| NASCA 2011 Annual Meeting |
|
Columbus, Ohio |
|
September 11 - September 15, 2011 |
| Click here for a draft meeting agenda - updated as of Sept 1. |
| Renaissance Columbus Downtown Hotel |
| 50 North Third Street, Columbus, OH 43215 |
| 1-800-266-9432 ($112 room rate, mention "NASCA" when making your reservation) |
| Or click here to make hotel reservations.Room block closes on August 28. |
| Travel scholarships are available this year, click here to download scholarship form. |
| Please contact Sarah Hickling with questions: sarah-hickling@nascanet.org |
| Registration |
| Click here to register online. You will need the following username/password to access the online registration: |
| Username = ohio |
| Password = ohio |
| (all lower-case letters) |
| Click here to download a registration form in Excel. |
| Please send all registration payments to: NASCA, PO Box 418301, Boston, MA 02241-8301. |
| If you have problems with the online registration or downloads, please email sarah-hickling@nascanet.org. |
| Field Staff Idea Sharing Session |
| Ray Ledgerwood is joining us again this year to facilitate the highly successful and popular field staff sharing sessions in Ohio: |
| Click here for a list of topics for the 7th Annual Field Staff Idea Sharing Session. |
| Nutrient Management and Grand Lake Tour |
| Tuesday, September 13 |
| Harmful Algal Blooms and their toxins have hit Ohio hard the past two years. The state’s largest inland lake, 13,500-acre Grand Lake St. Marys, witnessed lake-wide blooms and toxin levels far above World Health Organization guidelines. Public use of the lake has almost ceased entirely. The Western Basin of Lake Erie saw the highest levels ever of dissolved reactive phosphorus in 2010, along with extensive HABs. |
| During the Annual Meeting, NASCA attendees will take a tour to the Grand Lake and its watershed. There they will talk with farmers and agri-business leaders and consultants who support 300 livestock operations in the watershed, the greatest concentration in Ohio. Participants will hear about new ODNR Division of Soil and Water Resources rules for those farms and how the two local SWCDs will help implement them. We will tour the lake and talk with local leaders and those who use the lake for recreation and business. The group will also learn from local, state, and federal agencies about what they are doing at Grand Lake and elsewhere to address these challenges. |
| In a short conference setting at Wright State University Lake Campus, attendees will discuss the broad issues of nutrient management, hear from limnologists and agronomists, and debate voluntary and regulatory solutions. It is DNR's hope that member states will share information on programmatic and technical solutions to these problems that increasingly plague many inland and coastal waters. |
| There, and while enroute, Ohio DNR would like to hear whether and how NASCA agencies, partners, and conservation districts are facing these issues. We want to discuss what more we could or should do, including how we can help bring polarized communities together to tackle critical natural resources and economic issues like these. |
| While our scenery might not rival that of SW Colorado, we think this tour will allow us to focus on an issue most of our NASCA agencies are struggling with in some manner or other. NASCA and the Ohio DNR hosts invite you to join us in Columbus for what promises to be an interesting and informative meeting. |
