Scenic rural communities across the nation and around the world havebeen transformed as they have shifted away from extractive industries suchas agriculture, mining, and forestry and toward recreation-baseddevelopment relying on tourism, vacation homes, and retirees. Thesecommunities have built new economies and identities based on localnatural resources and are highly dependent on the natural environment.With these changes have come new questions: Do retirees and seasonal residents fit into their newsurroundings? Do longtime and new residents share the same values and visions for the future? Dodiverse community members disagree about how to manage their forest and water resources?

Condos in the Woods explores how these issues are reshaping community structure,employment, and inhabitants’ attitudes toward their environment in the Northwoods. Looking at trendsfrom the 1970s to the present, this work moves from the national scale to the Pine Barrens region innorthwestern Wisconsin and examines the approaches of residents to the management of their naturalresources. At the heart of this story, the authors find that despite the diverse makeup of suchcommunities, residents share many common goals and values and display more successful integrationthan previously expected

.“Makes a major contribution linking and expanding beyond an array of research on the question: Whatdoes the growing dominance of seasonal home ownership and use mean for the communities ofnorthern Wisconsin?”—Susan I. Stewart, USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station

Rebecca L. Schewe is assistant professor of sociology at Mississippi State University. Donald R.Field is professor of forest and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Deborah J.Frosch is an environmental specialist at Alliant Energy. Gregory Clendenning is senior projectmanager at NMR Group, Inc. Dana Jensen is a private consultant specializing in long-rangecommunity and land-use planning and regional economic positioning.

SESYNC invites applications to support synthesis research projects (“Pursuits”) under the following new Themes:

Theme 2 – Globalization and Environmental Change: SESYNC seeks proposals for activities that will illuminate linkages between globalization and natural resources or environmental change at any scale. Globalization here refers to increased economic and social interaction among peoples via trade, migration and employment, or via new forms of communication.

For more information: http://www.sesync.org/new-globalization-and-environmental-change

Theme 3 – Informing Sustainability & Adaptation Decisions through Assessment and Modeling of Ecosystem Services: SESYNC seeks proposals for activities related to data, modeling and methods that will improve our capacity to observe ecosystem services. This includes measures of social processes and outcomes, and biophysical outcomes.

For more information: http://www.sesync.org/new-informing-sustainability-and-adaptation-decisions-through-assessment-and-modeling-ecosystem

Applications are due no later than 5:00pm EST on May 31, 2012. Details and application guidelines can be found here.

Who should apply: Social scientists, natural scientists, computational scientists,and humanities scholars who need to visualize spatial data as they solve research problems

July 23-24, 2012National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center Annapolis, Maryland.

The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis (SESYNC) center is the newest nationalsynthesis center funded by the National Science Foundation, with the main vision tofoster synthetic, actionable science related to the structure, functioning, andsustainability of socio-environmental systems. The center supports research on diverseaspects related to the linkage between humans, societies, and the environment but isparticularly encouraging work on the social dimensions of environmental change andenvironmental sustainability.

One of SESYNC’s strategic goals is to foster the development of computational toolsand services in support of researchers including scholars studying human-environmentinteractions.

SESYNC is hosting this workshop to focus especially on the visualization and use ofspatial datasets from the social and environmental sciences. The workshop will discussand identify some of the current visualization challenges and emerging opportunities inusing spatial datasets to study human-environment interactions. We expect themeeting to be a ‘problem-solving’ workshop wherein domain scientists from the socialand environmental sciences can learn about visualization tools and resources availablefor their work and computational scientists can learn about the as-yet unmetvisualization needs in the domain sciences.

More specifically, the workshop will bring computational and domain scientists togetherto: (i) discuss some of the visualization challenges associated with using spatiotemporaldatasets; (ii) recommend possible collaborative IT efforts that could besupported under the SESYNC’s programs or through other funding mechanisms; and(iii) set up a network of researchers to interact on a regular basis, share information,and exchange ideas about the priorities identified during the workshop.

