Common Ground: Soils Beyond Borders

While summer 2023 has barely come to a close, it’s time to set our sights on summer 2024. SSSA will be hosting a conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on June 10–12. Common Ground: Soils Beyond Borders will bring together leading and emerging scientific leaders who are all working to advance the soil sciences.

Common Ground is designed to be unique, different from the SSSA Annual Meeting. Each day will feature a theme: Soils Across Scales, Soils Across Communities, and Soils Across Disciplines. We will have invited plenary speakers, workshops, discussion groups, and volunteered poster papers. We are collaborating with members and others who live in Puerto Rico to offer pre‐ and post‐meeting tours. On Monday morning of the conference, Manual Matos, USDA‐NRCS State Soil Scientist for the Caribbean Area, will deliver the first Bouyoucos plenary lecture, “An Overview of the Soils of Puerto Rico.” (Did you know that 10 of the 12 soil orders can be found in Puerto Rico? I can’t wait to learn about them!) Other Bouyoucos plenary speakers include: Rebecca Lybrand, “Connecting Soils to Life on Earth and Beyond”; Karen Vaughn; and April Ulery, “Teaching and Communicating Soil Science Across Disciplines.” As more details are solidified, they will be posted to the conference website: sacmeetings.org.

SSSA has taken a bit of a different approach to planning Common Ground. The planning committee was selected to ensure we had broad gender, race/ethnic, and career stage/path representation. We have a greater representation of younger members to ensure they have a strong voice in planning, and we wanted to provide an opportunity for them to learn how scientific meetings are successfully managed. Everyone has done a great job thinking about topics, formats, logistics, and the like!

Conference planning has been ongoing for about 18 months, and we are nearing the point of opening registration and abstract submission. Because this is a unique meeting, registration is limited to 400, as that is all the event space will allow. Stay tuned to your email and the conference website, so you don’t miss the opening of registration.