UC to host international botany conference June 2-6
Scholars from 30 countries convene to consider ‘The Future of Forests’
Event Information (passed)
A group of some 200 international educators will assemble to share scholarship around forest management on the University of Cincinnati’s Uptown campus on June 2 -6. The 60th annual conference of the Society for Economic Botany (SEB) will center on the theme of “The Future of Forests: Perspectives from Indigenous People, Traditional Practices and Conservation.”
The SEB was founded in 1959 to encourage research on the uses of plants and the relationship between plants and people, and to make those results available to the scientific community and the general public.
In a time of climate change, global deforestation and unprecedented wildfires in the west, the theme is especially relevant, said David Lentz, professor of biological sciences in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences, and conference co-organizer.
UC biology professor David Lentz.
"This Plenary Symposium, The Future of Forests, is a highly relevant topic because our forests across the globe are significantly imperiled,” Lentz said. “Every year, the earth loses forested areas the size of Vermont. Forests are one of our greatest buffers against climate change and, in general, we are not managing them well. This was seen clearly in the massive forest fires that occurred last year in California."
Says conference co-organizer Susan Allen, assistant professor of anthropology, the conference theme was inspired during her research on challenges for incorporating traditional and indigenous land management strategies into wetland conservation policy.
Susan Allen, UC assistant professor of anthropology.
"This naturally led to thinking about the need for forest management and conservation policies that consider tradtional and indigenous knowledge of successful strategies that, in various regions, co-evolved with forests over millennia," Allen said.
The idea of fighting forest fires with practices used by indigenous people is gaining traction as wildfires such as last year's Camp and Woolsey fires in California--which together burned close to 200,000 acres--become more destructive and deadly. Just last year, the U.S. Forest Service partnered with the Yurok tribe in northern California after another wildfire took 43 lives, according to Reuters.
An important goal of the conference is to bring together researchers and thought leaders to promote dialogue which could lead to policy change, Allen said.
"There is a critical need for interdisciplinary collaboration for strategies to confront the intertwined threats of rapid cultural diversity loss, climate change, and declining biodiversity in the management of forest resources," she said. "For this reason, we invited scholars who have a wide range of expertise as social scientists, members of indigenous communities, Native American tribal liaisons, natural resource managers and ethnobotanists to participate in the Plenary session on this theme. Because practitioners in these fields are not often in direct communication, we hope the conference will promote a closer dialogue."
Among the Plenary Symposim speakers will be M. Kat Anderson, professor and ethnoecologist from the University of California, Davis and author of "Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources. Anderson will discuss Native American ecological knowledge and its impact on land management techniques.
UC biology department head Theresa Culley (left).
Also presenting in the plenary session are UC’s Theresa Culley, professor of biology, discussing the evolution of Callery pear trees from sterile cultivars to invasive species; Alan P. Sullivan, professor of anthropology, on “Anthropogenic Forest Fires: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives”; and Daniel Murphy, associate professor of anthropology, on “Forest Visions: Technologies and Techniques of Collaborative Forest Futuring.”
Also at the conference, College of Charleston professor of anthropology John Rashford will be awarded the annual Distinguished Economic Botanist (DEB) award, and give a lecture at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 50 East Freedom Way, in downtown Cincinnati.
The conference is being hosted by the A&S departments of biology, anthropology, geography and geology, and is supported by grants from the Lloyd Library, the National Science Foundation, the Elizabeth Henderson Charitable Foundation, and UC’s Taft Research Center.
Members of the general public who are interested in volunteering may attend the plenary session and poster session talks without charge. To volunteer, contact Cory Perfetta at perfetcj@ucmail.uc.edu. To register for the conference or for more information, visit the Society for Economic Botany.
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