Inspiring Conservation: PEC Annual Meeting featuring Dr. Travis Belote

Come join PEC for our 2024 Annual Meeting at the iconic CODE Building in the heart of Charlottesville’s historic Downtown Mall, sponsored by Brown Advisory.

The day will begin at 9:30 a.m. with a brief welcome and reflection on PEC’s past, present, and future, followed by a keynote address from Dr. Travis Belote, Senior Science Director at The Wilderness Society, whose remarks will focus on large landscape conservation and the important role the Virginia Piedmont plays in the region’s biodiversity and connectivity.

Ahead of noon, we will break for a community lunch and fellowship with our keynote speaker, workshop leaders, and PEC staff and members. After lunch, we hope you’ll join PEC staff for an informative workshop covering one of three unique topics. The event will conclude at 2:30 p.m. following an optional social mixer in the CODE Building courtyard!

Dr. Travis Belote is the senior science director and has served as a research ecologist in the Northern Rockies Office of The Wilderness Society in Bozeman, MT since 2009. His research focuses on understanding the basic science of ecosystems to inform conservation and adaptive management under increasing pressures of global change (including land use, climate change, and invasive species) across the United States. He has studied the effects of fire on biodiversity, climate change on invasive species, the impacts of alternative timber harvesting disturbances on forest resilience, and ecological thresholds in rangelands. Recently his work has used large-scale spatial data to map wildland values and climate change vulnerability to guide conservation strategies that can inform policy development and drive community efforts to protect larger, more connected landscapes across public and private ownership. His research has appeared in Ecology, Ecological Applications, and Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, among other journals. He completed his M.S. at the University of Tennessee, his Ph.D. at Virginia Tech, and conducted postdoctoral research with the USGS in Flagstaff, AZ.

A choice of three workshops will begin at 1:00 p.m. The workshops will be simultaneous, so please choose the one you think you'd like to attend upon checkout (this gives us an idea of how many people are interested in each one). You can always change your mind when you're there!

As we continue our efforts to protect land and water in the Piedmont, PEC is exploring new strategic approaches to build and improve landscape connectivity through our conservation work. Join PEC’s Kim Biasiolli to hear about our regional efforts to connect and protect terrestrial and riparian corridors across the landscape. Attendees will learn how these projects permanently protect farms and forestland and help provide numerous co-benefits including watershed protection, climate resiliency, and wildlife corridors.

Join PEC’s Peter Krebs for an adventure across the city to see how our collaborative work with partners has improved accessibility and connectivity to nature in the community. Attendees will explore the Fifeville Community Trail, a critical new connection between Greenstone on Fifth (an income-qualified housing development) to Tonsler Park and major neighborhood throughways. The trail’s grand opening in 2022 followed years of work by the Fifeville Neighborhood Association and others to secure funding, seek community input, conduct historical research, and mobilize volunteers to create a welcoming natural space.

The Virginia Clean Economy Act of 2020 mandates that Dominion produce 100% of its energy from renewable sources by the year 2045. Understanding the importance of this goal and addressing the climate challenges before us, PEC staff will share how our work encourages policies, zoning, and individual actions that help reduce power demand and emissions, capture and sequester carbon in our forests and soils, and promote distributed renewable energy options. To add to the challenge, the proliferation of high energy use data centers is shifting the goalpost and making the VCEA goals all that much more difficult to meet. While the growth of data centers within the major data center hub of northern Virginia continues at a fast pace, communities throughout Virginia are now starting to see more proposals for data centers.

9:30 - 10:00 a.m. | Check-in / Meet & Greet

10:10 a.m. | Welcome & PEC Update by President Chris Miller

10:30 a.m. | Keynote by Dr. Travis Belote

11:40 a.m. - 12:20 p.m. | Community Lunch

12:30 - 1:30 p.m. | Choice of Workshops (attend 1 of 3 options)

1:40 - 2:30 p.m. | Social Mixer

Thank you to our generous event supporter, Brown Advisory.

Host or Publisher The Piedmont Environmental Council