[MPWG] upcoming conference on volunteer monitoring of water, plants, and forests

[Rachel Orwan]

Sorry for any cross-listings.

This is the announcement for a conference my organization is holding 
November 4-6, 2004.  Attached is the conference post card.  Please direct 
any comments back to this e-mail address.

Rachel


For Immediate Release 8/2/04

Citizen Environmental Monitoring in Appalachia: building an environmental 
monitoring program for validity, impact, and sustainability

Holiday Inn and Convention Center
Bristol, VA
November 4-6, 2004

The Rural Action Appalachian Forest Resource Center, Southern Appalachian 
Man and the Biosphere, Land Trust for the Little Tennessee, National Forest 
Foundation


The Appalachian Forest Resource Center (AFRC) is pleased to announce its 
partnership with Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere (SAMAB) in 
holding the Citizen Environmental Monitoring in Appalachia conference in 
the fall. The conference will take place in Bristol, VA, November 4-6, 2004 
at the Holiday Inn and Convention Center.  Focus of this event will be 
around citizen environmental monitoring of water, invasive and exotic 
species, and forest health and sustainability.

Citizen environmental monitoring or CEM is data collection and in some 
cases analysis of that data done by local volunteers. The information 
gathered by volunteers should answer questions of interest to the community 
and can be used for a variety of purposes including setting background 
levels, establishing environmental trends, raising a red flag of possible 
problem areas, educating communities, and influencing policy and management 
practices. This conference will be addressing the use of volunteers to 
monitor water quality as well as the presence and abundance of invasive and 
exotic species.  In addition, it will open a discussion into what makes a 
forest healthy and how volunteers can monitor whether it is being managed 
in a sustainable manner.

         The purpose of this conference is to bring together people from 
across Appalachia to learn about the usefulness of CEM and effective ways 
it can be used to create environmental awareness in communities and to 
achieve groups' goals. Target audiences include land trusts, watershed 
groups, land managers, government agencies, community organizations, 
researchers, environmental educators, recreation groups, volunteers, 
foundations and policy makers. While the conference agenda has not been 
finalized, there are many topics that have been earmarked to receive 
attention. Some of these topics include recruiting and retaining 
volunteers, getting agency buy-in, regulatory uses of volunteer collected 
data, emerging technologies in water monitoring, monitoring for control of 
invasive and exotic species, and monitoring for forest health and 
sustainability. To receive notification of the conference details and 
registration requirements contact Rachel Orwan or Caitlin Cusack at 
rachel at ruralaction.org  caitlin at ruralaction.org or call (740)767-2090.






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