WELCOME

Dr Richard Marchant Dr Ian Campbell

The Australian members of SIL invite you to participate in the 28th Congress of the International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology (Societas Internationalis Limnologiae or SIL). The congress will be held in Melbourne at the Clayton campus of Monash University from Sunday 4th to Saturday 10th of February 2001.

Australia encompasses a great range of inland water habitats with a unique aquatic biota. The platypus (the logo of our conference) is one of many unusual endemic aquatic species. Australia is a large country, similar in size to the conterminous United States, spanning temperate and tropical latitudes and wet to arid environments. Many of the management issues of Australian inland waters: blue-green algal blooms in rivers, lakes and reservoirs, water allocations to irrigators, establishment of appropriate environmental flows in regulated rivers, salinisation of rivers and lakes and wetland degradation, are common to other countries. They all have particular importance in a dry continent.

SIL has had a particular concern with restoration of inland waters and with worldwide water resource problems for many years. We welcome you to the 28th Congress confident that it will provide an unsurpassed opportunity to discuss these and other important limnological issues and to appreciate some of the unique features of the Australian natural environment.