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BWB2012: Featured Topics

ferns and moss-covered trees in temperate rain forest of the Pacific NorthwestThe agenda tracks at Biodiversity Without Boundaries are organized around the core activities of biodiversity conservation:

  • Science
  • Technology & Tools
  • Planning & Leadership

Each day, an additional program track will feature special topics geared toward today's issues and BWB’s audience. We currently plan these following special topics, but may adjust or change them as the agenda develops:

The Wild West

From tundra to rain forest, alpine meadow to desert pavement, the western region of North America offers incredible variety in landscapes and species. Huge tracts of open space, public lands, and wilderness provide both opportunities and challenges for biodiversity conservation. This topic will highlight the species and ecosystems of the region and the issues they face. We invite session proposals from member programs, partners, and others working to inventory, manage, and protect biodiversity throughout the wild West.

Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem Services refers to benefits provided by the environment that contribute to the social welfare. There is a major effort in the conservation science community to develop tools that help measure the outputs or quality of these benefits, changes in them over time, and the effectiveness of specific efforts to conserve them. Governments, NGOs, and universities are working to create markets for ecosystem services, as well as developing the biological information to make the markets work.

With a focus on the information and science needed and being developed to promote these efforts throughout the Western Hemisphere, this topic will highlight endangered species, biodiversity, and wetlands services, but other related services such as carbon, water quality, water quantity, and recreation can be included. A major focus will be current methods for assessing the status and trends of these services, as well as ways in which the data can be collected, maintained, and distributed for use in establishing conservation payment systems.

The agenda will also include a symposium that engages a panel of experts representing both the public and the private sectors in a discussion of issues, information needs, and collaboration opportunities surrounding Ecosystem Services.

The Assessment Landscape

Ecological assessments—landscape and watershed analyses, critical habitat modeling, predictive future condition modeling, and more—span numerous scales and an extremely varied range of objectives and tend to rely on whatever existing data are available. The lack of standards for data sources and quality can raise questions about the value and viability of the assessments, especially as they are increasingly used to set priorities for public investment and mitigation. Presentations under this topic will not only describe individual assessments but also address the challenges of finding quality data, identifying standards, integrating assessments across geographies, and stewarding assessment data.