IALE-OZ
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE
2.2 June
2001
EDITORIAL
Hello,
and welcome to the June edition of the IALE-Oz Newsletter
for 2001. This edition contains news items, upcoming events
and a report on the US- IALE Meeting which was held in Phoenix,
AZ during April.
If you have any feedback, comments and suggestions regarding the
newsletter please contact:
Amy
Hahs a.has@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
Diane
Pearson dpearson@gis.ntu.edu.au
TOP
PRESIDENTS
REPORT
It is
almost exactly 2 years until the 2003 IALE World Congress in Darwin,
and we now need to start organising things a bit more vigorously.
This Congress stands to increase the profile of landscape ecology
in Australia immensely, and there is a lot of interest in it from
landscape ecologists around the world.
Thanks
to Diane Pearson, the venues are all booked and we have block
bookings of a variety of accommodation types. There is also the
start of a conference web-page up.
The next
stage is to set up various committees to deal with aspects of
the congress. I see these as being:
1. Local
organising committee (dealing with conference logistics)
2. Scientific program committee (dealing with content, inviting
plenaries etc)
3. Sponsorship committee (dealing with seeking funds)
4. Field trip committee (dealing with organising field trips)
5. National organising committee with overall responsibility
for getting things together
At this
stage I’m seeking expressions of interest from people who’d like
to be involved in organising and running the conference in some
way. Putting on a major international conference is not a trivial
task, but with adequate organisation and doing things far enough
ahead of time, it need not be too onerous. Obviously, the local
arrangements have to be dealt with locally in Darwin, but I’d
like input and assistance with other aspects from anyone who’s
interested. Please let me know if you’d like to help rhobbs@essun1.murdoch.edu.au.
In the
meantime, I will be attending the European IALE Congress which
runs in Stockholm and Tartu (Estonia), with a ferry ride between
the two locations. I’m sure the arrangements for all this must
have been a logistical nightmare, and I’ll be collecting ideas
of what to do and what not to do (as well as enjoying the Baltic
environment). I’ll let you know how it goes next time!
Richard
Hobbs
TOP
FROM
THE IALE TREASURER
This year
I sent the IALE bulletins to all members through e-mail.
That is convenient especially for members in Australia, who now
receive them first instead of last. Not everyone receives
the bulletin because a number of mailboxes are full or addresses
have changed. To maintain a full service it is important to mail
address changes not only to Diane Pearson, but also to me: rob.jongman@alterra.wag-ur.nl.
If you did not receive the bulletin because the mailbox was full,
then we will send it to you by snail mail. That takes longer.
The other possibility is to download the bulletin from the following
site: http://www.wsl.ch/land/iale/iale_en.htm
From about
July, IALE will have a central web site: http://www.landscape-ecology.org
From here links to all landscape ecology sites, membership forms,
working group information, publications and other relevant information
such as job announcements and courses will be given. The
Directory of IALE is nearly finished. You might expect it in August
by normal mail.
Rob Jongman
Treasurer
TOP
SKY
HARBOURS LANDSCAPE
I arrived
at the United States section of the International Association
of Landscape Ecology’s (US-IALE) conference being held at Arizona
State University via Phoenix, Arizona’s, Sky Harbour (sorry, Harbor)
airport. What a sight to see the ‘footprint’ of 4 million people
spread over a desert landscape. The tentacles of suburbs, shopping
malls and golf courses were attached to bits of former agricultural
lands and desert shrublands. Although I had visited Phoenix before,
the extent of this urban development viewed on a clear day from
a few km up was both astounding and perplexing to me. I am sure
Mark McDonnell, another Aussie attending US-IALE, would not feel
so perplexed by these urban systems, but as someone who mostly
works on ‘natural’ landscapes, whatever those are, I felt uneasy.
The US-IALE
conference in Phoenix, Arizona, was superbly organized, I thought,
because each morning and afternoon session began with a Plenary
Address given by a distinguished landscape ecologist. These were
people working in a wide range of landscapes from natural to urban.
These were all, without exception, excellent and thought-provoking
addresses.
