Support for a Geological Society of America's Penrose Conference Entitled "Linking Spatial and Temporal Scales in Paleoecology and Ecology," May 1998, Annapolis, Maryland

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9729032 Cohen This proposal provides a rationale for partial funding from the National Science Foundation in support of a Penrose conference entitled "Linking spatial and temporal scales in paleoecology and ecology". The Penrose conference series is the primary research conference series of the Geological Society of America (GSA). Because of its interdisciplinary nature, this conference is being cosponsored by the Ecological Society of America (ESA) and the Paleontological Society (PS). Here we provide a rationale for NSF funding, which will be used to cover travel and conference costs for key U.S. and international speakers, and to allow for increased graduate student participation. The idea for holding this meeting arose out of long-standing discussions among the conveners concerning the need to increase communication between paleoecologists and ecologists. Long standing splits in departmental affiliation (geology vs. organismal biology), professional society affiliation and training have hampered communication channels between the two disciplines. However the need for such an informational exchange and synthesis has become greater than ever as a result of cross-cutting societal problems such as impending global climate change and loss of biodiversity that will depend on information input from both fields. Through the use of brief formal introductory talks, followed by extensive periods for poster sessions, panel discussions and open workshops we hope to achieve a synthesis of how the two disciplines can interact more effectively in the future. We have two goals for the conference support funding we request from NSF. First, we want to insure that outstanding scientists who share our goals of interdisciplinary synthesis are well represented at the conference. Second, we want to promote this goal in the upcoming generation of graduate students in ecology and paleoecology, by providing them with cross disciplinary contacts early in their careers and breaking down traditional cross -disciplinary barriers that often make this leap more difficult later in one's career.