NEWS

Soil Ecology Section Mixer & Business Meeting Minutes – ESA Annual Meeting 2006 – Memphis

Aug 8, 2006

Julie Whitbeck (Chair) called meeting to order at 7:25 pm
Co-chair and Secretary were absent
21 Section members were in attendance
Marc Los Huertos offered to take notes (reader beware).

 ESA business

Julie reported that the ESA membership and finances are in good shape. Furthermore, ESA has grant funding for small projects or planning grants for sections (such as workshops, website development, etc.). Planning grants are limited to $2500.

ESA staff asked for photographs of ecologists in action for the new ESA website (to be launched late October, 2006)—submit photos to liz@esa.org.

The Council voted to increase Section and Chapter fees from $3 to $5.

 Soil Ecology Section business

New officers will be elected by email vote after the meeting.

Nominees are:

Chair: Mac Callaham, Nancy Collins Johnson
Vice Chair: Bill Dress, Jennifer Pett-Ridge
Secretary: Loren Byrne, Kathy Szlavecz

Field trip for San Jose meeting (8/07): Marc Los Huertos is trying to arrange a field trip to Jughandle state park (pygmy forest and soil chronosequence made famous by Hans Jenny) and combine with wine tasting…

Symposia and organized oral sessions for ESA 2007 annual meeting in San Jose which is with the Ecological Restoration Society. Theme is “Restoration in a Changing World”.  The formal Calls for Proposals are located at http://www.esa.org/sanjose/symposiumProposals.php and http://www.esa.org/sanjose/oralSessionProposals.php.  The deadline for proposal submissions to ESA (via the web form only!) is September 15, 2006.

            Suggestions for a Section-sponsored symposium included:

Food webs focusing on carbon/energy flow
Functional Effects and functional responses

A few members (including Ann-Marie Fortuna) agreed to pursue ideas and submit a suggestion before Sept. so that section officers and a volunteer review committee (including former Symposium organizers Mitch Pavao-Zuckerman, Loren Byrne and Sherri Morris) can provide evaluative feedback and endorse a proposal.

If you have symposium or organized oral session ideas for next year’s meeting, please alert outgoing Chair Julie Whitbeck NOW! (jwhitbec@uno.edu) and plan to submit your proposal to this peer review group no later than September 5^th.

 Needs Assessment:  What can the Soil Ecology Section do for you?

Several suggestions were made that included developing an area of our website for soil ecology curricula and course materials such as power point presentations, laboratory and field exercises.

We also discussed what might be helpful to graduate students—networking potential.

However, we have trouble recruiting Section members to business meetings. Perhaps we could change the name of the business meeting to make it more inviting, and/or initiate different activities at our annual meeting get-together.

NEWSLETTER HIGHLIGHTS

Soil Ecology Section of the Ecological Society of America
Minutes from 2005 Business Meeting 8/10/06
(prepared by Section Secretary, Serita Frey; augmented by Section Chair, Julie Whitbeck)

Mixer Program: joint mixer with ESA Biogeosciences Section; program included brief presentations by funding agency program directors and opportunities to chat with them

15 members in attendance for Section business meeting

Report from ESA Council :

• ESA is healthy with 9000 members and “in the black” financially
• 2006 ESA meeting theme is “Icons and Upstarts in Ecology”
• ESA -wide deadline for proposals is Thursday, September 15, 2005

Old Business:

• 2005 Section-sponsored organized oral session/symposium
• “ From microbes to ecosystems: How do we really make the connections ,” organized by Serita Frey and Josh Schimel
• 2004 Soil Ecology Section student presentation winners (out of 22 entrants)
• Andrea Thorpe, University of Montana
• Sophie Parker, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Many thanks to the 21 Section judges for their service

Announcements/News:

• Soil Ecology Society meeting (May '05) report
• Society of Nematologists upcoming meeting

New business :

• There are currently 300 people in the section; we need an updated list of members
• Nominees are needed for new officers and a webmaster
• Symposium/workshop proposal ideas (due 9/15/05 ; due 9/2/05 to Section Committee)
• Sina Adl proposed an Organized Oral Session on soil food web interactions
• Ralph Boerner proposed a symposium or OOS on Soils and Conservation
• What can your Section do for you? What do you want from your Section? exercise
• It was proposed that the Soil Ecology and Microbial Ecology sections merge
• It was suggested that we survey members to determine why they do not attend the section meeting
• It was suggested that the section have a graduate student liaison to promote the meeting and awards
• It was suggested that the section honor students who have recently completed their degrees (Teri Balser and Deb Neher to take lead)
• Discussed what members want from the section
• Mixer at meeting
• Organize symposia and organized sessions
• Better coordination between the Soil Ecology Society and the section
• Student presentation awards
• Initiate soil ecology education group (Teri Balser will take lead)