AIBS News September 2002

From the pages of BioScience magazine, the online version of our current events column, with discussions of the latest happenings at AIBS in support of our mission.

• AIBS Launches Project on Infrastructure for Biology at Regional to Continental Scales

  The AIBS project "Infrastructure for Biology at Regional to Continental Scales" (IBRCS), funded by a $1.35 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), will launch in August 2002. These are the goals for IBRCS:

  * Help the scientific community determine the needs and means for increased physical infrastructure in observational platforms, data collection, data analysis, and database networking within and among field biology, other areas of biology, and other areas of science.
  * Provide for communications within the scientific community and with NSF regarding the development and focus of relevant infrastructure and data-networking projects.
  * Serve as a public information source on these projects.
  The project is led by a working group composed of biologists elected or appointed from the AIBS membership of scientific societies and organizations, assisted by a project manager on the AIBS staff and technical advisors. The working group will be assembled during the summer and fall of 2002. A call for nominations is forthcoming.

  There will be a special focus on the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) program, which is a major NSF initiative to establish a national platform for integrated studies and monitoring of natural processes at all spatial scales, time scales, and levels of biological organization. Funding for the NEON program was proposed in the FY 2003 NSF budget, but as this issue of AIBSnews goes to press, Congress has yet to approve the expenditure. The NEON network, once in place, will be a collection of field observatories linked via high-capacity communication systems. Each NEON observatory will comprise a core facility and several satellites, such as field stations, government research sites, museums, and universities. Standardized field-based and laboratory instruments will be deployed across the observatory region to collect comprehensive data. NEON will provide the resources and infrastructure for fundamental ecological research that could enhance our understanding of the natural world, improve our ability to predict the consequences of natural and anthropogenic events, and inform our environmental decisionmakers.

  The AIBS IBRCS project seeks to help members of the biological and broader scientific community determine the utility and benefits of existing and proposed infrastructure and data-networking projects to their areas of scientific activity; it will also explore how links to other areas of scientific activity and kinds of data can best be established.

  For NEON and other relevant programs, AIBS and the IBRCS working group will

  * Summarize and evaluate past workshops on relevant infrastructure and data-networking projects, as well as maintain a rolling summary of future workshops and related activities.
  * Conduct collaborative and consensus-generating activities, including working group meetings, joint sessions at the annual AIBS Council meeting, workshops, presentation and discussion sessions at scientific conferences, and coalition meetings with other scientific organizations. The goal is to spur biologists and other scientists to think about and work together on scientific activities, questions, and applications that can be better addressed with enhanced infrastructure and data-networking capacities.
  * Make the biological community aware of relevant infrastructure and data-networking activities in other scientific or technical communities, such as geology, chemistry, toxicology, hydrology, remote sensing and GIS, engineering, nanotechnology, biosensors, mathematics, computer science, and data management and information technology.
  * Serve as a key source of information about relevant infrastructure and data-networking projects for the scientific community, the public policy community, the media, and the general public. Information will be disseminated through brochures and reports, articles in BioScience, and a new Web site covering past activities (e.g., past workshop summaries and evaluations), present activities (e.g., current workshops and other meetings, reports, program announce- ments, lists of existing networks, a matching service for scientists who wish to partner with other principal investigators to develop funding proposals), and future activities (e.g., upcoming workshops and other meetings).
  The IBRCS project manager is Jeffrey Goldman, PhD. His e-mail address is jgoldman@aibs.org, telephone number 202/628-1500, ext. 225. The project Web site is www.aibs.org/ibrcs. Richard O'Grady, PhD, AIBS executive director, is the principal investigator. He can be contacted at rogrady@aibs.org, telephone 202/628-1500, ext. 258.

• AIBS Elections Go Electronic-Vote!

  Ballots for the annual AIBS elections to the Board of Directors will soon be going out to the membership. For the first time, ballots will be electronic as well as paper. Members are encouraged to exercise their franchise. All terms start 1 January 2003. The President-Elect serves a one-year term and automatically succeeds to a one-year term as President, then one year as Immediate Past-President. Board members serve three-year terms. There are three openings on the 13-member board. The slate of candidates this year is as follows:

  Candidates for President-Elect (one seat to fill):

  Joel Cracraft, American Museum of Natural History
  Christopher D'Elia, State University of New York, Albany

  Candidates for the Board, elected by the AIBS Council of member societies and organizations (one seat out of four to fill):

  Kent Holsinger, University of Connecticut
  Janet Keogh, Environmental Protection Agency

  Candidates for the Board, elected by the AIBS membership-at-large (one seat out of four to fill):

  Christopher Haufler, University of Kansas
  Lindsay Boring, Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center

• BioScience Submissions, Reviews Go Online in 2003

  Authors and reviewers for the AIBS journal, BioScience, will soon be able to submit manuscripts and peer reviews online. BioScience's online system will go into operation in January 2003. Revised Information for Contributors will become available at that time. Watch BioScience and the AIBS Web site for details. This conversion is expected to improve manuscript processing efficiency and decrease the time to publication. Contact: bioscience@aibs.org.

• AIBS Membership Drive Under Way

  AIBS has launched a major drive to encourage more individuals to enjoy the services and benefits of AIBS membership. Through a venture capital arrangement with Marketing General, Inc., of Alexandria, Virginia, upwards of 180,000 brochures will be mailed over the coming year. We look forward to reporting on the success of this program at a later date.

• AIBS Salary Survey Results Available

  The results of the AIBS Salary Survey, conducted from 15 June to 15 July 2002, have now been compiled. Bound copies of the report are available for purchase from AIBS. Contact Marsha Brown at mbrown@aibs.org, telephone 202-628-1500, ext. 202. A summary of the survey will be published in a future issue of AIBSnews. AIBS thanks all of its individual members, as well as member societies and organizations, who participated in the survey. Suggestions on how to improve the survey next year are welcome. Contact: rogrady@aibs.org.

• AIBS Work for NCSSF and National Commission for Science and the Environment

  SPARS, the scientific peer review services division of AIBS, recently completed a contracted project to review 33 proposals submitted to the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry. NCSSF is a program managed by the National Council for Science and the Environment (www.ncseonline.org) with a mandate to provide practical information and approaches that serve the needs of forest managers, practitioners, and policymakers. The program is now focused on Montreal Process Criteria 1: Conservation of Biological Diversity. The NCSSF emphasis is on developing the knowledge and tools most directly relevant to improving sustainable forestry practices on the ground over the next five years. The scope of NCSSF's current mandate includes examining the needs for managed forestlands, industrial and nonindustrial, in the continental United States.

• AIBS Work for ONR and Dissertation Symposia in Chemical Oceanography Program

  For many years the chemical oceanography community has sponsored the program "Dissertation Symposia on Chemical Oceanography" (DISCO). The program convenes regular meetings of recent PhD recipients, allowing them a forum to present their research and an opportunity to network and forge collaborative efforts. Under contract with the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the scientific peer review services division of AIBS, SPARS, has planned and facilitated these meetings, which have been held approximately every 18 months for over 20 years; the most recent meeting, DISCO XVII, was held in May 2002 in Hawaii.

  Recent and pending graduates are nominated by their deans, department chairs, and advisors to attend DISCO meetings. At the meeting, they are each given approximately one hour for their presentation and questions. Thus, the presentation may be more detailed than is possible at similar functions. The associations engendered at these meetings have been long lasting within the chemical oceanography community. Excellent collaborative research has resulted from these meetings. AIBS continues to provide planning and support to the ONR Ocean Biology Division on a variety of marine topics.

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