Scientific Conferences of the International Society for River Science

            Our society will sponsor or co-sponsor three types of meetings: (1) biennial Congresses; (2) periodic electronic conferences in years without a biennial Congress; and (3) co-sponsored and/or regional symposia.

Plenary talks from the First Biennial Symposium for the International Society for River Science

Now available for download.

Prof. Geoffrey E. Petts - Challenges for regulated river science: facing an era of water scarcity

Prof. Kirk O. Winemiller - Biodiversity, ecological complexity and food web dynamics of tropical rivers: can we make river ecology a predictive science?

Dr. Kenneth Lubinski - River conservation: the path and the destination

Prof. Martin C. Thoms - Interdisciplinary understanding of riverine landscapes

Congresses are held every two years, with meetings rotating between Europe/UK, North America, and other continents. The 2011 meeting will be in Berlin, Germany, August 8-12. St. Petersburg, Florida, USA was selected for the first biennial meeting of ISRS for July 12-17, 2009. Prior to establishment of the ISRS, an unofficial group held regulated rivers meetings every three years for several decades. Recent meetings of that informal society were held in Sterling Scotland (2006), Albury Australia (2003), and Toulouse France (2000). . Future meetings are planned for China (2013), Canada, the United Kingdom, South America, and other sites.

Electronic conferences are planned for one or more years between triennial meetings. The purposes of these meetings are to allow members to keep in communication between Congresses and to permit scientists and students to participate in meetings when they are unable to attend the international Congresses because of time commitments or financial constraints. Now that we have developed the current website, we will soon begin planning for our first electronic conference sometime in 2010. Our goal is to have both “poster” presentations in PDF format and “video/oral” presentations. We have not yet developed all the components and concepts for this meeting, but one possibility being considered is to allow all ISRS members to post one presentation (or possibly more) for free and then charge a nominal fee for presentations by non-members. All presenters will be expected to answer questions promptly on an interactive message board hosted by the ISRS website.

Co-sponsored and regional symposia will be held on occasion in various countries. This can be associated with another society’s meeting as a co-sponsored symposia or be a regional ISRS meeting focused primarily on regional issues. More than one meeting of this type could be held per year, and simultaneous meetings in multiple continents could be held.  In all cases, permission of the Board of Directors of ISRS is required before the ISRS name can be used in association with such meetings. At the present time, ISRS has no plans to provide financial support for such meetings.