Coastal Letters

1. Specialty Group Officers
2. Editor's Comments and Election Results
3. R. J. Russell Award Presented
4. Student Paper Merit Award for 1999
5. Students Provided Travel Grants for AAG'99
6. Call for COMA-Sponsored Sessions in Pittsburgh
7. Call for Student Papers
8. Call for Award Nominations: The R. J. Russell Award
9. Minutes of the 1999 Business Meeting
10. Student Paper Merit Award Increased
11. Geography in America - 21^st Century
12. COMA Slide Compilation Project 2000 (CDROM)
13. Video Critiques Wanted
14. News and Views from Members
15. Post-Doc Opportunities
16. Upcoming Conferences
17. Musings from the Chair - Rich Daniels

Richard Daniels, Chair
Shorelands/Dept of Ecology
P.O. Box 47690
Olympia, WA 98504
(360) 407-6427
rdan461@ecy.wa.gov

Klaus J Meyer-Arendt, Vice Chair
Dept. of Environmental Studies
University of West Florida
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, FL 32514
(850) 474-2746
kjm@uwf.edu

Harry Jol, Secretary-Treasurer
Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
105 Garfield Avenue
Eau Claire, WI 54702-4004
(715) 836-3244
jolhm@uwec.edu

Dawn Wright, Member of the Board of Directors
Department of Geosciences
104 Wilkinson Hall
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-5506
(541) 737-1229
dawn@dusk.geo.orst.edu

Wayne Engstrom, Member of the Board of Directors
Geography Department
California State University
Fullerton, CA 92634-9480
(714) 278-3384
wengstrom@fullerton.edu

Diane Horn, Board of Directors
Department of Geography
Birkbeck College
7-15 Gresse St
London W1P 2LL
England (UK)
d.horn@geog.bbk.ac.uk

Don't forget to renew your membership in the Coastal and Marine Geography Specialty Group when you renew your membership with the AAG. Please note, if you have a yellow mark on your address label it means your membership has not been renewed.

1. Our updated and new web site location is at: http://www.homestead.com/aag_coma. There has been a change in leadership as well. Please take a look at Specialty Group officers which are located on the first page of this newsletter.
2. There is a lot happening within the group, please read through the newsletter and pass it along to others.
3. Have you been getting e-mails? I periodically send out e-mails of interest to the group. If you have not been receiving these e-mails please send me (jolhm@uwec.edu) your e-mail address and I will add you to the COMA list.
4. You can view the current jobs in geography listings on the AAG web site: http://www.aag.org
5. The 1999 business meeting in Hawaii brought changes in the specialty group leadership. The major changes were the transition of Vice-Chair Richard Daniels to Chair. Klaus J. Meyer-Arendt was voted in as Vice-Chair and Diane Horn was voted in as a Member of the Board of Directors. The final election results are as follows:

• Klaus J. Meyer-Arendt was elected to a two-year term as Vice-Chair
• Diane Horn was elected to a two-year term on the board of directors to fill the vacancy created by the completion of Don Ziegler's term.

1. Any comments for future editions are always welcome. Thanks to everyone who provided items for this newsletter. This is your newsletter so please forward items.
2. Finally, the Speciality Group would like to thank Paul Gares and Don Ziegler for their dedication to the group over the past years. Your work has been much appreciated!

Harry Jol, Secretary-Treasurer, Editor

Tentative title: Coastal & Marine Student Paper Sessions

Sponsor: COMA Specialty Group

Session Organizer: Richard Daniels (address on page 1)

Tentative title: COMA Slide Compilation Project 2000 (CD-ROM)

Topic: short presentations by several of the authors of the slide sets contained on the COMA CD-ROM. Followed by a demonstration of the product. (discussion session format)

Sponsor: COMA Specialty Group

Session Organizer: Richard C. Daniels

Tentative title: e.g., Coastal Hazards or Population pressures on the Coastal Zone

Co-Sponsor: ????? & COMA

Eligibility: Full-time or part-time undergraduate or graduate students may compete for this award if they (1) are the first or sole author of an oral paper concerning coastal or marine geography which they will be presenting at the 2000 annual AAG meeting, (2) are a member of the AAG and of the Coastal and Marine Specialty Group, and (3) have submitted to the session organizer the completed application form and accompanying materials, to be received by August 26, 1999. Poster presentations are not eligible. Papers are judged both on content and on the quality of the presentation. The award consists of a $100.00 grant to be used to defray AAG and Coastal and Marine Specialty Group membership dues and travel expenses to the annual meeting as well as an award certificate.

