The U.S. Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology returned to UGA this month for its 25th anniversary symposium. The inaugural US-IALE meeting, co-chaired by the late Frank B. Golley and then-postdoctoral fellow Monica Turner, was held January 1986 at what was then the university’s Institute of Ecology.
This year’s symposium was held April 5-9 at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel. It was attended by more than 300 participants, including IALE members from approximately 20 countries.
Road trips, workshops and a roundtable discussion were organized around the 25th anniversary symposium theme “Is What Humans Do Natural?” Hosts and program chairs for the symposium were Terry L. Barrett and Gary W. Barrett, holder of the Eugene P. Odum Chair in Ecology.
Symposium attendees were officially welcomed to campus by Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Jere W. Morehead. Herman H. “Hank” Shugart from the University of Virginia delivered the keynote address at the awards dinner. Plenary speakers were Gary Barrett, UGA; Carol Brewer, University of Montana; Richard T.T. Forman, Harvard University; Simon A. Levin, Princeton University; Joseph A. Tainter, Utah State University; and Turner, who is now a professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Twelve symposia were presented on such topics as the landscape ecology of wildfires, the complexity of acoustical pattern in landscapes, the pathogens in heterogeneous landscapes, land-surface phenology, and the graph, network and circuit models in landscape ecology. Presentations represented collaborations of unique pairings of disciplines addressing landscape ecology and demonstrated an inventive approach to technology such as GIS relevant to landscape ecology.
