of small liberal arts colleges in mentoring future ecologists. The presentations on how undergraduate students can help create and use long-term or large-scale ecological research databases that give a well-defined picture of the research system, and on how to conduct multi-year experiments and publish results with students, are especially valuable to the development of ecology faculty at small liberal arts colleges. These faculty must spend more time on teaching duties than the time required for teaching and available for research at larger institutions. The papers' discussion of innovative ways for faculty at teaching-oriented institutions to obtain funding for collaborative ecological research will also be valuable.
I hope you can join us at one or more of these events. See you in Milwaukee!
Dr. Laurie Anderson (Laurel J. Anderson)
Associate Professor
Dept. of Botany/Microbiology
Ohio Wesleyan University
Delaware, OH 43015
740-368-3501
ljanders@owu.edu
We would like to inform you of a planned AGU 2008 Fall Meeting session sponsored by the Biogeosciences Section:
B17: Terrestrial ecosystem respiration: identifying sources and controls
Terrestrial ecosystem respiration is the combined flux of CO2 to the atmosphere from above- and below-ground, plant and microbial sources. Flux measurements alone (e.g. from eddy covariance towers or soil chambers) cannot distinguish the contributions from these plant and microbial sources. The development of process-based models that can predict how plants and microbes respond to changing environmental conditions require that field experiments partition the sources of respiration. The purpose of this session is to assemble studies in which novel approaches have been applied (or being developed) to separate ecosystem (or soil) respiration sources and their drivers. This may include the combination of flux measurements with isotopic techniques, manipulations, gradient studies, or modeling approaches. In addition, this session welcomes contributions that can highlight important environmental, biological, or physical controls on ecosystem (or soil) respiration fluxes over diel, seasonal, interannual, or decadal time scales. Abstracts due: 10 September 2008, 2359 UT (Universal Time).
Abstract instructions | Abstract submissions
Please contact one of the conveners if you have any questions.
Mariah Carbone, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1-805-893-5501, mcarbone@icess.ucsb.edu
Rodrigo Vargas, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California, Berkeley, 1-510-642-2421, rvargas@nature.berkeley.edu
A session in the next American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting that might be of interest to some of you:
B35: Advances of Remote Sensing in Terrestrial Biodiversity Research
Sponsor: Biogeosciences
Conveners:
Andres Vina,
Michigan State University, vina@msu.edu
Mao-Ning Tuanmu,
Michigan State University, tuanmuma@msu.edu.
Description: A key problem that ecologists and evolutionary biologist have strived to understand is the abundance and distribution of the biota. In this age of drastic and rapid rates of species extinctions, such knowledge has become an essential component for management and conservation. The synoptic view provided by earth-imaging sensors constitutes an important source of information on biodiversity at broad scales. The traditional approach to using these data has involved the classification of discrete land cover types which are then related to species distributions. A critical limitation of this approach is that many important dynamics are obscured as the variance is lost within arbitrary land cover classes. In recent years, novel analytical techniques have been developed that more fully exploit the spatial, spectral and temporal information content of remotely sensed imagery in order to quantify a broader range of ecosystem services, including biodiversity. This session features advances in the synoptic assessment of biodiversity at different spatial and temporal scales, using sensors carried on aerial and satellite platforms. The session will provide the initial steps towards a multi-disciplinary collaboration for establishing a synthesis on the synoptic assessment and management of biodiversity. We request presentations on applications of remote sensing techniques to biodiversity research, including the development of methodologies for assessment, monitoring, and modeling, as well as their implications for management and conservation.
We are organizing a session at the fall meeting (15-19 December 2008) of the American Geophysical Union (http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm08/) entitled:
B23: Environmental and Ecological Consequences of Deploying Second Generation Biofuels on the Landscape.
We encourage you to submit an abstract to this session (Online Submission Deadline - 10 September 2008). We are particularly interested in scientific results stemming from empirical, theoretical or synthesis studies examining the ecological or environmental consequences of converting current land uses to potential biofuel feedstocks. With your participation, this should be an exciting and highly visible session.
We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco.
Best wishes,
Evan DeLucia, co-organizer (delucia@uiuc.edu)
Bill Parton, co-organizer (billp@nrel.colostate.edu)
“The accelerating combustion of fossil fuels is driving the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; as this “greenhouse” gas accumulates it forces a rapid and potentially dangerous warming of the planet. Biofuels have the potential to offset the accumulation of carbon dioxide and thus slow the rate of global warming. The largest contiguous biome in continental North America is the agricultural region where corn and soybean are grown in rotation. Allocating a portion of this region to the production of “second generation” biofuels, such as perennial grasses, has the potential to reduce the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and may mitigate some of the negative impacts of modern agriculture, including the loss of soil carbon and nitrogen contamination of ground water. This session will examine recent understanding of the effects of biofuel feedstocks on the biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nitrogen and water, and will incorporate societal and economic implications through a discussion of life-cycle analysis applied to biofuel feedstocks.”
Deadline for Submission: September 25, 2008
The theme for the ESA Annual Meeting in 2009 is "Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society". With fossil fuels waning, a public awareness of global warming and biodiversity issues increasing, and new green technologies breaking into public markets, the world is poised for planning sustainability of a global society. While ecologists continue to be on the forefront of research examining anthropogenic effects on biodiversity and ecosystem function, interdisciplinary studies incorporating ecological knowledge into sustainable planning are lacking. Growing fields of agro-ecology and urban ecology are attempting to develop interdisciplinary links, but all fields of ecological study can offer information toward sustainability, as evidenced in recent books of sustainability and societal collapse. Symposia and Organized Oral Session proposals related to this year’s theme are highly encouraged. Please visit the homepage for next year’s ESA Annual Meeting for additional information: http://www.esa.org/albuquerque.
SYMPOSIA are the scientific centerpiece of the meeting. They are limited to half-day sessions (3.5 hours). Individual talks in symposia range from 15 to 30 minutes in length at the discretion of the symposium organizer. Time devoted to synthesis, summary, and discussion is strongly encouraged. This meeting will include 24 symposia, and all proposals will be peer-reviewed. For additional information and to begin the submission process, please visit http://www.esa.org/albuquerque/call_symposium.php.
ORGANIZED ORAL SESSIONS are organized around a specific topic with most of the speakers invited by the organizer. These sessions are distinguished from symposia in that 1) there is less emphasis on breadth of appeal and overall synthesis; 2) they may be comprised largely of related case studies; 3) talks are set at 15 minutes each, with 5 minutes following for discussion (as in contributed oral sessions); and 4) at least 2 time slots out of the 10 available in an organized oral session are reserved for placing related talks from the contributed abstracts by the Program Chair. Organized oral sessions also are limited to half-day sessions (3.5 hours). There is no set number of accepted Organized Oral Session proposals, and all proposals will be peer-reviewed. For additional information and to begin the submission process, please visit http://www.esa.org/albuquerque/call_oos.php.
If you have any questions, please contact Program Chair, Scott Franklin, at Scott.Franklin@unco.edu, or Program Assistant, Aleta Wiley, at Aleta@esa.org.
The symposium is a new way of approaching a scientific hypothesis at an international meeting in a common effort from fundamental to molecular plant breeding research. Alternative oxidase is suggested to play an important role for plants in cell reprogramming related to adaptive growth and development.
Differential regulation of AOX is supposed to interact with the general fitness of plants. Polymorphic gene sequences have been described, indicating a potential for molecular plant breeding. Thus, AOX was highlighted as a candidate for functional marker development. Robust plants that can confront complex and changing stress conditions during plant development are of general interest for crop and tree improvement.
The aim is to advance strategic ideas, technologies and current knowledge in AOX gene and protein research, in AOX molecular-physiology, genetics, and molecular breeding during this meeting. We welcome all kinds of abstracts related to these topics. Presentation sections will be followed by roundtable discussions to reflect and summarize the outcome for the hypotheses. No parallel sections will run. At the end of the conference, a paper will be launched together with all group leaders. The paper will be submitted to a highly ranked journal with all participants of the conference as a consortium. By this way, we hope to create a comfortable atmosphere with free and joyful discussions. Chairs and Speakers will be invited for every main session. The number of participants is restricted to 120.
