This award will provide funding to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to organize the 11th International Estuarine Biogeochemistry Symposium, which will take place in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina in May, 2011. This meeting, entitled "Crossing Boundaries", is part of an on-going series (originally entitled the International Model Estuaries Symposium) that has occurred semi-annually over the past three decades, and participation in the symposium by US scientists has always been significant. The last two symposia have been in Germany and China, and the series now returns to North America. The Symposium has traditionally been organized in a plenary fashion with keynote talks on pre-selected topics of interest, followed by a series of related talks. As the meeting lasts 4 days, the number of talks (20 minutes each) will be restricted to 20-30. Each session begins with an invited keynote speaker and a general discussion after each session is proposed. However, in addition to talks, there will be provision for large interactive poster sessions so that a larger number of presentations can be made.
This year?s Symposium will provide an exciting major interdisciplinary forum for marine, earth, and atmospheric scientists by focusing on the dynamics of estuaries in modulating the transport and transformation of materials from land to the ocean. In addition to examining the processes that occur within the central estuary, this symposium will explore transport and transformations at estuarine boundaries and within adjacent environments that exchange with estuarine waters (floodplains, ground waters, bed sediments, the atmosphere, tidal river, and inner shelf).
Broader Impacts: For US estuarine chemists, this meeting has been the primary forum for the presentation of their results to an international community and the structure and nature of the Symposium allows for substantial interaction with foreign colleagues with similar interests. As in the past, the meeting will be designed to attract estuarine chemists from the US with particular expertise in the topic areas, many of who will be keynote speakers, as well as a diverse international contingent. The first announcement, which was sent out in November, was circulated to all US scientists in attendance at the two previous symposia, plus a broader list of US scientist with interests in the biogeochemistry of estuaries. Other notices will be posted on related websites and e-mailed using US listings of oceanographic departments and institutions across the country. Contact for emerging graduate students will be made through the most recent DISCO and DIALOG lists, particularly those with thesis topics in estuarine chemistry. After application and approval of this international travel grant, all US scientists making application to the meeting will be notified of the opportunity to obtain travel, registration and residential support. Costs for attending the meeting will be economical given that no foreign travel is required for US scientists.
(IEBS ‘11) "Crossing Boundaries" continued a series of meetings, which were originally entitled the International Model Estuaries Symposium. This symposium provided an exciting major interdisciplinary forum for marine, earth and atmospheric scientists whose focus is on the role estuaries and the critical role these dynamic environments play for in the transport and transformation of materials from land to the ocean. In addition to examining the processes that occur within the central estuary, this symposium explored transport and transformations at estuarine boundaries and within adjacent environments that exchange with estuarine waters (floodplains, groundwaters, bed sediments, the atmosphere, tidal river, and inner shelf). Significant involvement from international participants (9 coutries represented) and by students (10 undergraduate and 14 graduate students) resulted in a learning experience that will have a long-lasting impact on all 59 participants. The involvment by 8 local high school teachers made our discussions about public outreach and what is needed to effectively tranfer information and knowledge to the non-science public very poigniant. Participants found this Symposium to be a very effective way to bring together scientist that have different expertise and backgrounds (hydrologists, ecologists, oceanographers, estuarine scientist, geomorphologist and soil scientist) to better understand river systems...the overarching Earth System that brings them together. By involving students, the intent was to help develop a new generation of scientists that are not as constrained by narrow disciplinary focuses but rather better understand how thier particulat expertise fits into a larger "whole system" understanding of one of the most important surface Earth features...rivers.
