
Call for Abstracts for CERM 2025
Be a part of the 2025 Catskill Environmental Research and Monitoring (CERM) Conference!
SHARED GROUND: COLLABORATIVE APPROACHES TO CATSKILLS
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH
October 22-24, 2025
Belleayre Mountain, Highmount, NY
The CERM Conference Planning Committee is now accepting submissions of early abstracts for the 2025 Catskill Environmental Research and Monitoring Conference. Accepted abstracts are required to be presented in person at the conference in Highmount, NY. Please review the information below before submission.
Early Abstract submissions are due April 25, 2025.
Early acceptance decisions will be announced in May. If presentation slots remain, a General Call for Abstracts will then begin with selection decisions made by early September.
Submission Information
We invite abstracts for both platform and poster presentations. Accepted abstracts will be scheduled for either a 15-minute oral presentation on Wednesday, October 22, or Thursday, October 23; or a poster presentation the afternoon of Wednesday, October 22. The poster session must be attended by at least one contributing author. If allowed, we will display the poster through following days of the conference.
The primary criteria for acceptance includes scientific merit, probable interest by conference attendees, and a clearly written and compelling description. Limits on time may make it impossible to accommodate all worthy submissions. The Abstract Review Committee has final authority for acceptance and scheduling of proposed presentations.
Abstracts may be from any area of environmental science and management related to the Catskills region, but those related to the conference theme and session topics are especially encouraged.
There is no fee for abstract submission. Conference attendance fees will be waived for presenters on the scheduled day of presentation. Student presenters can apply for a full scholarship covering conference fees if they register for the Student Research Breakfast Symposium held the morning of Friday, October 24.
We hope you will consider contributing to the 2025 CERM Conference. Submit abstracts of 500 words or less through an online form using the button below.
Questions? Please direct questions to info@ashokanstreams.org.
Topics and Themes for CERM 2025
The 2025 Catskill Environmental Research & Monitoring (CERM) Conference aims to highlight projects that demonstrate the value of shared information across disciplines and studies that integrate aspects of ecosystems. One of the conference’s long-standing goals is to foster cross-disciplinary information through the sharing of presentations, networking, and field investigations.
The number of collaborative efforts to better understand environmental change in the Catskills has increased over time. Multiple studies that influence each other through shared data and information are underway. Communicating the availability of data and study results is key to expanding inter-disciplinary efforts and ensuring research is not conducted in a disjointed way. Environmental managers value receiving summaries of key understandings in a conference setting.
As the 2025 CERM Conference Planning Committee began reflecting on today’s most urgent needs for science-based information to inform environmental management and policy for the Catskills, a few topics and themes began to stand out during discussion. We seek paper and poster presentations, as well as invited speakers that address these topics.
Wet Carbon and Carbon Flux
As the climate warms under human contributions to greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, the topic of carbon flux and management becomes highly relevant to the Catskills. Carbon production, sequestration and loss by wetland and forest ecosystems connect the Catskills to the global atmosphere and surrounding regions. The topic of Wet Carbon storage and its change through time is a focus for NASA and area universities. Understanding lateral flux of carbon into rivers is a growing monitoring and research need related to water supply protection. At the same time, the occurrence of drought and potential for forest fires in the Catskills highlight the need to understand the role natural fire plays in this ecosystem.
Wetlands
Another need is to better understand the implications of a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court case, the Sackett v. EPA decision that limited EPA’s authority to regulate waterways under the Clean Water Act. The decision poses questions for science-based management. Water that flows through soil and air is connected to other water bodies even if not visually observed by humans through a continuous surface. Wetlands separated by man-made barriers are still connected by the animals that migrate between them. Policy makers in New York State recently updated the state’s Freshwater Wetlands Act to lower the threshold of protected wetland size and included hundreds of thousands of additional small wetlands. New York is one of several states that don’t base their wetland protection laws solely on federal guidance. Monitoring and research information is needed to inform local and state management of water bodies as the climate changes and new policies are implemented. Studies have documented the positive effects of the Clean Water Act and particularly the Clean Air Act for the Catskills environment. What future adjustments to policy are needed to allow human communities interwoven with “wet” ecosystems to mutually flourish?