Main Session Subjects: AOX DNA Research; AOX Protein Research; AOX: Molecular-Physiology and Stress Research; Genetics and Plant Breeding.
Symposium Coordination: Birgit Arnholdt-Schmitt, EU Marie Curie Chair, ICAM, University of Évora, Portugal
For more information: www.aox2008.uevora.pt
The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement is the premier award for recognizing outstanding contributions in the fields of environmental science, environmental protection, energy and environmental health.
Since its inception we have honored fifty-nine individuals and four corporations with the Tyler Prize and through their work, the Tyler Laureates have focused worldwide attention on environmental problems by their discoveries and the solutions that have resulted from these discoveries. The award consists of a gold medallion and a US $200,000 cash prize.
The 2008 Tyler Prize was awarded to Professor Harold A. Mooney, Stanford University and Professor James N. Galloway, University of Virginia for their contributions to earth system science through their research on local and global biogeochemical processes as modified by human impact, and alerting the international community to the environmental consequences of these modifications.
The Tyler Prize Committee would like to extend an invitation to you to submit a nomination for the 2009 Tyler Prize. The requirements for nominations can be found on our website at: http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/tylerprize/nominate.html.
The deadline for this year's nomination process is September 15, 2008. The recipients of the 2009 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement will be announced in April 2009.
For more information on the Tyler Prize please visit our web site at:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/tylerprize/
In the meantime, if you would like to receive nomination materials or suggest a potential candidate, please contact the Tyler Prize office at 213-740-9760 or tylerprz@usc.edu or contact me directly at duguay@usc.edu.
Thank you very much for giving this letter your careful consideration.
Sincerely,
Linda E. Duguay, Ph.D., Executive Director
ESA Presents Faculty Development Workshop:
"Using Continental-scale Data to Teach Undergraduate Ecology"
Funded by the National Science Foundation
Bring cutting edge science into your undergraduate classroom! Explore how large-volume data collected at large temporal and spatial scales can be incorporated into the undergraduate curriculum. Workshop ideas will inform the development of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) cyberinfrastructure.
Apply Online today!
Applications will be accepted until July 7.
Plan now to attend the 6th Annual "Genes in Ecology, Ecology in Genes" Symposium on November 14, 15, & 16, 2008, in Kansas City. We will convene in the Intercontinental Hotel on the beautiful Country Club Plaza on Friday at 6:00 p.m. and conclude on Sunday at noon.
Ecological Genomics is a field at the interface of ecology, evolution and genomics that seeks to place the functional significance of genes and genomics into an ecological and evolutionary context. Featured speakers for the 2008 Symposium include the following:
A poster session will be held on Friday night and Saturday. Poster topics should be related to the field of Ecological Genomics. A limited number of submitted poster abstracts will be selected for oral presentations.
Information will be posted on our website, www.ecogen.ksu.edu, as details are finalized. Please share this announcement with colleagues and students who are interested in learning more about the field of Ecological Genomics. If you have questions, please contact us at (785) 532-3482 or ecogen@ksu.edu.
We are pleased to announce a 2-day conference designed to stimulate conversation between evolutionary ecologists and applied scientists that study weed adaptation to the agricultural system. The goal is to foster new, integrative thinking about the process of weed domestication to agriculture and the evolution of 'weediness.'
Topics include: Weed adaptation to the agricultural system, transgene movement from crops to wild species, parasitic weeds, weed shifts and weedy species of future interest
We will be hosting presentations from the following speakers as well as a poster session for registrants. There will be a poster abstract competition for graduate students and post-docs with the award being $500 travel/housing relief. See the website for details.
This conference will be held at the University of Georgia in the Georgia Center. For registration and more information, please see:
http://www.plantbio.uga.edu/weeds/
Gordon Research Seminar in Ecology for Graduate Students and Post-docs.
This message is to bring to your attention a Graduate Research Seminar (GRS) this July (5th and 6th) in conjunction with the Gordon Research Conference (GRC), Metabolic Basis of Ecology (July 6th-11th). This year’s conference looks to be outstanding; a list of speakers can be found at:
http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?year=2008&program=metbasis
The purpose of the GRS is to facilitate interaction among graduate students and postdocs the weekend prior to the GRC. Also, given the high caliber of many of the GRC conferees, grad student and postdoc involvement has been limited in the past. A key goal of the GRS is to prepare young scientists for greater participation during the GRC.
