The Society for Freshwater Science (SFS) is an international

scientific society A learned society ( ; also scholarly, intellectual, or academic society) is an organization that exists to promote an academic discipline, profession, or a group of related disciplines such as the arts and sciences. Membership may be open to a ...

whose members study

freshwater ecosystem Freshwater ecosystems are a subset of Earth's aquatic ecosystems that include the biological communities inhabiting freshwater waterbodies such as lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, springs, bogs, and wetlands. They can be contrasted with marine ec ...

s (

river A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...

lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

s, and

estuaries An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

) and ecosystems at the interface between aquatic and terrestrial habitats (

wetland A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...

bog A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and musk ...

fen A fen is a type of peat-accumulating wetland fed by mineral-rich ground or surface water. It is one of the main types of wetland along with marshes, swamps, and bogs. Bogs and fens, both peat-forming ecosystems, are also known as mires ...

riparian forest A riparian forest or riparian woodland is a forested or wooded area of land adjacent to a body of water such as a river, stream, pond, lake, marshland, estuary, canal, Sink (geography), sink, or reservoir. Due to the broad nature of the definitio ...

s, and

grassland A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominance (ecology), dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes such as clover, and other Herbaceo ...

s).

History

The Society for Freshwater Science was founded in 1953 in Havana, Illinois by 13 charter members, and was called the Midwest Benthological Society. It was later known as the North American Benthological Society before being renamed the Society for Freshwater Science.

Membership and governance

Currently, SFS is approaching 1800 members. The majority of members are students and are from

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

and are students. Members are employed in

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

consulting A consultant (from "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice or services in an area of specialization (generally to medium or large-size corporations). Cons ...

, federal and state agencies, and other governmental positions. Members are elected as officers and delegates by their fellow society members.

Executive committee

The executive committee is responsible for day-to-day business of the society and is made up of member officers elected by their peers. It includes the current president, the past president, the president-Elect, the treasurer, and the secretary; the current vice president, the vice president-elect, the public information and policy representative, the chair of the finance committee and the executive director participate in the committee but are non-voting members. Thus, being elected president of the society represents a three-year service role (one year each as president-Elect, president, and past president), and being elected vice president is a two-year role (one year each as vice president-elect and vice president).

Presidents

Recent presidents of the society include:

Other committees

The society is also governed by a board of directors and 19 standing committees: a finance committee, a board of trustees of the endowment fund, a development Committee, a Journal Endowment Committee, an Election and Place Committee, an Awards Selection Committee, a Long-Range Planning Committee, an Annual Meeting Committee, a Publications Committee, a Public Information and Policy Committee, a Constitutional Revision Committee, a Student Resources Committee, an Early Career Committee, a Taxonomic Certification Committee, a Technical Issues Committee, a Science and Policy Committee, an International Coordination Committee, a Conservation and Environmental Issues Committee, and an Education and Diversity Committee. As of 2021, the society also had three ad hoc committees: the Code of Conduct Committee, the JEDI Task Force focused on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, and the Membership and Data Committee.

Annual meetings

SFS hosts an annual meeting for its members. On occasion, SFS has partnered with other scientific societies, such as the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, Atmospheric science, atmospheric, Oceanography, ocean, Hydrology, hydrologic, Astronomy, space, and Planetary science, planetary scientists and enthusiasts that ...

(AGU), the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), the Phycological Society of America, and the Society of Wetland Scientists to host joint meetings.

Journal

The main

academic journal An academic journal (or scholarly journal or scientific journal) is a periodical publication in which Scholarly method, scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the ...

of the Society is the journal ''Freshwater Science''. 4 issues are published each year. The journal was first published in 1982 and called ''Freshwater Invertebrate Biology''. In 1986 the title was changed to ''Journal of the North American Benthological Society'', and the title was changed again in 2012 to ''Freshwater Science''. About once a year the journal publishes open-access fact sheets called BRIDGES that cover new ideas in aquatic science using non-technical language.

Awards

SFS gives out awards annually to its members, including naming members as SFS Fellows who have made excellent contributions to freshwater science over many years. The SFS Fellows program began in 2017 with a large first "class" of fellows: SFS also awards several other awards on an annual basis: the Award of Excellence, the Distinguished Service Award, the Environmental Stewardship Award, and Hynes Award for New Investigators, named after Noel Hynes; the Graduate Student Conservation Research Award; and awards for the best presentations and posters delivered by students at each annual meeting.

Programs

The Instars and Emerge mentoring programs support underrepresented groups in freshwater science. Students who are accepted into the Instars program as mentees are assigned a graduate student mentor who helps them network at the annual meeting, while the Emerge program provides year-round mentoring. SFS partners with the Stroud Center to provide an aquatic

invertebrate Invertebrates are animals that neither develop nor retain a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''spine'' or ''backbone''), which evolved from the notochord. It is a paraphyletic grouping including all animals excluding the chordata, chordate s ...

taxonomic certification program for its members. The society's endowment is also used to fund small awards for research and travel, particularly by students.

Outreach

SFS has several programs focused on outreach to broader audiences. 'Making Waves' is a

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

hosted by society members that comes out semi-monthly and discusses freshwater science for a general audience. Society members also maintain media libraries through

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

for general use. SFS holds a leaf pack workshop at the annual meetings for local environmental groups and educators. Finally, a group of SFS members recently developed the Ecological Evidence Exchange to create a publicly available

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

of scientific information to inform

environmental management Environmental resource management or environmental management is the management of the interaction and impact of human societies on the environment. It is not, as the phrase might suggest, the management of the environment itself. Environment ...

References

{{authority control Non-profit organizations based in the United States Limnology Learned societies of the United States Biology societies Ecology organizations Organizations established in 1953