CERF 2019 Workshops

Are you looking for a way to further enhance your CERF 2019 experience? Consider signing up for a workshop! We will be offering a diverse program of 11 workshops on Sunday, 3 November 2019, as an exciting kickoff to a great CERF conference. These workshops represent an opportunity to receive valuable training in topics ranging from effective communications to technical web-based software.

All workshops have a limit to the number of participants to ensure maximum interactions and discussions. We encourage you to sign up for a workshop when registering for the CERF conference and take advantage of a low-cost, high-quality training opportunity. Please email the office at [email protected] if you have already registered for CERF 2019 and would like to register for a workshop.

Check out the workshops below:

Analyzing, Synthesizing, and Communicating Your Data

Bill Dennison & Heath Kelsey

Coastal and estuarine research encompasses monitoring data collected for a myriad of purposes. Whether it is for determining changes in water quality, evaluating climate change effects, protecting human health, establishing baseline conditions, measuring results of restoration activities, or modeling future conditions, synthesizing and communicating results is an essential part of using the data. Too often, monitoring datasets are not used to their full potential for managing, restoring, and protecting coastal and estuarine resources. This cross-cutting two-hour workshop touches on a variety of conference priorities, such as statistics and data processing, science communication and education/outreach, and diversity and inclusion.

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Beginner GIS for Ecologists

Kayla Key

This seven-hour workshop will provide an overview of beginning GIS skills for biologists using ArcGIS, including use of existing data, creating your own data, and review of fundamental concepts for GIS. Participants will learn basic concepts of landscape ecology and implement applications of GIS through hands-on, self-guided exercises. Participants will be responsible for bringing their own laptop and will receive instructions for downloading software prior to the conference.

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Building and Sustaining Effective Community-Research Partnerships
Katy Hintzen, Brenda Asuncion, and Darren T. Lerner

This three-hour workshop focuses on best practices for engaging in equitable and mutually beneficial relationships with community partners and will feature a combination of case study presentations, small group discussions, and interactive scenario-based activities. The ultimate aim of the workshop is to provide a space for coastal professionals and researchers from diverse disciplines to share their expertise and experience around community-research partnerships and learn from each other.

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Best Practices in Science Communication

Bill Dennison & Heath Kelsey

The goals of this two-hour workshop are to improve participants’ science communication capabilities and help participants translate their science to reach broader communities. This cross-cutting workshop touches on a variety of conference priorities. Science communication is not only important for promoting diversity and inclusion in science, but also to maintaining relationships and partnerships by communicating data in an understandable, engaging way. Communicating science effectively helps solve environmental problems by promoting the preservation of coastal and estuarine habitats, elucidating ecosystem services and resources those habitats provide, and supporting cultural heritage through transdisciplinary science and inclusive stakeholder approaches.

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Concepts and Controversies in Tidal Marsh Ecology Revisited - SOLD OUT
Ron Baker

This inter-generational meeting of tidal marsh ecologists will bring together ecologists from retired leaders to new grad students, to identify and discuss the key challenges facing these ecosystems into the 21^st century. A combination of presentations, panel Q&A, and group discussions will facilitate the sharing of insights, knowledge, and advice from the old guard to the new. We will explore the central theme of marsh support of fisheries by discussing topics including habitat-fishery linkages, connectivity, seascapes, economic and social valuation, restoration, and climate change. Registration fee for this two-day, off-site workshop includes lodging and meals.

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Democratizing Access to Ocean Observing Technology
Brian Glazer

This four-hour workshop provides an opportunity to lower the technological barrier to entry for building custom sensors and working with telemetered data. Opportunities for participants to exchange lessons learned and emerging challenges from their home watersheds, as well as specific training for low-cost, high-resolution water level and temperature sensors will be provided. We will pre-package, distribute, and demonstrate DIY sensor kits to monitor and quantify in near-real-time coastal tides, inundation, and beach run-up risks.

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Engaging in Coastal Science After Retirement: Brainstorming Options and Opportunities
Holly Greening and Rich Batiuk

Are you retired or thinking about retirement, but aren’t ready to completely hang up your coastal and estuarine science hat? Is your agency/company/university/NGO looking for ways to tap in to recently retired coastal scientists, watershed managers and other experienced CERF members? Come join this interactive three-hour workshop to hear from CERF members who have made the retirement transition into a "second life;" learn about opportunities after retirement from agencies, universities, NGOs and private companies eager to tap into expertise from retiring CERF members; and share ideas about how CERF can encourage linking retiring scientists and entities wishing to engage them.

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Out in the Open: Identifying, Understanding, and Addressing Implicit Bias
Treda Grayson
Facilitator: Dr. Franklin Trimm, University of South Alabama

CERF is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive culture at all levels of the Federation. This three-hour workshop is aimed at increasing the capacity of diverse individuals to interact and to realize the benefits of diversity. Participants will explore some underlying reasons for the lack of diversity, and learn tools to identify, address, and overcome social stereotypes that form outside of our own conscious awareness, known as implicit bias. Expert speakers will lead a series of discussions and exercises that will result in better awareness of and actions to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in personal and professional settings.

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Putting Science "In the Room:" Science Communication to Support Decision-Making
Jacques Oliver

CERF scientists produce extensive research that is intended to inform environmental decision making. Communicating science effectively to decision-makers usually requires specific skills often not included in graduate science training. Participants in this four-hour workshop will interact with environmental decision-makers in state and federal government by making a presentation and receiving feedback, thereby gaining experience translating their science through a decision scenario. Participants can expect to improve their understanding of common pitfalls and strategies to overcome them, and to hear from decision-makers about how they receive and apply scientific information. Participants can expect subject matter feedback on the presentations they make.

SOLD OUT!

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Sharing and Applying Best Practices for Mapping/Monitoring Coastal SAV
Mark Finkbeiner

This four-hour workshop will build on earlier CERF SAV workshops to advance the awareness and application of best practices related to SAV mapping and monitoring. Information will be presented on mapping and monitoring methods, the indicators that can be measured at various scales or tiers, and the technologies useful at each tier. The results of a case study mapping/monitoring project will be presented and how the SAV Community of Practice contributed to that effort. Finally, participants will also learn how to join and engage with the CERF SAV Community of Practice.

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The Next Step with R: Data Management, Graphics, and Functions
Kimberly Cressman and Shannon Dunnigan

The goal of this full-day workshop is to guide learners who are already using R to be able to automate daily tasks, manage their data in a reproducible framework (using tidyverse R packages dplyr and tidyr), make publication ready graphs (using R package ggplot2), and write their own functions. Anyone with questions about what exactly the workshop will cover or if they have the appropriate skillset can contact Kimberly Cressman or Shannon Dunnigan . Materials from a similar workshop offered at the 2018 American Ornithological Society meeting can be found here. Participants should bring their laptops with R installed on it.