ESA 2017 – Ecological Restoration section minutes

Posted by on August 28, 2017

Ecological Restoration section minutes –August 8, 2017

The Ecological Restoration section of ESA met Tuesday evening during the annual meeting, with 46 people attending.

Meeting opened by Co-Chair Kris Hulvey with introductions of all present, a review of the section’s goals and philosophy, and accomplishments of 2016-17.

Jonathan Bauer, website and social media guru, reported that we have 650 followers in Twitter. The website is up and running. Currently both the website and social media positions are combined, but these are likely to be split in the future

Kris reported on the new Ecological Restoration Section Mentorship program that began this year at the meeting. We had 4 mentors and mentees participating, with good feedback from folks. We will look to expand this program next year at the New Orleans meeting.

Officers: An invitation was issued to submit nominations (including self-nominations). Nominees will be invited to submit brief biographies, and these will be circulated via email for a vote in the near future. New nominations will be accepted until Sept. 15.

Brainstorming about section activities for the 2018 annual meeting in New Orleans:

  • Collaboration with the Traditional Ecological Knowledge section. Michelle Stevens (Cal State-Sacramento) suggested that we might pursue a symposium or other session on the topic of “cultural restoration.”
  • Regarding a symposium, a suggestion was also made to find a way to fit the 2018 meeting theme of “Resilience, Human Well-Being, and Extreme Events.” (NOTE: As of 8/21/17 this effort is under way in conjunction with the Rangeland Ecology section. Nancy Shackelford is taking the lead on a proposal with input from Brandon Bestelmeyer, Stephen Murphy, Mark Brunson, and Loretta Battaglia.)
  • There is interest in a restoration-themed field tour for the New Orleans area. Persons who expressed willingness to help us connect with local experts were Max Piana and Albert Meier. Julie Whitbeck, soil scientist at the University of New Orleans, may be able to help.
  • An Ignite session could be assembled that has a real-world, applied focus where people offer short (5-minute) descriptions of how they’ve approached a restoration problem and hopefully solved it (or at least learned about it).
  • Adam Mitchell suggested an organized oral session. Others who agree to work on that included Noah Teller, Albert Meier, Virginia Matzek, and Anisha Malik.
  • Bring practitioners to a special session where they can share ideas with graduate and undergraduate students. There was discussion about where to find practitioners – one suggestion was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
  • This year we sponsored a graduate student poster contest; the suggestion was made to expand this to include talks as well. The challenge is that attending talks takes more time, so we would need significantly more volunteer judges to make this happen.
  • Other suggestions about sessions in New Orleans:
    • Provide a venue for grad students who want to network with non-academic professionals
    • Pull together a set of case studies of adaptive management
    • Focus on the region where we’ll be meeting (Gulf Coast)

Other ideas about section activities:

  • Mentorships – students would appreciate if we can focus on recruiting members from NGOs or practitioner firms as mentors.
  • Post profiles of section members on the website
  • Post internship opportunities on the section website (NOTE: This would also entail doing outreach to encourage use of the section website.)
  • Be careful not to duplicate what the Society for Ecological Restoration has done. (For example, SER regional meetings are practitioner-heavy and we can encourage students to attend those meetings.)
  • The outreach coordinator can do outreach to news media as well as restoration researchers, managers, and practitioners.

One attendee who works in consulting shared the perception that the section’s focus is largely “theoretical” rather than applied. Others disagreed – for example, the section is called Ecological Restoration rather than Restoration Ecology to stress that the emphasis is on science to accomplish restoration rather than simply on ecological research that could inform restoration activities someday somehow.

This led to a discussion about how it can be difficult for practitioners to get permission and support to attend an ESA meeting because research isn’t as valued by that sector of our audience.

 

– Submitted by Mark Brunson

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