The call for abstracts for the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Ecological Engineering Society is now out. Abstracts must be submitted by January 31, 2012 .

The conference will be held in Syracuse, NY from June 7 to 9, 2012, with workshops June 4-6.

Oportunities for education in ecological design include:

Workshops offered by the American Ecological Engineering Society.

The School of Architecture and Allied Arts at the University of Oregon offers an Ecological Design Certificate. For more information about their program, click here.

Some time when I was young I read an account of the Pleistocene megafauna that roamed the earth up until about 10-12,000 years ago. Ever since then the image of “beavers the size of bears” has been lodged in my imagination. Now comes word that, shades of Rocky and Bullwinkle, we had sabre-toothed squirrels to keep the beaver-bears company. At least in my dreams because, according to an article in New Scientist magazine, these guys were companions of the dinosaurs rather than the megafauna, but still:

Truth is sometimes just as strange as fiction. Palaeontologists have unearthed fossils of a bizarre mammal that lived in the shadow of the dinosaurs and was a dead ringer for the sabre-toothed squirrel star of the computer-animated Ice Age films.

[The squirrel fossil] was dug out of rocks rich in the remains of giant sauropod and theropod dinosaurs. Its large eye sockets indicate it was possibly nocturnal, says Christian de Muizon at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, who was not a member of Rougier’s team. “The function of the long canines is difficult to assess,” says Rougier. “There is no real modern model for that.”…The shape of the squirrel’s molars suggests that it may have had a taste for insects…

Read the full post here.

Here is a new book worth checking out, an exploration of experience of lakes and the science of lakes. I met the author, Darby Nelson, at the 2011 North American Lake Management Society meeting in Spokane. Just by chance I set down with him and his wife Geri at the poster session reception and we started talking. Darby reminded me that one of the things Henry David Thoreau did was to sound Walden Pond and demonstrate to the locals that its depths were not infinite.

• Author: Darby Nelson
• Michigan State University Press, 2012

Available from Amazon.

The American Ecological Engineering Society (AEES) is leading an effort to improve the practice of collaborative, multidisciplinary ecological design through its Certified Ecological Designer Program. For more information, click here.

The North American Lake Management Society is meeting this week in Spokane. The conference center is right on the banks of the Spokane River; it is a beautiful site. (Did you remember that Spokane hosted a World’s Fair in 1974? I didn’t. The river park is a legacy of that event.)

Spent all day yesterday in sessions on lake oxygenation and alum application, with a some very interesting work on mercury mitigation thrown in for good measure.

Headlines thus far:

• Oxygen–you probably need more than you think
• Alum–a tool that works, maybe poised for  a comeback, as watershed BMPs cannot help you deal with the phosphorus already in the sediments
• Mercury–nitrate applications can inhibit mercury movement from sediment to water (and thence to fish), good news for a seemingly intractable problem

Looking forward to what Day 2 may provide.