Winter 2005 Newsletter
Our Meadowlands, New Jersey, conference in October was very well attended, due in part to support from co-sponsoring organizations, the Society of Wetland Scientists and the Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute. The meeting included an invited panel session entitled "Challenges and Successes in Estuarine Habitat Restoration - the Hudson-Raritan Estuary." AERS Executive Board member Dave Yozzo assembled the panel and moderated the session.
Keynote speaker Dennis Suszkowski, Hudson River Foundation, described the long history of pollution impacts to the New York - New Jersey Harbor Estuary and the progress made in the past few decades towards restoration. He also described the NY/NJ Harbor Estuary Program's Contaminant Assessment and Reduction (CARP) Program. Steve Zahn, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, presented the results of a baseline environmental study of borrow pits located in eastern Jamaica Bay. The pits, slated for bathymetric recontouring with dredged material, exhibit degradation from decades of hydrodynamic isolation and poor water quality. Both technical and political challenges need to be resolved to undertake this restoration project.
Dan Miller, Hudson River News National Estuarine Research Reserve, presented an overview of historic shoreline changes in the upper Hudson River Estuary, including dredging and filling, shoreline hardening, and construction of stream barriers on tributaries. Erik Kiviat, Hudsonia, Ltd., reviewed biodiversity in the Hackensack Meadowlands, with particular emphasis on the consideration of biodiversity in restoration planning. Peg McBrien, the Louis Berger Group, described a newly developed Hydrogeomorphic (HGM) functional assessment procedure being used for restoration planning and evaluation within the Hackensack Meadowlands District. Len Houston, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, presented an overview of the USACE's Hudson-Raritan Estuary Study, a regional ecosystem restoration consortium of multiple agencies and institutions, with a series of restoration projects currently underway. Carl Alderson, NOAA's Restoration Center, described faunal recolonization of restored salt marshes in the Arthur Kill waterway, the location a catastrophic oil spill in the early 1990s.
We'll hold our spring 2005 conference (March 10- 12) in Solomons, Maryland, at the Calvert Marine Museum. The conference theme is Remote Sensing and Shallow Water Monitoring in Estuaries, although papers on all topics related to estuarine science will be presented. We are very pleased that Dr. Hans Paerl, University of North Carolina, will be our keynote speaker. Hans' talk is titled, New Indicators and Approaches for Estuarine Water Quality Monitoring: From Microbes to Remote Sensing. Following Han's talk, on Friday morning (March 11), a panel of speakers will address various aspects of the conference theme. Panel members are Tom Miller (Chesapeake Biological Lab), Kevin Sellner (Chesapeake Research Consortium), Bruce Michael (Tidewater Ecosystem Assessment, Maryland Department of Natural Resources) and Ken Moore (Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Virginia). Dr. Mark Bundy, Assistant Secretary for Chesapeake Bay Programs, Maryland Department of Natural Resources will moderate the session. We hope for lively discussion following the panel presentations.
We're also pleased to offer a workshop for all conference participants on Saturday morning (March 12). We've enticed Estuaries' Managing Editor Steve Threlkeld to leave balmy Mississippi to journey north for a few days. Steve's workshop, Peer Review and Scientific Writing: an editor's advice for authors new and old alike, will cover the ins and outs of preparing a scientific paper and getting it accepted for publication. Although the publishing process is sometimes a dark mystery, the insights of an editor should help us all become more efficient in our writing and better prepared when we struggle to crank out a manuscript. Steve will discuss how a paper is evaluated as well as the review and editing process, and perhaps most importantly, what to do when the manuscript is returned with a list of changes and critical comments. This workshop will be extremely useful for everyone who wants to learn more about publishing their work in a scientific journal.
A banquet will be held on Friday night at the beautiful Lighthouse Restaurant on the Patuxent River estuary. Abstract submission, preregistration, and AERS student travel award deadline is February 1. For more information and to register, please go to the AERS web page at http://www.aers.info.
We say farewell and extend a knuckle salute to Stan Hales for his years of service on the board. Stan served in many positions, including stints as president and endowment chair. Joining the board and taking over student endowment duties is Peter Straub. Peter is an associate professor in Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, and his research specialty is the genetic makeup of plants and marine fish.
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