Eight grad students and/or postdocs will give talks during that weekend on topics ranging from dynamics at the cellular, organismal, and population levels to the flow of energy and materials in communities and landscapes in a format identical to the GRC.
More information can be found here:
http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?year=2008&program=grad_metab
Funds are available to support registration and travel.
Space and funds are limited. There is room for only 35.
Application Deadline: June 14th
We look forward to meeting you in beautiful Maine this summer!
Sincerely,
Puni Jeyasingh & Chuck Price
ISEPEP arose by the amalgamation of two previous series of meetings: the International Symposium on the Cold Hardiness of Animals and Plants and the European Workshop on Invertebrate Ecophysiology. The idea was to cover the environmental physiology of invertebrates, plants and vertebrate ectotherms (fish, amphibians, reptiles). ISEPEP1 was held at the University of Roskilde, Denmark in 2005 and attracted 90 participants from 14 countries. ISEPEP2 was held in Dunedin, New Zealand.
ISEPEP is the only meeting focused on the environmental physiology of these groups and has the potential to attract an interesting and cohesive group of researchers who work in these areas.
For more information, see: http://www.nias.affrc.go.jp/anhydrobiosis/isepep3/
This is a call for papers and posters for the 6th International Conference on the Applications of Stable Isotope Techniques to Ecological Studies. The IsoEcol VI conference will take place in Honolulu, Hawaii, from August 25-29, 2008.
The aim of this conference is to assemble an international group of isotope scientists engaged in ecological research, share ideas and state-of-the-art science, identify gaps in our knowledge in the field of ecology, and determine where future stable isotope research and interdisciplinary efforts could be best applied. Previous ISOECOL meetings have been very successful in meeting these goals. For the 2008 IsoEcol conference, our goals will be accomplished through oral and poster presentations and, informally, through discussions and debate during organized social events. The conference will begin on August 24th with an opening mixer at the Waikiki Aquarium, located on the shores of Waikiki beach, which should provide an excellent start to meeting our conference goals. We are pleased to announce that our two keynote speakers are Drs. Gabriel Bowen (Purdue Univ.) and Simon Jennings (CEFAS). Dr. Gabe Bowen will provide a synthesis of exciting frontiers in ecological isoscapes and a review of the important information generated from the Isoscapes 2008 conference. Dr. Simon Jennings will present a talk titled ‘Marine food web ecology: insights from stable isotopes’, which will review his research on the impacts of fishing and environmental change on the structure and function of marine communities and ecosystems.
Registration and abstract submission are available online. The abstract deadline is May 15, 2008. The early registration fee will continue until April 20, 2008. Students can apply for one of several student registration waivers. The application is located at the end of the abstract form, and should be submitted with the abstract and before the May 15th deadline. Students who receive the registration waiver and who have already registered for the conference will receive a registration refund.
All IsoEcol VI Conference details, including online registration, abstract submission, and accommodations (book early!) can be found at: http://www.isoecol.org/ If you have any questions about the meeting please contact the organizing committee at isoecol5@hawaii.edu Aloha and a hui hou, IsoEcol VI Organizing Committee
We would like to bring to your attention a Graduate Research Seminar (GRS) this July (5th and 6th) in conjunction with the Gordon Research Conference (GRC), Metabolic Basis of Ecology (July 6th-11th). This year’s conference looks to be outstanding; see the list of speakers.
The purpose of the GRS is to facilitate interaction among graduate students and postdocs the weekend prior to the GRC. Also, given the high caliber of many of the GRC conferees, grad student and postdoc involvement has been limited in the past. A key goal of the GRS is to prepare young scientists for greater participation during the GRC.
Eight grad students and/or postdocs will give talks during that weekend on topics ranging from dynamics at the cellular, organismal, and population levels to the flow of energy and materials in communities and landscapes in a format identical to the GRC.
