Nancy Grimm welcomes attendees to the first ESA Millennium Conference. ESA’s first Millennium Conference kicked off today in Athens, GA. The meeting is bringing together ecologists and social scientists to engage in conversations about one of the most dramatic emerging challenges in ecology: that of clean water and water scarcity. While ecologists’ main expertise is in providing and maintaining adequate…
The first conference in ESA’s Millennium Series begins on Monday at the University of Georgia in Athens. The conference, titled “Water-Ecosystem Services, Drought, and Environmental Justice,” will bring 100 scientists and land managers together to work on the resolution of social issues related to localized drought. The conference will focus on issues surrounding one of the biggest emerging environmental issues…
ESA is a supporting partner of a really innovative and useful new project by the World Resources Institute: an online directory of scientists whose work relates to ecosystems services. This experts database is meant to be a resource for journalists, policymakers and businesspeople. The free directory enables users to search for experts around the world in a wide range of…
In this week’s Policy News, produced by ESA’s Policy Analyst Piper Corp: climate legislation delayed, acceleration of the process for Endangered Species listing, new Energy and Natural Resources bill in the House and the EU unveils environmental measure of GDP. Read the full Policy News here. Senate delays climate bill, raising questions about Copenhagen. Senate Democrats no longer plan to…
Well, it’s just been a week full of videos, hasn’t it. For those interested in Sen. Tom Udall’s address to ESA at the recent annual meeting, below is a video of his Regional Policy Award acceptance speech. You can also read the full transcript of the address here.
If you haven’t yet taken the time to check out The EEB and Flow blog, make today the day. Marc Cadotte, who has quite recently moved from a postdoc in sunny California to a professorship in chilly Toronto (a metaphor here, maybe?), and his colleagues maintain an excellent blog on all things ecology and evolutionary biology. Their blog posts center…
As ESA’s Annual Meeting drew to a close today and the city of Albuquerque breathed a sigh of relief — now there might be places for locals to sit in a restaurant! — the echoes of the meeting were just beginning. Scientific meetings are a place to bring together scientists from myriad subfields: in the case of ecology, from biogeochemistry…
A greenroof atop Chicago’s city hall. Having a garden on your roof isn’t just nice for a garden party; it can make your city more environmentally friendly. Planting a rooftop garden can offset heat, increase city biodiversity and decrease stormwater runoff, which is why many cities around the world are creating laws to encourage the use of greenroofs. In Berlin,…
Photo courtesy of Julie Naumann. If you’ve been to many national forests, chances are you’ve seen signs like the one to the left: walk on this field and a land mine might explode. In her talk this morning at the ESA Annual Meting, Julie Naumann of the U.S. Army Corps of engineers explained that even if they don’t explode, these…
This post was contributed by ESA’s Director of Public Affairs, Nadine Lymn. While other voices boldly make authoritative assertions over issues that may be deeply nuanced, scientists tend to communicate their considerable knowledge in ways which make them sound wishy-washy at best and completely uncertain at worst. This was the theme of a symposium session, “Global Sustainability in the Face…
The field of disease ecology is a fast-evolving one as ecologists realize more and more that the insides of animals and plants are really like small-scale ecosystems, encompassing the same rules as large-scale ecosystems, like species interactions, environmental variability and evolutionary change. Katia Koelle of Duke University gave a talk yesterday about evolution in the H3N2 virus — not to…
The theme of this year’s ESA meeting is “Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society, and the program shows it: there are at least six sessions devoted completely to sustainable agriculture and agroforestry. Most studies approach the problem of increasing cropland productivity while causing little harm to the environment by assessing above-ground processes, like cropland biodiversity or the use of…
Insect herbivore species often specialize on the host plants that they eat, evolving adaptations to use a plant’s unique set of resources. But like any time you throw all your eggs in one basket, these caterpillars put themselves at risk. Michael Singer of Wesleyan University gave a talk today at the ESA Annual Meeting that evaluated these tradeoffs in caterpillars….
A pulse of midges swarms over Lake Malawi in Africa. Photo credit: The Daily Mail. Freshwater fish often rely on terrestrial insects as a portion of their food supply. In lakes, the size and shape of the lake can determine how much the fish rely on terrestrial insects for food. But with humans’ love of lakefront property, the resulting development…
Program Chair Scott Franklin and ESA President Sunny Power at the scientific plenary and ESA Awards session. This post was contributed by ESA’s Director of Public Affairs, Nadine Lymn. At the start of this morning’s Scientific Plenary & ESA Awards Session, ESA President Alison “Sunny” Power gave her State of the Society address. Much like the U.S. presidential “State of the…
The ESA meeting kicked off last night with the opening plenary session and presentation of the ESA Regional Policy Award. ESA’s Director Katherine McCarter welcomed everyone to the meeting, citing the fact that her first ESA meeting as director was also in Albuquerque in 1997. She pointed out that the meeting’s theme, “Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society,” is…
ESA’s 94th Annual Meeting will begin on Sunday, August 2 in Albuquerque, NM. The meeting’s theme is “Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society,” and the program will include everything from talks on urban ecosystems to sessions about geoengineering to a workshop on improv comedy. We’ll be live blogging from the meeting, with updates, stories, photos, and (hopefully) some video….
ESA released a position statement today on the proper place of ecological and environmental capital in the nation’s economy. As the United States and much of the world try to recover from the current economic crisis, ESA recommends that long-term sustainability should be prioritized in the restructuring of business models and economic growth. A key to this task, the statement…
The ESA podcasts page has been revamped! Check out the new look for your favorite ESA podcasts on the new ESA podcasts page. Or, if you’re an ESA podcast newbie, here’s the rundown of the three series: Beyond the Frontier features interviews with the authors publishing in the ESA journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The authors to discuss…
The information below was submitted by Sue Anderson of the University of Southern California. The 2010 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, an international award that honors achievements and contributions in the fields of environmental science, protection, energy and medicine, is now open for nominations. The deadline is September 15. The winner will receive a gold medallion and a $200,000 cash…