Welcome!

This symposium, co-sponsored by Boise State University Center for Environmental Sensing and INRA will be held on the Boise State University campus on October 25-26, 2007. The focus of this meeting will be on development of new sensor technology and use of sensors and sensor systems to acquire information about the movement of nutrients, water, contaminants, and chemical and biological threats in the environment.   

WHAT'S NEW? Online Registration Open July 1, 2007 Paper Submission Open June 15, 2007 Abstract Submission Closed June 14, 2007

Our keynote speaker for this event will be Dr. Gary Sayler, Director of the University of Tennessee - Oak Ridge National Laboratory Joint Institute for Biological Sciences. He is the Beaman Distinguished Professor of Microbiology, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Founding Director of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology. Dr. Sayler has 32 years of experience in multidisciplinary laboratory and field environmental research and biodegradation of organic pollutants such as polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and trichloroethylene (TCE). Over the past 20 years, he has pioneered the development of environmental molecular diagnostics including the extraction and analysis of nucleic acids from soils, bioluminescent reporter technology, and the first field release of a genetically-engineered microorganism for environmental sensing and bioremediation. Dr. Sayler is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and an Associate Editor of Environmental Science and Technology, He serves on EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors and the Scientific Advisory Board; holds 10 patents and has contributed nearly 300 publications. 

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The featured speaker, Dr. Jörg Imberger, is the Director at the Centre for Water Research and Vice-Chancellor's Distinguished Fellow at the University of Western Australia. His main research interest is in the motion and mixing in lakes, estuaries and coastal seas in response to both natural forces such as tides, meteorological surface fluxes, river inflows and outflows as well as anthropogenic forcings and mechanical mixers and the effect of such motions and mixing on ecological systems residing in the water bodies. Dr. Imberger is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the US National Academy of Engineering. He was also awarded the 2007 ASLO A.C. Redfield Lifetime Achievement for his work on physical limnology. In 1996 he was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize, and received the Onassis Prize for the Environment in 1995 for his contributions to environmental issues. Dr. Imberger continues to work in the area of water quality management in lakes, rivers and estuaries. He leads a field operations group, a modeling group and a contract research group which provide both the worldwide research community and industry with state of the art instrumentation and models to monitor and understand what is happening in a water body and therefore implement effective and sustainable water management strategies.

Technical Sessions are planned for the following areas of sensor development, research and application:

• Watershed Instrumentation/Sensing (chaired by Jim McNamara, Boise State University): Focus on novel uses of sensors and sensor networks for monitoring hydrologic stores and fluxes in watersheds, incorporating sensor networks into hydrologic databases, and the implementation of regional hydrologic observatories.
• Soil Moisture and Temperature Sensor Applications (chaired by Michael Young, Desert Research Institute, Las Vegas, NV): Use of moisture and temperature sensors and sensor networks for hydrologic and engineering applications.
• Detection and Characterization of Microbes and the Processes they Mediate in Complex Environmental Niches (chaired by Andrzej Paszczynski, University of Idaho; Gary Sayler, University of Tennessee): Ecoproteomic ecogenomic, and other novel methods and tools that can be used to sense and characterize microorganisms and microbiological processes within natural and anthropogenic environments will be explored. Such tools allow as never before investigations of ecosystems at the "global" level, giving insight into environmental processes both the metagenomic and meaproteomic scales. Speakers will discuss some of the challenges and recent successes of these innovative methods in the study of complex natural and human-altered ecosystems.
• Biological Environmental Sensors (chaired by Kevin Feris, BSU): The development, testing, and validation of biologically-based environmental sensors.
• Geophysics for Environmental Sensing Applications I and II (chaired by John Bradford, BSU): Advances in analysis and interpretation of geophysical data for non- or minimally invasive measurement of shallow subsurface properties. This includes distribution of contaminants, soil moisture content, stratigraphic variability, and imaging flow and transport processes. Methods include ground-penetrating radar, seismology, low frequency EM, and potential field measurements.
• Remote Sensing (chaired by Nancy Glenn, ISU-Boise): The use of satellite and airborne sensors for environmental modeling, including: modeling near-surface soil moisture, surface roughness land cover, and soils; image and data fusion, and validation and accuracy assessment.
• Case Studies and Applications in Environmental Sensing (chaired by David Janecky, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM): Application of sensors and sensor networks for characterizing and long-term monitoring of contaminated sites, waste disposal sites, water supplies, and other applications.
• Environmental Sensor Technology I and II (chaired by Dale Russell, BSU; Wan Kuang, BSU): The development of sensor technologies to detect chemical, biological, nuclear, and explosive materials with a focus on technologies that improve sensitivity, integration, resolution, and portability.
• Panel Discussion (chaired by Scott Lowe, BSU): Key governmental, regulatory, economic, and societal issues surrounding attainment and non-attainment of environmental goals and standards. Example topics will include technical and economic analyses of air quality standards non-attainment in the airshed surrounding Boise, Idaho.

There will be a poster session/reception on Thursday night, as well as a student research poster competition. The top three poster winners will receive cash awards totaling $1,750.

Symposium registration includes a bound copy of the proceedings, continental breakfast and refreshments both days, and lunch, refreshments, and heavy hors d'oeurves at the reception on the first day of the symposium.