The 94th Ecological Society of America annual meeting: Impressions from Albuquerque

This past August I traveled to my first major week-long conference, the 94^th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). Over 3000 ecologists brought the otherwise deserted downtown Albuquerque to life, overwhelming the understaffed restaurants and filling the streets with an unusually high number of Hawaiian shirt-clad and beard-sporting men. Ecologists study nature from the organism level up to the ecosystem level and work on land, in freshwater, and in the oceans. I hadn’t realized before attending this meeting that, for some traditional reason, marine ecologists (those who work in the oceans) are not members of ESA but are included in geoscience professional societies. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society,” reflecting the concern among ecologists about the impact of human activity on organisms and the environment.

While the overall theme guided organized sessions, many sessions were filled with contributed talks and posters, meaning unsolicited presentations on any topic. The University of California, Berkeley participants gave over 100 presentations at the meeting. These included graduate student presentations on the biophysical constraints on the size of leaves, the need to take into account habitat complexity on different spatial scales when doing pest control, changes in the species composition of fungi due to increased nitrogen fertilizer inputs, and a new method for measuring nitrogen gas emissions from soil (my talk). Clearly ecology is a very broad scientific field!

This year ESA organizers made a greater effort to group talks and posters into sessions with cohesive mini-themes. However, it was unavoidable that there were still multiple rooms featuring simultaneous talks on the same areas of interest. This sometimes meant choosing between attending one talk to support a friend or another talk to learn about a new study. I tended to choose the latter, hoping that my friends would understand that I was supporting them in spirit. The overlapping sessions also meant getting quite a workout dashing up and down escalators and hallways to make it from one session to another during the short question and answer period between talks.

This was a great year to attend the ESA annual meeting for my field of biogeochemistry, the study of how biological, geological, chemical, and physical processes affect the environment. A special symposium sponsored by the National Science Foundation brought in high profile scientists to emphasize the importance of considering interactions in the cycling of elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and iron. There were also an unusually high number of contributed biogeochemistry presentations. This not only gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about topics related to my research, but it also allowed me to start networking.

I had looked forward to coffee and meal breaks as times to refuel and refresh, but it soon became apparent that those were prime times for introducing myself to new people and meeting up with old acquaintances to build collaborative relationships and sell myself for potential future jobs. As a graduate student, I was familiar with the work but not the faces of my colleagues. This proved to be an asset in calming my nerves before giving my talk—for all I knew my audience was filled with people who had wandered in from the street. However, this made networking much more difficult. Rather than using the awkward strategy of glancing not-so-slyly at the nametags of people passing by, I shadowed the well-connected members of my lab to angle for introductions.

I didn’t anticipate how tiring it would be to participate in a conference. Official meeting activities ran from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, including talks, posters, and mixers. By only the second day, I felt like a week had passed, and I wasn’t sure if my brain could absorb any new information. Though I didn’t plan to skip any of the sessions, I had to forgo one afternoon session filled with interesting talks to take a much-needed nap. I finally understood why conference attendees often ditch for a day to become tourists. The conference organizers also recognized the need for down time. My advisor dragged herself out of bed at five o’clock one morning to participate in an organized 5K run. Every evening one of my labmates joined an informal group of musicians and onlookers who gathered to unwind and release their creative energy.

One of my lasting impressions from attending the ESA annual meeting for the first time is the passion that ecologists have for science and for protecting nature for the sake of future generations. My flight to and from Albuquerque was filled with ecologists and the buzz of conversations rarely strayed from ecology. Even on the AirBART ride out of the Oakland airport, I eavesdropped on a USGS scientist introducing himself to two Berkeley faculty members who were discussing their research. Despite our overloaded minds, we couldn’t stop thinking about science. I feel lucky to be embarking on a career path in a field where my colleagues are so passionate about their work. I look forward to seeing them all again next August for the 95^th ESA annual meeting in Pittsburg!