The following symposia are planned for the annual meeting. The listings below are tentative and subject to change. New symposia will be added as information is received from the organizers. Check this web site for updated information or e-mail inquiries to aaaspd@sou.edu. If you plan to attend the meeting largely for one symposium, please call 541-552-6869 to confirm its status before committing travel funds.
(1) Peopling of the Pacific, organized by Nina Jablonski (Dept. Anthropology, California Academy of Sciences; njablonski@calacademy.org).
Scheduled for Saturday afternoon.
The islands of the Pacific were the last frontiers to be explored and colonized by humans. Almost everything about this process — especially the nature of the peoples and the technologies used in getting to remote places and staying there — has invited great public and scientific interest. We are now at a unique point in our intellectual quest to understand the process of the peopling of the Pacific, because we have available to us many new and different kinds of data. To the traditional battery of archeological and skeletal evidence, we now have molecular and linguistic evidence that bears on the nature and timing of this length and complex colonization process. We also know much more about how early “natives” behaved, and how they contributed to sometimes dramatic changes in island ecosystems in short spans of time. In this symposium, a wide variety of scientists, from the fields of archaeology, physical anthropology and molecular genetics, will be brought together to present new evidence on the colonization and utilization of Pacific island environments by humans. For anyone interested in human evolution and human history, this will be a session not to be missed!
Speakers:
Poster:
(2) Island Biogeography, with a Pacific Flavor, organized by Nina Jablonski (Dept. Anthropology, California Academy of Sciences;
njablonski@calacademy.org).
Tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning/afternoon.
Natural historians from Darwin onward have noted that the floras and faunas of islands are distinctive, sometimes dramatically so. Islands have been said to be microcosms of evolution, in which the workings of the process — isolation, the production of variation, natural selection, and adaptation — are laid bare. In this symposium, scientists who have studied both the process of biotic evolution on islands and the biogeography of island biotas, will come together to present and discuss some of their latest research. Presentations will include those devoted to how the islands of the Pacific have been colonized by different kinds of organisms and what has happened to various lineages of animals and plants after the original colonization events. The biogeography of
Hawai'i itself will also be highlighted. The scientists participating in the symposium represent many fields, including systematic botany and zoology, molecular biology, and oceanography. There is no better place to learn about island biogeography than Hawai'i!
Speakers:
(3) Conservation of Nature and Knowledge about Nature in Hawai’i, organized by Sam Gon (The Nature Conservancy; sgon@tnc.org).
Tentatively scheduled for Saturday morning.
Conservation challenges in Hawaii are a microcosm of those facing the global biosphere. A history of change in an isolated and vulnerable setting have lead to great losses of biodiversity, but much has been retained, leaving hope for the future. Certain ecosystems (such as lowland dry and mesic forest) have been all but lost, taking many endemic species with them into extinction, while others, more remote, or less suitable for human use, have held many of their original elements of biological diversity. Following an initial history of habitat loss and disturbance from direct human land use, starting with the impact of indigenous Hawaiians and accelerating in the 200+ years since Western contact, the current challenges to Hawaiian ecosystems and species are more subtle, and more intractable — the effects of introduced plants and animals on a preexisiting set of native natural communities. Their direct and indirect effects occur at a small enough scale, and in an isolated system that is accessible to scientific inquiry, rich enough to involve the full gamut of complex ecological processes, and yet highly instructive to larger global problems. Global warming, for example, is reducing the size of high-elevation refugia for native Hawaiian forest birds from introduced avian diseases.
The richness of evolutionary and ecological lessons from Hawai'i are the exemplars of the modern biological curriculum. Research on Hawaiian species and ecosystems continue to provide insight on the process of evolution and speciation, and on adaptations of species to a wide spectrum of environments—from coast to alpine, and from desert to arguably the wettest spot on Earth. In addition to the knowledge accumulated in scientific literature is traditional indigenous knowledge; a source that is receiving growing recognition as a complementary body of information of value to the pursuit of understanding of the natural world.
This symposium will include speakers reviewing current research on native species and ecosystems in Hawai'i, on the efforts being made in environmental education, and on the connections between the rich natural history of Hawai'i and the correspondingly rich Hawaiian culture that developed here.
Speakers:
(4) VOG - Volcanic Fog, organized by William B.N. Berry (University of California, Berkeley; bberry@uclink4.berkeley.edu)
Tentatively scheduled for Saturday afternoon.
Speakers:
(5) Hawai’i Charter Schools: New Methodologies for Instruction, oragnized by William B.N. Berry (University of California, Berkeley; bberry@uclink4.berkeley.edu)
Tentatively scheduled for Saturday morning.
(Under development)
(6) e-Learning in Science, organized by Kathleen Fisher (Center for Research in Mathematics & Science Education, San Diego State University; kfisher@sciences.sdsu.edu).
Tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning.
e-Learning can be broadly defined as the process of teaching and learning across the Internet. It is the fastest growing domain in education today, with a multi-billion dollar investment that is expected to increase by more than ten billion dollars in the next five years. Initial instructional efforts involved simple transfer of traditional course materials to the Internet. More creative methods are now being explored. This symposium presents a snapshot of some of the approaches being developed, including
Speakers:
Atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements have shown a steady increase over the last half century. At the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii this increase has been about 12.5%. Increases of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases have raised concerns that warming on a global scale might occur, causing significant climate shifts, disruptions to agriculture, and rising ocean levels due to melting ice caps. Indeed, the past 10 years have been the warmest in recent history. In this symposium we will look at global climate change as it relates to changing carbon dioxide levels. We will also consider existing and developing technology of carbon dioxide reduction and public policy as it relates to carbon dioxide reduction.
Speakers:
Speakers:
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