Streams and Forests
Traditionally the CERM conference has treated forests and streams as separate session topics, given the expansive focus on management of these abundant ecosystems in the Catskills. Both ecosystem types in the Catskills have a long history of sustained management (by the Lenape People) followed by over-use and ill-advised management (by colonists) that eventually resulted in new protections and ecosystem recovery through adaptive management. Ecosystems and the people who live amongst them are now facing new environmental threats. Climate change is leading to adjustments in stream channel morphology and an increase in flooding, and combined with pests and pathogens, downed wood in the region. In response, some members of the public call for loosening of regulations or more intensive stream management to protect infrastructure near streams. At the same time, New York City’s reliance on the upstate freshwater drinking supply has never been greater. Over recent decades stream management approaches intended to meet multiple objectives were deployed at locations throughout the Catskills. How effective have they been in meeting multiple objectives and are new methods and approaches needed to meet emerging and future challenges?
The connections between stream flows and the surrounding landscape, including groundwater infiltration and supply are an urgent topic as air and stream temperatures warm. New pests and pathogens threaten forests, and at a growing number of locations, so does human use of forests for recreation. Human behavior has changed since the Covid-19 pandemic and managers need inter-disciplinary information on whether those behavioral changes are permanent or evolving. Extensive research, public education, and applied management of forests and streams in the Catskills make the region an ideal natural laboratory for improved scientific understanding and innovation in management. An initiative to establish a Research Forest in the Catskills has gained momentum since the last CERM Conference in 2022.
New Technologies
Large land areas under management require the prioritization of funds and leveraging of best-available technology to gather data and create information for effective management. Scientists and managers are deploying a new array of quickly evolving technologies to extend the range and period of investigations. Under federal research initiatives, new technologies are being used in the Catskills for groundwater detection and mapping and stream temperature monitoring. Instruments attached to unmanned aerial vehicles are now deployed to gather large amounts of data that is analyzed to detect changes in species composition and the terrain, including adjustments in stream corridors as part of water supply management. New technologies may be used to estimate above ground biomass and carbon. Data are then sifted by machine learning algorithms. New algorithms may allow early detection and rapid response to invasive species. The CERM Conference is an opportunity to share information on new technologies on the horizon and emerging use and deployment of technologies, and methods that expand our reach beyond human senses to measure environmental change.
Human-Environment Interactions
The theme of “Shared Ground” extends to a recognition of the history of forced separation between people and their place. This damage must be repaired and new connections forged. Several major separations have created trauma in the Catskills. The violent removal and attempted cultural extinction of the Lenape (Delaware) and Mohawk peoples by colonists and their descendants. The near complete deforestation of the Catskills and extirpation of native species for industry and farming by the mid-1800s. The ongoing pollution of our air, water, and land from industry and transportation. And the taking of lands that displaced human settlements and buried rivers for construction of the NYC Water Supply. The need to reconnect with natural environments is reflected in public pressure to access conserved lands in the Catskills for recreational pursuits. Off-trail hiking (bushwacking), mountain biking, backcountry skiing, and heavy visitor use of trails and swimming holes in the High Peaks region continue to trigger new policies and management strategies. Public land managers require access to monitoring and research to make decisions that protect ecosystems while meeting public needs. Management approaches for dealing with invasive and overabundant pests, pathogens and diseases, such as early detection and rapid response, and public involvement in these efforts are needed. We’d like to explore how environmental science and management can evolve and become a connected part of daily life in the Catskills.
What else?
We also welcome presentation abstracts that address the CERM Conference purposes, theme, and session topics in ways that haven’t been identified above. Catskills ecosystems, like all ecosystems, are complex systems, and we don’t yet understand all the linkages and system dynamics among geology, hydrology, chemistry, biological organisms and communities, biosemiotics, and human behavior. The amount of environmental research and monitoring that has been and continues to be conducted here represents an opportunity for researchers to explore these relationships and discover the potentially novel aspects of Catskills ecosystem dynamics.
See more here about the CERM conference purpose https://cermconference.org/about-cerm/ and here for past conference themes and presentations at https://cermconference.org/past-conferences/.