CER

As you are probably aware, the biannual Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF) conference is scheduled for November 1-5, 2009 in Portland, Oregon. The Call for Abstracts is open and the deadline for abstract submission is May 15, 2009 (http://www.sgmeet.com/cerf2009/).

Joe Needoba, Tawnya Peterson and I have put together a session entitled “Human Impacts on Biogeochemical Processes along the Land-to-Sea Continuum”. We feel that some aspect of your research would fit in well with this topic and therefore hope you will submit an abstract to this session. We anticipate hosting oral and poster presentations related to this topic. For better orientation on our vision, a description of the proposal for this session follows:

SCI-075 Over the past century, watersheds worldwide have been increasingly impacted by humans through such activities as large-scale water reclamation projects, deforestation practices, agricultural land management and urban development. These modifications have accelerated changes in land and water use in ways that can profoundly impact the biogeochemical connection between land and sea. Both the drivers and consequences of changes in phenomenology (e.g the timing of water delivery), constituent provenance (e.g. the source of sediment or nutrients), and physico-chemical interactions with the landscape (e.g. erosion or run-off) often remain poorly characterized, and are therefore difficult to predict and challenging to mitigate. In this combined oral / poster session, we seek presentations that provide concise reports on specific biogeochemical processes occurring along the land-to-sea continuum. The main objective of the session is to identify key challenges currently limiting the ability to quantify the impact of human change on targeted biogeochemical processes and ultimately to help refine existing ‘best management practices’ for watersheds. (http://www.sgmeet.com/cerf2009/change.htm)

Please feel free to contact either one of us by phone or email if you would like more information. We hope you can attend. Also, if you can think of a colleague who may be interested in this session, please do not hesitate to pass this email message on.

Thanks!

Fredrick G. Prahl, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-5503 (fprahl at coas.oregonstate.edu, 541-737-3969)

Joseph Needoba & Tawnya Peterson, Department of Environmental & Biomolecular Systems, Oregon Health & Science University, Beaverton, OR 97006 (needobaj at ebs.ogi.edu, 503-748-1197 & petersont at ebs.ogi.edu, 503-748-7679)