Thursday, August 9, 2018: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
244, New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
As a scientific community we have been diligently working together to connect the ecological pieces of the US Southwest and Mexico puzzle through historic, current, and continued research. Through these efforts, we have gained valuable insight into the many different fields of ecology this dynamic, variable, and broad sweeping region of the world encapsulates. Yet even with the directed and concerted efforts towards increasing the breadth and depth of our knowledge, many exciting and important questions remain. The goal of this session is to identify existing research gaps and the opportunities they provide as well as any potential challenges we may have to overcome moving forward. For this session, speakers from across multiple disciplines have been tasked to ask themselves these very questions. Within their topic of expertise speakers will present on areas they have identified as ecological research gaps. After the presentations, we encourage the audience to join us in a group discussion geared toward propelling ecological research forward in the US Southwest, Mexico, and beyond.
Monitoring dryland vegetation dynamics from space
William Smith, University of Arizona;
Joel Biederman, USDA-ARS;
Russell L. Scott, USDA-ARS;
David J.P. Moore, University of Arizona;
John S. Kimball, University of Montana;
Dong Yan, University of Arizona;
Mingzhu He, University of Montana;
Mallory L. Barnes, University of Arizona;
Amy R. Hudson, University of Arizona;
Natasha MacBean, University of Arizona;
Andrew M. Fox, University of Arizona;
Marcy Litvak, University of New Mexico