Instructions: Follow the program participation guidelines outlined in the July 1999 Newsletter of the AAG as an individual participating in an organized paper session. By following those instructions you will have a diskette containing your abstract, one paper copy of the abstract, your participation fee, and a completed AAG program participation form. In addition, complete this application form (below) and attach a second paper copy of your abstract to it. Gather all of these materials into one package and mail it to:

Richard C. Daniels
Shorelands & Environmental Assistance Program
Department of Ecology
P.O. Box 47600
Olympia, Washington 98504-7600

Rich must receive your materials by August 26, 1999.

Name _______________________________________________________

Address ___________________________________________________

Email address ______________________________________________

Are you a Ph.D., M.A./M.S., or undergraduate student? ______

In what year of your program? ______________________________

Thesis/project advisor _____________________________________

Are you a member of the AAG? ______

Are you a member of the Coastal and Marine Specialty Group? ______

Is your paper primarily focused on human/social or physical geography? ____________

Attach a hard copy of your abstract.

Nominations for the R.J. Russell Award should be directed to the Vice-Chair. Nominations for the current year should be made at least 2 weeks prior to the annual AAG meeting.

This specialty group award is presented in recognition of an individual's major contributions to the field of coastal or marine geography. These contributions may be in research, teaching, public service, and/or to the specialty group. Previous awardees include Jess Walker (1991), Fillmore Earney (1992), Norb Psuty (1993), Karl Nordstrom (1996), Doug Sherman (1997), and Bernard Bauer (1999).

Nominations are accepted from Coma members, but nominees do not have to be members of either the specialty group or the AAG. Two nominations are required for consideration for the Award. At least one of the nominations must include a complete letter of nomination which will include one paragraph describing the nominees contributions to the field of coastal or marine geography and/or to the special interest group and a list of the nominees relevant publications. The R. J. Russell Award is named in honor of Richard Joel Russell (1895-1971). He was Dean of the Graduate School at Louisiana State University for 12 years, an organizer of the Coastal Studies Institute (1954), president of both the Association of American Geographers (1948) and Geological Society of America (1957), and named to the National Academy of Sciences (1959).

In the nomination letter please include one paragraph describing the nominees contributions to the field of coastal or marine geography and/or to the special interest group and a list of the nominees relevant publications. For an example of a suitable nomination letter, please visit the groups home page at http://www.homestead.com/aag_coma.

MINUTES OF THE 1999 SPECIALTY GROUP BUSINESS MEETING--by Harry Jol

Paul Gares opened the meeting at 6:21 p.m., March 25, 1999, Hawaiian Hilton Village with 23 members present.

Secretary. The minutes of the last business meeting (Boston 1998), which appeared in July 1998 in v. 10(2) of Coastal Letters, were approved.

Treasurer. Secretary-Treasurer Harry Jol reported on financial transactions since the last business meeting in March of 1998. We began 1998 with $1383.10, spent $330.04, and received $427.91 in income. The current balance is $1,480.97. The specialty group agreed to help defray the costs of students coming to Hawaii to present (four travel grants were awarded) - see article page 3.

Newsletter: Harry Jol reported on the last newsletters. There was some discussion of how to send out future editions of the newsletter. We could stop mailing hard copies altogether and send newsletters only on email, and/or post it on the web (already done now). On the other hand, not many members have volunteered to receive it via email in the last three years, and email addresses for many of our members are not available from the AAG. It was decided to revisit this issue again in the future.

Logo: Rich Daniels reported on the Logo results - Logo B (the one on the front of the newsletter) received the most votes. Several slight revisions to the logo were suggested and will be taken into consideration.

CD-ROM Project: Rich Daniels reported on the CD-ROM project originally started by Joann Mossa. He showed a draft version of the COMA CD-ROM. The product was impressive and will be completed after a few more slide sets are sent in. Please see article on page 7 of the newsletter. Further discussion revolved around the cost of the CD-ROM (around $10) and that money raised would be used for the specialty group, particularly for student support. There was also a suggestion that a special session be held at the 2000 AAG in Pittsburgh on the CD-ROM project.

Chair. Paul Gares reported on the main points covered in the specialty group chairs' luncheon. Two major points were discussed:

1. ARGWORLD/ ARGUS CD was being shown at the Exhibition Hall. AAG has put together a CD which provides activities and resources in the Geography of the World. It is a curriculum development project funded by the National Science Foundation. ARGWorld is administered by the AAG. If you want further information please contact: Phil Gersmehl e-mail: gersm001@maroon.tc.umn.edu.
2. Journal Issue - The AAG council suggest combining the journals (Professional Geographer and Annals). This was talked about a lot and produced much controversy, many e-mails and long meetings. The council is now getting feedback. 20% of the membership was surveyed - many of responses were not to change the journals. Alternatives were discussed on how to redo the present journals. Contact your councilors with your ideas. There will be a meeting on the last day discussing the journal issues. These issues have been further discussed in the AAG Newsletters since our business meeting. Also, see Chair's Musing Coastal Letters 11(1).

