2018 ESA Annual Meeting Presentations
In the past year alone, extreme events including hurricanes, droughts, and extensive fires have impacted significant regions of the United States—affecting the health of both natural habitats and human communities. Fittingly, the theme of this year’s Ecological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting is ‘Extreme events, resilience and human well-being.’ The meeting takes place August 5-10 in New Orleans, LA—a city still rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina which hit more than a decade ago.
Over 120 presentations and posters at the August meeting will feature research from 17 of the 28 National Science Foundation funded Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites and are listed below. In addition, a Monday afternoon symposium, titled “Innovative Continental-Scale Ecological Research Enabled By NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network)” will include examples of developing synergies between NEON and other continental-scale observation networks such as the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) and Critical Zone Observatory (CZO) Networks.
For a listing of NSF-funded research in the LTER, CZO and NEON programs, see the NSF’s news release on the meeting.
NSF Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites, with their sustained observations, are ideal for capturing the impact of extreme and unexpected events. Long term ecosystem experiments, like those carried out at many LTERs, provide an opportunities to ask (and answer), “what conditions foster resilience?”
With LTER sites in Florida, Georgia, and Puerto Rico hit hard by the 2017 hurricane season, resilience in the face of repeated salt-water flooding and forest damage is a frequent motif. Changing snowmelt and permafrost regimes—and their impacts on plant and animal communities—are also frequently-explored topics.
The range of natural precipitation at LTER sites provides a canvas for rainfall manipulations—both drying and wetting experiments—that offer insight into the role of rainfall timing and variability as well as absolute amount. Nutrient and temperature manipulation experiments at many LTER sites, combined with naturally-occurring extreme events, provide information about the interactions between short-term and long-term stresses.
Data Help Desk
Ecological data repositories and data specialists will collaborate at the ESA 2018 meeting in New Orleans to add a Data Help Desk to the Poster/Exhibition Hall. The Environmental Data Initiative (EDI), iDigBio, Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), DataCite, DataONE, and Arctic Data Center will offer three types of assistance:
- Data Reference Desk – For general information management and data discovery and use questions.
- Meet the Expert – One-on-one sessions. Stop by the Help Desk and make an appointment!
- Presentations/Software demos – About ecological data topics ranging from data repositories to analytical tools to creating metadata.
LTER Mixer
In addition to the many research presentations, the LTER Network Communications Office is co-hosting a Science Storytelling mixer with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). The event will feature three professional storytellers as well as an open mic for ESA attendees to tell their own short science stories.
Science Communications
In a similar vein, the Florida Coastal Everglades LTER is hosting a half-day workshop at ESA entitled Story-Tell Your Science with ComSciCon: The Communicating Science Workshop for Graduate Students. The workshop will include discussions and hands-on activities to help train early career scientists to communicate effectively about their research to various audiences.
LTER Talks and Posters
Sunday, August 5th, 2018
| Title | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Story-Tell Your Science with ComSciCon: The Communicating Science Workshop for Graduate Students (Workshop) | 12:00 PM‑5:00 PM | Convention Center-354 |
Monday, August 6th, 2018
Tuesday, August 7th, 2018
Wednesday, August 8th, 2018
