Papers, posters, presentations, and workshops will all be in English. All abstracts must be submitted in English.

Oral Presentations, Speed Talks, and Posters:

Abstracts for oral presentations, speed talks, and posters should be 300-500 words long. They should include the following so as to convey the salient features of your proposed paper/presentation:

1) A sentence or two at the beginning to provide a basic introduction to your work, phrased so as to be understandable to anyone interested in natural resource issues;

2) Two to three sentences that provide more detailed information of interest to practitioners and scholars working on forestry, livelihoods, and assessment topics, and/or your selected theme;

3) Two or three sentences clearly stating the general problem your study will address;

4) Two or three sentences summarizing the methodology and main result (please use the phrase, “Our study finds,” or We show” or their equivalent);

5) Two or three sentences explaining the scholarly and/or practical significance of the main results and findings, especially as compared to what is already known; and finally,

6) One or two sentences that situate the results in a more general context.

Our abstract selection committee will assess submitted abstracts on four criteria: A. Innovative argument and policy relevance to forests, livelihoods, and/or assessment issues including potential for generating discussion (25%); B. Contribution to the larger literature and knowledge (25%); C. Quality of data, methods, and analytical rigor (25%); D. Quality of Writing (25%) We expect that the best papers presented at the conference will be included in one or two special issues of leading peer-reviewed journals, in consultation with authors/presenters.

Panel Session Submissions:

If you would like to submit a set of papers for a single panel, please submit an abstract for each talk. At the end of each abstract, list the name of your panel organizer (LastName_Panel). In addition, please also email the name of the organizer and the authors of each abstract to watkinsc@umich.edu

Workshops:

Workshops will be held Monday, November 30th, in 2-hour sessions. We seek workshops related to the conference themes which provide opportunities for hands-on learning and discussion about tools, datasets, new or controversial topics, research needs from a practitioner standpoint, etc. It is expected that the workshop will be organized and facilitated by the person(s) submitting the abstract, with some assistance from the FLARE Coordination Committee. Workshop abstracts should also be 300-500 words. They should include descriptions of the relevance of the workshop and its linkages to the conference themes, its objectives/goals, and the expected outcomes. Moreover, the form of the proposed workshop should be briefly explained.