Two highlights
of US-IALE for me were:
1. Symposium
sessions where eminent landscape ecologists listed what they thought
were the ten most important issues in landscape ecology. For example,
Prof. John Wiens from Colorado State University, listed among
his ten issues that landscape ecologists needed to move “beyond
landscapes to waterscapes”. That is, we need to include riparian
zones and other aquatic ecosystems in our landscape studies. Wiens
also stated that landscape ecologists need to move “beyond pattern
to process”, stressing that landscape ecology needs to be more
than just pattern description – we need to better understand the
interactions between pattern and process. He also added to his
list that scale-dependencies in pattern-process interactions needs
a lot more study. My talk in another session dealt with pattern,
process and scale in defining healthy savanna landscapes. Wiens
also urged landscape ecologists in the USA to move “beyond nature
to human-modified systems”, as they have in Europe where almost
all landscapes have been highly modified by humans for centuries.
He stressed, as did a number of others in this symposium, that
making a distinction between natural and human-modified landscapes
is often counter-productive, and that we should always include
human factors in the landscapes we study. I think we already do
this well in Australia.
2. A mid-conference
field trip was a highlight for me, as it was for other conference
participants. Out of number of possibilities, I chose a field
trip on the anthropology and geomorphology of the region. It was
fascinating to see on the ground, so to speak, how today’s Anglo
and Hispanic farmers in the Phoenix area still use many of the
irrigation channels developed by Hohokam people a thousand years
earlier (of course, these channels are now lined with concrete).
These channels follow distinctive geomorphic surfaces, which developed
during past glacial epochs. We ended the field trip in the Superstition
Mountains east of Phoenix, where legend has it that vast gold
treasures remain hidden – we did not find these treasures.
John Ludwig
TOP
UPCOMING
EVENTS
IALE-Oz
Lunch during ESA Meeting in Wollongong
The Ecological
Society of Australia is holding their Annual Meeting in Wollongong
this year, from September 26 – 28. As many IALE-Oz members
are also members of the ESA, this presents a good opportunity
for us to get together and meet some of the other IALE members
in person. Is there any support for an informal lunch on
Wednesday 26 September for ESA attendees with an interest in landscape
ecology? If a member of the executive committee was going
to be present, they could perhaps take three or four minutes to
say a few things about IALE-Oz and membership opportunities.
This would identify a specific contact person for prospective
members, as well as keeping current members informed about what’s
going on ‘behind the scenes’.
If you
are planning to attend the ESA meeting, or if you will be in the
Wollongong area at this time, and would be interested in attending
this event- please contact Amy Hahs a.hahs@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au.
More specific details will be sent out electronically closer to
the day.
Amy Hahs
School of Botany, University of Melbourne
2nd
International Symposium on Landscape Futures
4th -
6th December 2001 - University of New England, Armidale, New South
Wales
The primary
aim of the Symposium is to afford land and catchment managers
and policy professionals the opportunity to gain a deeper and
more comprehensive understanding of the social, political and
institutional issues that surround planning and management of
natural resources at a broad regional scale.
To achieve
this aim, the Symposium has been structured around the three themes
that are described on the Symposium home page. Each of the themes
is tailored to a particular audience, both in terms of participants
at the Symposium and the broader audience for the Symposium Proceedings
that will be produced on CD after the conference. The first
theme (the politics and sociology of landscape futures) will be
of interest to the researchers, academics and senior policy-makers
who are involved in resource management and planning at the wider
regional scale.
The second
theme (institutional design for landscape futures) is targeted
at field professionals and catchment managers at a more local
level who are concerned with the practicalities of establishing
community commitment to sustainable resource management, although
this theme will also be of interest to senior policy- makers with
an involvement in policy and institutional change at the State
and Federal level.
The third
theme (advances in landscape futures analysis) will be of interest
to technical practitioners concerned with the use of GIS, landscape
modelling and scenario building in resource management and planning.
The focus will be on leading-edge techniques and will provide
the Symposium participants with an opportunity to update their
skills in this area.
Further
information regarding this Symposium can be found at:
http://www.ruralfutures.une.edu.au/lsfutures2/confhome.htm
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