The following keynote speakers have already agreed to participate in the workshop:

Dr. Daniel Aliaga, Computer Graphics and Visualization Lab, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University(http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/aliaga)

Dr. Stephen Sheppard, Director of Collaborative for Advanced LandscapePlanning, Department of Forest Resources Management/LandscapeArchitecture, University of British Columbia (http://www.calp.forestry.ubc.ca/people/stephen/)

Dr. Ben Shneiderman, Human-Computer Interaction Lab, Department of omputer Science and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies,University of Maryland (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben)

SESYNC invites interested computational and domain scientists to submit abstracts (atmost one page) related to the main goals of this workshop. Abstracts will be reviewedby a SESYNC Committee and a subset will be invited to participate in the workshop,subject to meeting capacity.

Travel expenses of the lead authors of accepted abstracts will be covered by SESYNC.

A small subset of the accepted abstracts will be invited for oral presentations while therest will have poster presentations during the afternoon of the first day of the workshop.

Please submit your abstract in PDF format by April 20, 2012 to:cyber-workshop.application@sesync.org

2. All the data from 250 VSP studies going back to 1988. The data is searchable by keyword, site,
region, park type, date, region, survey variable, and other criteria.

3. All questionnaires, reports, and executive summaries, including economic impact (MGM2)
reports.
Visit the VSP Online Database at https://vsp.uidaho.edu

What can you do with this database?

• Browse survey questions
• Search data (simple and advanced)
• Filter data (by year, region, park type, etc.)
• View charts and data for selected results
• Download Data and documents

What kind of Information is available?

• Demographics (Age, education, residence)
• Activities
• Transportation
• Recreation preferences
• Visitor opinions on park resources and management
• Visitor spending and economic impact
• And much more

How to access the VSP Database:

• Visit https://vsp.uidaho.edu
• Sign up for an account (optional)
• Click the tabbed window to view Surveys, Question Types, or Advanced Search function
• Follow the on‐screen instructions

If you have comments or suggestions, we’d like to hear from you. Use the suggestion box found at the
bottom of the screen when viewing the database.

With the rapid growth and innovation of public participation in scientific research ( PPSR), researchers and practitioners are in need of a venue for sharing insights across projects and fields of study. This landmark event will convene science researchers, project leaders, educators, technology specialists, evaluators, and others from across many disciplines (including astronomy, molecular biology, human and environmental health, and ecology) to discuss advancing the field of PPSR.

The PPSR Conference is being held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), a venue that has long been supportive of citizen science and that welcomes relevant insights from diverse fields. PPSR Conference attendees may be interested in staying in Portland to attend – or even give a talk or poster at – the ESA conference that runs August 6th -10th. ESA’s call for abstracts is now open, with a February 23rd deadline (please note that this call is for ESA only, NOT for the PPSR Conference): http://www.esa.org/portland/contributed.php
More details about the PPSR Conference are available at CitizenScience.org/conference/2012, including the agenda, information on a forthcoming call for posters, and a poll for an early headcount.

Conference Co-Organizers:
Meg Domroese, research consultant, SERC Institute
Heidi Ballard, University of California – Davis
Rick Bonney, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Tony DeFalco, Consultant, Equity and Sustainability
Abraham Miller-Rushing, National Park Service
Sarah Newman, National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
Jennifer Shirk, CitizenScience.org, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Jake Weltzin, U.S. Geological Survey, USA National Phenology Network
Alison Young, California Academy of Sciences

Global Change Institute
3022777
Full time, fixed term appointment (2 years); immediate start
ARC Super Science Fellowship

Organisational Environment
The Federal Government’s 2010 Excellence in Research for Australia survey confirmed The University of Queensland as one of the nation’s top two universities, measured on a combination of research quality and breadth. ERA reported that research at UQ is above world standard in more broad fields than at any other Australian university: this reflects UQ’s leading global role in many areas of discovery. UQ’s outstanding critical mass offers researchers significant interdisciplinary capability.

UQ integrates its research strengths with excellent teaching and learning and has won more national teaching awards than any other Australian university. The Times Higher Education-QS table ranks UQ in the top 100 universities globally, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University World Rankings names UQ as a top 20 Asia-Pacific institution. UQ is one of Australia’s Group of Eight, and a founding member of Universitas 21, an international consortium of leading research-intensive universities.