Geography in America: Since the last business meeting, Dawn Wright, Phil Steinberg, and Norb Psuty have written the chapter representing the COMA section in the Geography in America--the 21st Century publication. They have entitled the chapter "Coastal and Marine Geography: More Than Just Flotsam & Jetsam" and presented the chapter to a special session during the meeting.

Four Travel Awards of $100 were made to the following students: Jeff Baldwin (University of Oregon), Becky Mansfield (University of Oregon), Michael Craghan (Rutgers University), and John Dobosiewicz (Rutgers University). Further details can be found on page 3.

Student Paper Merit Award went to Jeffery R. Baldwin, Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, for his paper entitled: Tourism, development, and environmental alteration in Antigua, West Indies: Wetlands reclamation and changing views of coastal ecologies. ). Further details can be found on page 2.

It was proposed that the award for the Student Paper Merit Award contest be increased from the current $50.00 to $100.00. The increase will go into effect at the 96^th Annual Meeting of the AAG. Motion Passed.

R.J. Russel Award was presented to Dr. Bernard O. Bauer, University of Southern California. Full citation and further details can be found on page 2.

Klaus J. Meyer-Arendt was elected to a two-year term as Vice-Chair.

Diane Horn was elected to a two-year term on the board of directors to fill the vacancy created by the completion of Don Ziegler's term.

Paul Gares turned over the Chairmanship to Richard Daniels.

Norb Psuty thanked Paul Gares for all his work on behalf of the Specialty Group.

The meeting was adjourned by 8 p.m.

During the annual business meeting held in Honolulu it was proposed, voted on, and passed that the award for the Student Paper Merit Award contest be increased from the current $50.00 to $100.00. The increase will go into effect at the 96^th Annual Meeting of the AAG.

This increase was proposed to make our merit contest competitive with other specialty groups, some of which have awards as high as $400.00, and to reward the student for the extra effort it takes to prepare a paper for inclusion in the competition. This increase may be used to defray AAG and Coastal and Marine Specialty Group membership fees and travel expenses to the AAG annual meeting. The revised by-laws read as follows:

This change to the by-laws was required to delete the provision that the award only be used "for AAG and Coastal and Marine Specialty Group membership fees for the following year".

The full chapter and bibliography for the Coastal and Marine section of the book is located at http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/gia. Norb Psuty, Dawn Wright and Phil Steinberg have written our section of the publication which is entitled "Coastal and Marine Geography: More Than Just Flotsam & Jetsam" Great job!!

Websters’s dictionary defines musing as "absorbed in thought or contemplation." Since I’m writing this only a few days after spending two weeks on the road in Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee please forgive my lack of "depth" in this discussion.

As you may have noticed, the AAG’2000 abstract submission forms were published in the July issue of the AAG newsletter. If you are planning a presentation for Pittsburgh on a coastal or marine topic, please consider submitting your abstract to a COMA sponsored session. If you will be submitting your abstract to a special session not sponsored by COMA, please ask the session organizer to contact one of the COMA officers to determine if we can co-sponsor the session. This is important, as the AAG attempts to minimize conflicts between sessions that are sponsored/co-sponsored by a given specialty group. In addition, we are currently seeking session organizers for special sessions on coastal hazards and/or marine geography. If you feel you can find three or more presenters on ether of these topics give me a call and we (COMA) will assist you in reaching other potential presenters via the groups e-mail list.

Last of all, who am I? This is what I told my new division manager last year.

Rich is a member of the Coastal Monitoring and Analysis Program (CMAP), Shorelands and Environmental Assistance Program, Department of Ecology. He is located at cube C2C-20 at the Ecology HQ building in Lacey, Washington. This particular cube is as far as one can get from any window and is known for the quantity of dust that spews from the ventilation vent location over the desk. It is also where the expensive color scanners are located. While not fending off scanner wana-use-bees he manages the GIS database for the Southwestern Washington Coastal Erosion Study. In addition, Rich is involved in the design, survey, documentation, and maintenance of a geodetic control network created to support the studies beach and nearshore topographic surveys.

When not stomping through fragile dune vegetation or endangered bird nesting areas with GPS equipment, fending off wana-use-bees, or updating the GIS, Rich uses the ERDAS Imagine software package to develop orthophoto mosaics. The "current" coastline and vegetation line are digitized from these orthophotos and compared to older shorelines to determine erosion or accretion rates.

On the side Rich does some writing and attempts to publish some of his works (see: http:/www.wa.gov/ecology/sea/swce/staff/daniels/pubs.html). While at home, Rich experiments with malt and hops, and according to Mr. Steve Butkus (Olympia, WA), "sure knows how to mix them hops, malt, and water."

O-yes, I’m an Eagle Scout too.