Prepare 200-word abstracts and apply before April 1st 2008 to be considered for the eight speaker slots.
We have funds to partly defray the GRS registration fees. Moreover, if you also register to stay on for the main GRC-Metabolic Basis Of Ecology we can partly defray your travel expenses.
Space and funds are limited – apply now! There is room for only 35! We look forward to meeting you in beautiful Maine this summer!
Sincerely,
Puni Jeyasingh & Chuck Price
Submission Deadline for Contributed Oral and Poster Abstracts: February 28, 2008
You are invited to submit an abstract for a Contributed Oral or Poster presentation at the 93rd ESA Annual Meeting. The meeting will be held August 3-8, 2008, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Midwest Airlines Center.
Abstracts that address the meeting theme, “Enhancing Ecological Thought by Linking Research and Education”, are especially encouraged, but submissions may address any aspect of ecology and its applications. We also welcome submissions reporting interdisciplinary work, that address communication with broad audiences, or that explore ways of teaching ecology at any level.
Please note that invited speakers for Symposia and Organized Oral Sessions should NOT submit their abstracts until they receive specific instructions by email.
Information regarding the criteria, the submission process, and the cancellation policy are included in the Call for Abstracts. Please adhere to these guidelines closely.
If you have any questions, please contact the ESA Program Chair, Louis Gross (gross@tiem.utk.edu), or the Program Assistant, Aleta Wiley (aleta@esa.org).
Organized by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) and the Botanic Garden of the Delft University of Technology. Abstracts for oral presentations must be electronically submitted by 15 February 2008; abstracts for poster presentations are due 1 March 2008. Everyone is welcome to submit an abstract.
Themes:
Access conference information at http://botanicalresearch2008.bt.tudelft.nl/
A two-day conference on the Ecology and Evolution of Plant-Pollinator Interactions will be held on August 2-3, 2008, immediately prior to the Ecological Society of America Meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
The goal of this conference is to highlight the most exciting recent advances in community and evolutionary pollination biology, and foster interaction among pollination biologists. We aim to encourage a unified framework to the study of community and evolutionary approaches, and to draw attention to largely unexplored questions at the intersection of these disciplines. This two-day conference will feature 23 speakers from five continents, as well as a poster session.
Conference speakers and topics have been selected to complement, rather than repeat, the major themes covered at the 2007 International Pollinator Symposium. The 30 minute symposium presentations will be scheduled throughout the day on Saturday, August 2 and Sunday, August 3. To promote interaction between symposium speakers and participants, there are planned breaks with time for discussion as well as a two-hour poster session and reception on the evening of Saturday, August 2. The poster session will provide an outstanding opportunity for pollination ecologists at all levels to share ideas. We encourage all conference attendees to present a poster. Note that individuals presenting a talk or poster in this Pollination Conference are also welcome to present a contributed paper or poster (even the same poster) at the Ecological Society of America meeting.
For more information, see: http://www3.uakron.edu/biology/pollination/
Aquatic and riparian ecosystems are fragile environments rich in biodiversity. They are threatened by impacts related to a variety of land-water interactions. Degradation of terrestrial environments adjacent to freshwater ecosystems can adversely impact aquatic habitats and associated biological communities through many mechanisms. Understanding the mechanisms driving losses in aquatic and riparian biodiversity is important to the conservation and restoration of these environments worldwide. This symposium will address the effects of agricultural production on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and their resident biodiversity, and management practices and alternatives that preserve it.
We will convene an international symposium at the 2008 Joint Meetings of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Herpetologists League, Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, American Elasmobranch Society) in Montreal, drawing on scientists who conduct research on the impacts and mitigation of agricultural practices on aquatic and riparian ecosystems in North American. We expect to publish the proceedings as an on-line publication that will attract the attention not only of professional scientists but also of public and private officials with a stake in the issues discussed.
Format: Two half-day sessions to be scheduled in the mornings with additional presentations suggested for contributed papers and poster sessions scheduled in the afternoons.
Symposium Chair and Principal Contact:
Frank H. McCormick (fmccormick@fs.fed.us, 360 753 7667)
Co-Chairs: Alan Savitzky, Gerald Smith, Krista McCoy.
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