UQ’s 44,000-strong student community includes 12,000 postgraduate scholars and over 10,000 international students from 134 countries. The University has 6300 academic and professional staff and a $1.4 billion annual operating budget. Its major campuses are at St Lucia, Ipswich, Gatton and Herston, in addition to teaching and research sites around Queensland and Brisbane city. The University has six faculties and eight institutes. The institutes — co-funded by government and industry grants, philanthropy and commercialisation activities — have built scale and focus in research areas that UQ regards as strategically important.

Global Change Institute
Global change is the hallmark of our age – understanding and responding to global change is more important than ever. Our world is changing at an unprecedented scale and speed through natural causes and human activity, and is influenced by diverse and interacting issues such as climate change; population change; technological innovation; resource security, and; impacts on biodiversity and natural ecosystems. A changing climate, an exponentially expanding human population and an ever growing demand for resources create challenges for the environment and in food production, energy, health and access to clean water on local, national and global scales.
One of the great associated challenges is managing this complexity across different temporal and spatial scales. Getting this right is an imperative and has ramifications for ecosystem health, social resilience and economic prosperity.

The University of Queensland has extensive expertise in all these areas and has established the Global Change Institute to provide leadership, engagement and advocacy in the area of global change, and to harness the expertise available to find innovative solutions in a multi-disciplinary, integrated manner.

The Institute’s mission is “To advance discovery, and create and promote solutions that influence high level political and social changes that address the challenges presented by a changing climate technology and population”. In meeting this mission, the Global Change Institute delivers high-impact, ‘game changing’ research that provides solutions to global change challenges facing the world. It does this through high-level engagement and partnerships internally using the University of Queensland’s expert knowledge base, and externally through national, regional and international collaboration.

A key component of the GCI’s role is to engage with government, industry and the community to promote research and discovery, to advocate the importance of coordinated and integrated approaches to finding solutions and to transfer knowledge and technologies to the public. With a unique mix of skills and expertise, it also acts as a think-tank in which new ideas can flourish and expand.
Established at the University’s St Lucia campus, the GCI has links to all Faculties, Institutes and Research Centres of the University as well as to an extensive network of national and international collaborators.
Information about the Global Change Institute may be accessed on the Institute’s website at www.gci.uq.edu.au.

Australian Sea Level Rise Partnership
Global sea levels are changing rapidly. The GCI has adopted a multi-disciplinary, outcome-oriented approach to facing the challenges posed by sea level rise in the 21st century. Established under the Australian Research Council (ARC) Super Science Fellowship scheme, the Australian Sea Level Rise Partnership (ASLRP) is an ambitious program that brings together a dozen of Australia’s leading researchers along with five outstanding post-doctoral research Fellows. The program draws expertise from the full spectrum of relevant disciplines, including maritime law, geomorphology, economics, climate science, conservation and urban planning, policy, coastal ecology, engineering, business sustainability and human geography. ASLRP will partner with Government in taking a systems approach to generating the necessary tools for understanding, communicating and adapting to the consequences of the threat.
Information for Prospective Staff
Information can be found at https://www.uq.edu.au/uqjobs.

DUTY STATEMENT
Primary Purpose of Position
The GCI is seeking a highly motivated early career researcher to take up an ARC Super Science Fellowship, joining the other post-doctoral Fellows on the ASLRP team. The advertised Fellowship will investigate organisational resilience and governance in the face of sea level rise. With a track record of impactful research in a relevant discipline such as economics, business, policy or planning or a related discipline, the successful candidate will have the following attributes:
• A demonstrated commitment to innovative, applied, outcome-oriented research
• The desire and capacity to work across traditional interdisciplinary boundaries
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• The initiative and responsibility to drive a research project forward

Project outline
The successful candidate will join a dynamic research group and will carry out research on resilient organisations and governance underpinned by new science on rising sea levels and their ecosystem impacts, working with Professor Andrew Griffiths and Dr Tiffany Morrison. Having been awarded a PhD in economics, business, policy or planning or a related discipline within the past three years, the candidate will have a demonstrated record of excellent research.

The focus of the research will be on bringing together and extending Griffith’s work on organisational adaptation and resilience and Morrison’s work on environmental policy and institutional design. The particular focus will be on decision support that integrates organisational strategies and urban planning instruments for managing the impacts of sea level rise in urban environments, although the Super Science Fellow will be at liberty to tailor the project.

