Participants – Matt Doss, Ric Lawson,
Gary Kohlhep, Sarah Lehmann, Charlie Peters
Background - The LMMCC discussed
hosting a conference on monitoring in the Great Lakes at the Kalamazoo meeting.
Those discussions suggested possibilities of developing a solely monitoring
focused conference or the possibility of holding monitoring sessions as a part
of an ongoing conference. The IAGLR conference in May, 2001 was suggested as a
possibility. The National Monitoring
Council is supportive of regional monitoring conferences in the odd numbered
years (the National conference is in the even numbered years). The National
Council will discuss developing some guidance for regional conferences at their
August meeting. The IAGLR organizers contacted Charlie about LMMCC interest in
developing monitoring sessions. This call was held to determine how to proceed.
Other conferences planned in the
Great Lakes area – SOLEC in October, 2000; a Beaches conference in February of
2001; IAGLR in May, 2001; IJC in Fall 2001; State of Lake meeting in November
of 2001. Any of these could also provide a venue for LMMCC monitoring sessions
or other outreach potential.
Three Primary Options
Discussed –
1) Develop IAGLR sessions, 2) pursue funding for and develop our own
conference, or 3) do both. It was decided that we should develop sessions for
IAGLR and that we should look into possible funding options and continue to
consider possibility of our own Fall 2001 conference. Additionally, the
outreach group should also consider what our presence should be at other
upcoming Great Lakes conferences.
IAGLR – Decided that we will
propose a full day session, devoted to monitoring issues, to the IAGLR planning
team. The proposed title of the session is: “Research and Monitoring: Enhancing
linkages and communication”. The proposed format is a 4-hour morning session
with 2-hours of presentations addressing approaches to make researchers
findings most useful for influencing resource managers decisions, followed by a
2-hour workshop/discussion of the topic. The afternoon session would also
include 2-hours of presentations addressing how the monitoring community could
provide the information the research community is interested in, followed by a
workshop/discussion of the topic.
LMMCC Great Lakes Monitoring
Conference
– Although this option was considered to provide the most benefit to the LMMCC
and it’s mission, there was some concern that there are not enough resources
and time to pursue by the Spring 2001 date. There was also some concern that
there would not be enough interest in such a conference. Funding options within
each agency will be pursued with the hope that some funding can be committed to
the activity by the end of 2000. If funding can be obtained it was believed
that a conference could be pulled together by Fall of 2001. It is believed that
enough interest could be generated in a regional monitoring conference by
developing some specific sessions (TMDLS, etc) and some more generic sessions
(Database management, methods comparability, etc).
LMMCC presence at other
conferences
– The outreach group should discuss if we want to have some type of involvement
at each of the conferences described above, and what that involvement should
be. Some possibilities: make brochures available at the conferences, develop a
poster for display at conferences, develop a session to promote the Council.
The Council should also consider how to interface with the 3rd National
Monitoring Conference planned for May 2002 in Madison.
Next Steps – Charlie will provide the
proposed IAGLR session information to the IAGLR planning team. Funding for a
2001 conference will be pursued.
Specifically, Sarah will target EPA, Region 5 sources and Matt will talk
to GLNPO contacts. Ric will arrange a
conference planning call for the week of August 14th.