The call for abstracts for the 2017 International Conference on Ecology and Transportation (ICOET) recently opened. Seeing this announcement reminded me about this community of scholars and practitioners who work in the fascinating subfield of transportation ecology. These are the people who design and build wildlife overpasses, culverts for small creatures to move under roadways, and barriers to keep wildlife off highways. They do spatial models of habitat connectivity to figure out the impacts of transportation corridors. They describe successful examples of collaboration between transportation agencies and the agencies that enforce environmental regulations. They pilot new ideas for managing the vegetation in transportation rights of way. Anything that has to do with the interaction between transportation systems and ecological systems is in their wheelhouse.

And they get together every two years for a conference.

My former colleagues at North Carolina State University support ICOET, and, along with the host state and a steering committee, put together a rich program of technical sessions, excursions to the field, and keynote speakers. I had the good fortune to be involved with ICOET during my time at NC State and can vouch for the quality of the conference.

The 2017 conference theme is ‘Beyond Boundaries: Building on Common Ground’. The conference is currently accepting abstracts submitted for technical paper presentations, poster presentations, lightning talks, and planned sessions. Full details (and past proceedings) on line here: www.icoet.net

And for an overview of transportation ecology, using ten years of ICOET proceedings, check out this poster Eugene Murray and I presented at the 2013 ICOET: