Conference: Support to expand access to BIOGEOMON 2024 through incorporating diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and accessibility

BIOGEOMON 2024将于2024年1月7日至11日举行。这是第11届国际会议，重点了解土壤、森林、河流和湿地的生态系统生物地球化学，特别关注在分水岭、景观和全球尺度上研究的人为影响。BIOGEOMON 2024将在波多黎各大学Río Piedras举行，这是波多黎各圣胡安的一所西班牙裔服务机构，这是BIOGEOMON首次在热带地区举行。虽然BIOGEOMON会议一直吸引着不同群体的与会者，但2024年组委会在会议设计中明确强调多样性、公平、包容、正义和可及性（DEIJA）。通过这笔拨款提供的旅行补贴将向更多的学生、早期职业科学家以及来自波多黎各、美属维尔京群岛和整个美国大陆的代表性不足的群体的科学家开放。对会议计划和与会者支持团队进行改革，将有助于本次会议成为扩大小型会议参与和范围的典范。虽然大部分申请的资金将用于向来自代表性不足群体的早期职业科学家提供旅行补助金，但组委会已经计划了几项活动，向所有与会者介绍生物地球化学领域的公平和多样性问题，包括DEIJA论坛和关于生物地球化学研究的社会经济和社会文化层面的讲习班。委员会将利用从同行评审文献和关于举办包容性会议的报告中收集的建议，实施各种措施，使会议更具包容性，并加强科学计划，包括将通用设计原则纳入会谈和会议室，提供广泛的交流机会，设计会议行为准则，并建立一组现场包容性联络员，他们可以在会议期间协助与会者。组委会将在会议之前、期间和之后收集有关这些措施有效性的数据，这些数据将包含在一份报告中，供组织者在规划未来的会议时使用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

BIOGEOMON 2024 will be held January 7-11,2024. It is the 11th international conference focused on understanding ecosystem biogeochemistry of soils, forests, rivers, and wetlands with special attention given to anthropogenic effects studied at the watershed, landscape, and global scale. BIOGEOMON 2024 will be held at University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras, a Hispanic-serving institution in San Juan, Puerto Rico, marking the first time BIOGEOMON will be held in a tropical landscape. While the BIOGEOMON conferences have always attracted a diverse group of attendees, the 2024 organizing committee is emphasizing diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and accessibility (DEIJA) explicitly in the conference design. Travel subsidies funded through this grant will open attendance to many more students, early career scientists, and scientists from under-represented groups from Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and throughout the continental USA. Incorporating changes to both the conference program and the support team for attendees will help this conference serve as a model in how to broaden participation and scope of inclusive small conferences. While most of the requested funds will be used to provide travel grants to early career scientists from underrepresented groups, the organizing committee has planned several events that will educate all attendees on issues related to equity and diversity in the field of biogeochemistry, including a DEIJA forum and a workshop on the socioeconomic and sociocultural dimensions of biogeochemical research. The committee will use recommendations gathered from peer-reviewed literature and reports on running inclusive conferences to implement a variety of measures that will make the conference more inclusive as well as enhance the scientific program, including incorporating Universal Design principles into talks and meeting rooms, providing extensive networking opportunities, designing a conference code of conduct, and establishing a group of onsite Inclusivity Liaisons who can assist attendees during the conference. The organizing committee will gather data on the effectiveness of these measures before, during, and after the conference which will be included in a report that can be used by organizers when planning future conferences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.