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Rural Action
Southern Appalachian Man And the Biosphere (SAMAB)
The Land Trust for the Little Tennessee (LTLT)
National Forest Foundation
The Moriah Fund
The Institute for Culture and Ecology
USDA Southern Research Station
National Commission for Science and Sustainable Forestry
EMAN
National Water Quality Monitoring Council
Summit Organizers
Appalachian Forest Resource Center (AFRC)
Colin Donohue, Former Director of Conservation- Based Economic Development colind@ruralaction.org
Caitlin Cusack, Rural Action VISTA caitlin@ruralaction.org
Rachel Orwan, AFRC VISTA rachel@ruralaction.org
Southern Appalachia Man And the Biosphere (SAMAB)
Andy Brown, SAVEM Program Coordinator andy@equinoxenvironmental.com
Susan Schexnayder, Education and Outreach schexnayder@utk.edu
The Land Trust for the Little Tennessee
Dennis Desmond, Forestry Program Coordinator ltlt_forest@dnet.net
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Citizen Environmental Monitoring in Appalachia Summit a Soaring Success!
Bristol, Virginia November 4-6, 2004
The Summit, Citizen Environmental Monitoring in Appalachia: Building Environmental Monitoring Programs for Validity, Impact and Sustainability drew about 130 participants and speakers from Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Montana, Oregon, Ontario, Canada and the Ukraine. Participants particularly enjoyed the wonderful networking opportunities with the vast number of high capacity people attending and the breadth of information of attendees, including 39 local, regional and international experts on citizen environmental monitoring. One participant commented that the most useful part of the conference was gaining an awareness of the vast number of efforts underway and encouragement that there are success stories out there. We enjoyed 2 days of plenaries, workshops and discussion on building sustainable monitoring programs of water quality, forest health, invasive species and sustainable forest management and a day of field trips to see examples of on-the-ground water quality, invasive species, forest health and forest landowner monitoring programs.
The specific importance of the CEM Summit is many faceted. Perhaps the most important challenge in land conservation today is strengthening the positive relationship between people and the land. I am hopeful that CEM is a way to do this, says Dennis Desmond, of the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee. This was the first event of its kind to combine the years of experience in water quality monitoring with the themes of invasive species and forest health and sustainability. Participants were able to draw on the advice and lessons learned from those involved in water quality monitoring to improve existing programs and formulate ideas for starting new ones. Also, the gathering of people working throughout a wide-spread geography offered the opportunity to create a network of both experts and novices in the field of CEM to learn and discuss both the opportunities and challenges to using volunteers.
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