The Fellow will join a team with four other postdoctoral researchers each specialising in a different facet of sea-level rise, including: physical characterization of sea-level threat; coastal ecosystem impacts; urban conservation planning; and legal and insurance responses. The Fellow be allocated a generous discretionary research budget of $20,000 per year, and assistance towards relocation cost and visa sponsorship may also be available.

Duties
Primary duties of the position include, but are not limited to:
• Work with project supervisors in developing a program of high quality, game-changing research that leads to improved sea level rise adaptation, nationally and internationally
• Take significant intellectual responsibility for the progress of the project against proposed outcomes
• Represent the Global Change Institute and The University of Queensland at high-level national and international conferences and workshops
• Forge research collaborations with relevant individuals and organisations
• Work with colleagues in seeking opportunities and writing research grant applications
• Prepare progress and annual reports for submission under the ARC Super Science Fellowship scheme agreement
• Actively participate in the working life the GCI and the host Schools, including delivering seminars as appropriate

Other duties
• Comply with the University’s Code of Conduct (see the University’s web site at http://www.uq.edu.au/hupp/?page=24987)
• Comply with requirements of Queensland occupational health and safety (OH&S) legislation and related OH&S responsibilities and procedures developed by the University or School. (see the University’s web site at http://www.uq.edu.au/ohs/index.html?page=133956)
• Adopt sustainable practices in all work activities and comply with associated legislation and related sustainability responsibilities and procedures developed by the University (see the University’s web site at http://www.uq.edu.au/sustainability/responsibilities)

Reporting Relationships
The Fellow reports to the Environment Programs Manager in the Global Change Institute and to their academic supervisors.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Qualifications
Essential
• The successful candidate will have been awarded a PhD or equivalent at a recognised institution, in economics, business, policy, planning or a related discipline, not more than three years before the commencement date of the Fellowship.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience
Essential
• Demonstrated expert knowledge in a relevant research field, such as organisational strategy, institutional resilience, economics of climate change, or risk management (as applied to climate risk/coastal environments)
• A record of significant research outputs relative to opportunities at the current career stage
• Excellent organisational and time management skills and a demonstrated ability to prioritise tasks in order to meet deadlines
• The ability to plan and execute data gathering and to interpret data independently
• The ability to adopt and adapt novel research techniques rapidly
• Experience of working in a team environment

Desirable
• Knowledge of global change issues, especially sea level rise or climate change
• Evidence of work across research institutions and/or disciplines
• Capacity to attract, or willingness to apply for, external grant support

Personal Qualities
• Ability to work collaboratively with colleagues.
• High level communication and inter-personal skills
• Willingness to contribute to communal tasks.

The University of Queensland is an equal opportunity employer.

Smoking is prohibited in all University buildings.

- Agroforestry & nontimber forest products
- Changing demographics & land tenure
- Community forestry
- Cross-boundary cooperation
- Education & communication
- Forest management
- Forest markets
- Forest policy & economics
- Landowner attitudes, practices & perceptions
- Landscape change, urbanization & parcellation

Now, more than ever, solutions are needed to help mitigate and avoid the threats facing forests.This conference will focus on the issues confronting small-scale forest owners around the worldand the solutions that can benefit landowners, society, and the natural environment. In additionto plenary and concurrent technical sessions, we will be holding interactive, structured sessionsto synthesize the state of the knowledge and identify research gaps – all of which will be laterpublished.

Submissions for the first call for papers are due 31 January 2012.

In addition to the conference itself, there will be a pre-conference workshop and a postconferencetour. There are numerous interesting ideas for the workshop and want your inputbefore making a final selection. Please visit http://iufrossf2012.org/program/tours-andworkshops/pre-conferenceworkshop/ by 31 December and vote for your favorite. The postconferencetour will head into the Green Mountains of Vermont where we will explore smallscaleforestry issues, enjoy the scenery of autumn in New England, and partake in the localculture.

For more information about this conference, visit: http://iufrossf2012.org/.

During the recent holiday break, we lost another IASNR member and rural sociologist far too early. I have attached some material I have received, which provides some more information.

As one of our colleagues said, this seems to be happening far too often.

Sorry to be the one to pass this on, but I thought you would all want to know.

Sincerely,

A.E. Luloff, IASNR Executive Director

Please click here for A collection of writing on William Robert Freudenburg from the IASNR website.