President's Address

Fellow SWS Members, Every fall, along with Dr. Ric Hauer from UMMissoula, I have the pleasure of teaching a week-long class on assessing floodplain function for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE). The course runs twice, so we see about 60 folks from ACOE and a few other agencies. We start each week William Kleindl, Ph.D. Montana State University by asking about the breadth of their responsibilities and projects. We then SWS President spend the week in the beautiful floodplains of Montana and use that time to get to know them better. The number of ongoing projects where humans and waters interact astounded me. Yet, what impresses me most as I spend the week with these hard-working agents, is how much they deeply care about making decisions that are best for our aquatic ecosystems within the constraints of these projects.

As a researcher and consultant, I have interacted with engineers, ecologists, and regulatory agents throughout my career. The daily decisions practitioners make shape our wetlands, rivers, and floodplains well into the future. Most of these decisions are made within severe constraints of time, money, objectives, and regulations. But these constraints inspire creativity that alters design to avoid or minimize impacts to water, and inspires innovation in ecological restoration practices that compensate for unavoidable impacts. Most engineers and consultants work very hard to achieve these solutions and have an effective working relationship with the regulatory agents that can help guide them. As innovations become practice, other agencies codify those approaches, track the status and trends of our waters as these approaches are implemented, and recommend improvements over time. Through this fast-moving iterative effort, this suite of consultants, engineers, and regulatory agents has advanced the application of aquatic ecological practice in the United States and worldwide.

The best part of our International Society of Wetland Scientists is that we are a three-legged stool of researchers, consultants, and government workers. Most global wetlands, rivers, and floodplains operate within socioecological systems. Each SWS of the triumvirate brings a unique understanding to this system, and SWS creates a platform to share that understanding. Over the next few weeks, we will be accepting abstracts for our annual meeting in Spokane, WA (USA), and I would love to see many talks from practitioners. Our annual meetings are a wonderful place to learn about the cutting edge of our practice, and I look forward to it.