UGA will host the “Water-Ecosystem Services, Drought and Environmental Justice” conference Nov. 9-12.
The conference is being co-chaired by Ted Gragson, head of the department of anthropology at UGA, and Steward Pickett of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. It will be held at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel.
The meeting will bring together ecological and social scientists and students to explore the development of scientifically and socially sound solutions to water allocation in times of drought. The ultimate objective is to reduce conflicts among water users, enhance environmental justice and more effectively manage public responses to water scarcity.
While attendance will be primarily by invitation, live Webcasts of all keynote speakers will be available at www.esa.org/millenniumconf/2009/index.php, the Web site for the conference.
“Our goal in this ESA Millennium Conference is to bridge our knowledge of the biophysical and socioeconomic processes underpinning the local-to-regional provision of water ecosystem services,” said Gragson. “This will be the basis for analyzing the mechanisms for managing socio-ecologic vulnerability to drought in order to enhance environmental justice. Many significant questions will be addressed during the conference.”
Ecology has the tools and methods needed to measure and predict the impacts of drought on ecosystem services related to water and in turn to help analyze the magnitude and social distribution of those impacts.
“While the combined knowledge and approaches of ecology and social sciences are required to solve the increasingly pressing problem of drought, the two disciplines have pursued the research on drought largely independently,” Gragson said. “Understanding the implications of drought for water and other related ecosystem services is key to effective forecasting and education about the role of drought in socio-ecological systems.”
The conference is being sponsored by UGA, the Ecological Society of America Millennium Fund, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, the USDA Forest Service and the UGA President’s Venture Fund.