Iowa Water Conference 20/20: Bringing Our Water Vision into Focus

The Iowa Water Conference is IWC’s largest outreach and collaboration effort with a dozen planning partners. The conference is designed to bring together multi-disciplinary organizations and institutions to discuss relevant water issues in Iowa. The inaugural event in 2006 combined several existing conferences with the purpose of coordinating research and management efforts. Today’s conference draws over 400 attendees and still strives to encompass the whole of Iowa’s water landscape including expanding into realms of education and outreach, conservation, policy and regulations.

The conference website, which houses the agenda, registration, and conference logistics, is www.iowawaterconference.org. This page will be updated periodically with a call for presentations and past event pages with links to presentation slides and videos as well as lists of award winners.

What does the path to meaningful change look like across the vast spectrum of water resource issues? Who are the drivers of change and who should be included at the table as critical change agents? The theme of the 2020 Iowa Water Conference is centered on the answers to these questions. We want to transform water resource work in the year 2020 to be 20/20 as an effort to refocus our vision of the future for how we can promote inclusive, resilient water resource management.

This conference will focus on our evolving relationship with water at a personal and societal scale, as well as what the future may hold if we continue our current trajectory. Through scientific discovery, diverse change agents, and foresight on future challenges, we will move into an equitable and verdurous world of the future.

Call for Presentations

The Iowa Water Conference Planning Committee is specifically interested in proposals that address the theme of this year’s conference. Proposals that do not directly relate will be considered by the committee if they address innovative, novel ideas that are new advances in the topic or emphasizes interdisciplinary teams at work. Accepted proposals will be asked to include at least one slide addressing how their presentation topic contributes to the vision for Iowa’s water future.

Accepted proposals include at least one of the following:

• Emphasizes diversity of science and members of society (institution, geography, gender, ethnicity, subject)
• Timely topics that address real-time needs of Iowans
• Exemplifies success stories, ground-breaking data, or interesting angles of approach for a subject
• Addresses policy discussions on water resources in a manner that is data-driven and informed by scientific discovery

Read more and access submission guidelines here.
This submission is now closed. 

Posters

The general poster session is for researchers, water professionals, and students to showcase projects to conference attendees.The Iowa Water Conference Planning Committee is specifically interested in posters that address the theme of this year’s conference. Proposals that do not directly relate will be considered by the committee if they address innovative, novel ideas that are new advances in the topic or emphasizes interdisciplinary teams at work.

Read more and access submission guidelines here.
Posters will be accepted until March 25, 2019.

Student Registration Scholarships

We give special thanks to Betty and Dennis Keeney for sponsoring student scholarships to the Iowa Water Conference. Recipients are asked to provide a follow up statement on their attendance. Applications for scholarships are due March 8th by 11:59PM. The application can be accessed here.

Photos

See photos of presentations, award winners, and more from the 2018 conference at our Flickr page.

Suggest a topic

Have you seen a great presentation or know of a successful project or topic you’d like to recommend? Please fill out our webform! Suggestions are accepted year-round, but the agenda building period typically lasts between July through October. Any suggestions that can’t be used for the upcoming conference will be considered in the future.

Past Conferences

• 2019 Iowa Water Conference – Back to Basics: Land, Water People – March 12-13 Event Page
• 2018 Iowa Water Conference – Our Watershed, Our Community – March 21-22, 2018 Event Page
• 2017 Iowa Water Conference – Watershed Management: Partnerships for Progress. Event page in progress (sorry for the delay!).
• 2016 Iowa Water Conference – AtTENtion – EnlighTEN- InTENsify: TEN years of the Iowa Water Conference – March 23-24, 2016. Event page
• 2015 Iowa Water Conference -Currents & Currencies: Trends and Motivators for Better Water Management- March 2-3, 2015. Event page
• 2014 Iowa Water Conference– Making Connections, Solving Problems: Water strategies for success in a changing world- March 3-4, 2014. Event page
• 2013 Iowa Water Conference – H2O: Humans, Science and Oversight – March 4-5, 2013. Event page