December,
2006
by Susan Hendricks
(ORBCRE 2006 Program Coordinator)
The Center for Reservoir Research hosted the annual symposium of the Ohio River Basin Consortium for Research and Education (ORBCRE) held at the Curris Center October 25-27, 2006. The Consortium's mission is to promote inter-institutional research, education and information exchange in water-related environmental issues in the Ohio River Basin. The Consortium, an association of universities, colleges, governmental agencies, industries, and individuals, is a non-profit, tax-exempted corporation in existance since 1985.
See ORBCRE website at http://www.orbcre.org
The annual symposium provides a forum for the association membership to communicate and cooperate in addressing current water-related or environmental issues within the Ohio River Basin. The last time Murray State University hosted the symposium was in 1991, when it was held at Barkley State Resort Park.
The theme of this year's meeting was "Land-Water Interfaces within the Ohio River Basin". The meeting began on Wednesday afternoon, October 25, with a workshop held in the new Biology Building sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region IV. The focus of the workshop was "The Ohio River Run" with hands-on demonstrations and sessions devoted to bacteria, algae, zooplankton and mussels found in the Ohio River.
On Thursday and Friday, October 26-27, six sessions of oral presentations took place on a wide variety of topics important within the Basin. Topics ranged from the development of national environmental observatories and observatory networks linked via cyberinfrastucture throughout the Basin, to large river (Ohio and Tennessee) biology/ecology and chemistry, groundwater, hydrology, and contaminants. Thirty-two abstracts were submitted as oral presentations and five as poster presentations, 25 of which were presented by CSET faculty and students. The meeting drew approximately 65 participants from as far away as Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, to Murray State University at the opposite end of the Ohio River, a distance of 981 river miles!
Commercial exhibitors included IDEXX, Fisher Scientific, Hach Environmental, Fondriest Environmental, Inc., and the Rivers Institute at Hanover College, IN.
At this time, special recognition is extended to the following CSET faculty, students, and offices for their outstanding assistance in helping the meeting happen: Dr. Tom Kind (local arrangements committee), Drs. David White and Joe Baust (workshop), Dr. Tim Johnston (sponsors and exhibitors committee), Dr. Susan Hendricks (program committee), and Dan Lavit and Janeen Winters (Center for Continuing Education, Community Education). We also thank the following faculty and students for chairing the oral sessions: Dr. Tom Timmons (Biological Sciences), James Ramsey (Water Sciences Program), Dr. Robin Zhang (Geosciences), Dr. Bommanna Loganathan (Chemistry), Dr. HwaSeong Jin (Hancock Biological Station), and Dr. George Kipphut (Geosciences).
