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Workshops
Technical information workshops
The Technical Issues Committee (TIC) will be hosting two all-day workshops in Pittsburgh. They are scheduled to run from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Tuesday, May 28, 2002. Additionally, the TIC and the Science and Policy Committee are co-sponsoring a half-day interactive policy dialogue focused on issues surrounding mountaintop mining and headwater streams. Workshops are described below:
1. IDENTIFICATION AND ECOLOGY OF ADULT AND LARVAL ODONATA IN NORTH AMERICA, NORTH OF MEXICO.
The workshop will include morning and afternoon sessions, with the morning devoted to a general introduction to the taxonomy and ecology of dragonflies and damselflies and to characteristics and identification of adults. The latter portion will include "hands-on" experience with adult identification. The afternoon session will begin with a lecture/discussion of larval habitats, their importance in aquatic ecosystems, and their potential utility in monitoring aquatic systems and land/water ecotones. The remainder of the afternoon will be devoted to larval identification, and any residual problems with adult identification as time allows. Identified and unidentified samples of both adults and larvae will be provided, and participants are encouraged to bring specimens of interest, concern, or puzzlement.
All participants will be provided with lecture outlines, illustrated keys to all North American genera of both larvae and adults, species-level keys for selected genera, and an extensive list of references; this will probably be available in CD form.
Workshop coordinator is Mike May, Dept. of Entomology, Rutgers University. Other workshop leaders may participate; further information will be announced when available.
2. PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS AND ACCURACY OF STATISTICAL APPROACHES IN BENTHIC BIOLOGY
This workshop will be in two parts. A morning plenary with 4 talks that will be open to anyone who registers. An afternoon practical session with numbers dependent on the availability of computers. The philosophy of the workshop is that it is time to stop arguing about which bioassessment method is best and develop methods and criteria for testing and comparing methods. The workbook will be made available on CD to all registering. It will include the text of the talks and the data sets and macros to run test simulations that will be used in the afternoon practical.
Stuart Bunn (Griffith University, Australia) will present a synthesis of a large-scale, multi-method study that tested and compared several bioassessment methods (including fish, invertebrates, stream metabolism and others) against a gradient of riparian clearing and land use. The approach and results are informative and not quite what might have been expected. Chuck Hawkins (Utah State University) has extensive experience comparing predictive models and multimetric methods using both macroinvertebrates and fish and will present recent work in this area. There are strengths and weaknesses to all approaches and there may be no silver bullet. Bob Bailey (University of Western Ontario, Canada) has been busy exploring the statistical features of various approaches to bioassesment using invertebrates and will present some alternatives showing their properties and applications. Richard Norris (University of Canberra, Australia) and co-workers Wayne Robinson (Charles Sturt University) and Simon Linke (University of Canberra) have been developing simulated data sets and methods for testing bioassessment methods. They will present the use of these data sets along with methods for determine confidence and the need for replication. Protocols for combining the outputs without conflict when more than one method has been used in an area will also be presented.
The afternoon practical session will be limited by the number of computers available but people registering for the session are welcome to bring their own (many people now have laptops). We will supply 10 computers for 20 people (2 to a machine) on a first come first served basis. Subsequent registrants will need to bring a computer or indicate with whom they have agreed to share. Computers will need to be PC and run Microsoft Excel and have a CDROM drive.
We will use a North American data set with known features as the basis for simulated data sets (names and places have been changed to protect the innocent). It is necessary to use a known data set because model building and metric testing are not trivial procedures and we need to ensure that what we are doing is appropriate. The reference data set will be modified in known ways to produce several test data sets that have the sorts of impacts that bioassessment methods are commonly used to assess. The afternoon practical session will be based on running these data sets through the analyses and evaluating how the outputs respond to the known (to us initially) impacts that have been made to the data. There will be set exercises to evaluate the analyses. The data sets and analyses will be set up to run in Excel and these will be available on the workshop CDROM. If time permits, some new model building software developed by Chuck Hawkins will also be demonstrated. This session is being coordinated by Richard Norris.
3. STREAM IMPACTS FROM MOUNTAINTOP AND VALLEY FILL MINING: A SCIENCE SYNTHESIS FOR POLICY MAKERS - CO-SPONSORED BY TIC AND THE SCIENCE AND POLICY COMMITTEE.
Following up on the NABS 2001 Technical Information Workshop entitled "Communicating Science to Non-Scientists and Decision-Makers," a special workshop is being organized for NABS 2002 to take the next logical step - to provide a science synthesis for policy makers on an important topic. The topic for this synthesis (see title) is relevant to the region surrounding the location for the Pittsburgh meeting, has national implications, and is a topic on which NABS members have considerable expertise. The workshop will consist of one presentation describing the issue in detail, and two presentations providing a synthesis of the science relative to the topic. Each presentation will be 30 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions. A one-hour panel discussion will follow. The presenters will be asked to provide the synthesis in lay terminology, and the primary audiences for this workshop are the policy makers at the local, state, and national level, who will be extended special invitations to attend. Other audiences include NABS members and other parties interested in the topic. For further information, contact Nick Aumen at 561-732-3684, ext. 117, or naumen@bellsouth.net.
As of press time for the Bulletin, the following is the speaker slate
"General overview of issues related to mountaintop and valley fill mining." Dr. J. Bruce Wallace, Professor of Entomology and Ecology, University of Georgia
"Synthesis of aquatic research results." Ms. Margaret Passmore, US Environmental Protection Agency Wheeling Operations Office, Wheeling, WV. (Invited)
"Synthesis of terrestrial research results." Dr. Stephen Handel, Professor of Ecology and Evolution, Rutgers University.
Graduate student workshop
The Graduate Resources Committee is offering a FREE student workshop and business luncheon at this year's Annual Meeting. Registration is limited to the first 100 students. The sessions will serve to promote professional development and interaction among NABS student members and senior scientists. A schedule for the workshop is listed below. The workshop will conclude with a luncheon to provide a forum for informal discussion of student issues. In addition, students will be introduced to the activities of the Graduate Resources Committee, and the NABS Executive Committee and presenters will be in attendance for lunch and available for small group discussions on various pertinent matters related to graduate school and subsequent employment.
Tuesday, May 28, 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
- 9:00-9:30 am
- General Gathering and Welcome, GRC Activities Update
- 9:30-10:15 am
- Essential Job Hunting and Interview Skills - Judith Li, Oregon State University, and Kristopher Wright, University of Wisconsin - Platteville
- 10:15-11:00 am
- Effective Community Outreach and Education Practices - Alan Covich, Colorado State University
- 11:00-11:15 am
- Break
- 11:15 - 12:00 pm
- Strategies for Successful Grant Writing - Hiram Li, Oregon State University, and Penny Firth, National Science Foundation
- 12:00 - 1:00 pm
- Graduate Student Business Luncheon
Space is limited! To register, complete the registration form below and email or
mail it to Jo Latimore by April 1.
Jo Latimore
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife
13 Natural Resources Building
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48823-1222
Email: latimor1@msu.edu
GRADUATE STUDENT WORKSHOP REGISTRATION FORM
Name:
Affiliated Institution:
Undergraduate or Graduate?
Will you be a student member of NABS as of April 1, 2002?
Will you be attending in the Graduate Student Workshop?
Will you be attending the business luncheon?
Regular or vegetarian lunch?
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