Introduction:
Dani Or, the S-1 Division Chair called the meeting to order and presided. He introduced the Division officers David Radcliffe (Incoming Chair), Gerard Kluitenberg (Chair Elect), David Nofziger (SSSA and ASA Board Representative), and Glenn Wilson (Incoming SSSA and ASA Board Representative). The minutes from the last business meeting were approved.

Awards and Announcements:
Jan Hopmans announced the S-1 Early Career Award recipient was Markus Tuller. Art Warrick will be Chair of the Early Award Committee for next year. Other committee members are Per Moldrup, Glendon Gee, and Dani Or. By mistake Dani was asked to participate in last year's reviews instead of Jacob Dane who was the past-chair. Therefore, Jacob Dane will serve in Dani's place when the Committee considers the next award. Jan Hopmans will submit a writeup to CSA news on the award to Markus Tuller.

Dani presented Kurt Pennell with an S1 Special Service Award for dedicated service to the Division in building and maintaining the S1 webpage and newsletter.

Dani recognized all S1 award recipients: Jan Hopmans (Don and Betty Kirkham Soil Physics Award), Steve Evett (SSSA Fellow), Robert Hill (SSSA Fellow), Gerard Kluitenberg (SSSA Fellow), Yakov Pachepsky (SSSA Fellow), and Scott Tyler (SSSA Fellow).

Old Business:
Sally Logsdon, S1 Technical Editor, made the SSSAJ Editorial Board report:

The Editorial Board changed the policy regarding review papers to accept volunteered as well as invited review papers and not require the approval of all technical editors as in the past. The Editorial Board will require that all submissions be made electronically through Manuscript Tracker by July 1, 2004.

Sally encouraged members to use WORD and not WordPerfect due to problems with fonts when converting to PDF format that may only appear when the PDF file is brought up on another computer. Sally volunteered to help anyone needing assistance getting their paper into PDF form.

SSSAJ now has a written policy that authors will receive the first review within 3 months of submission, as opposed to the previous 4 months. The number of associate editors has been increased to facilitate faster reviews.

SSSAJ is going to a flat fee of $650 per article ($750 per article for nonmembers) as opposed to the previous method of page charges after the first 4 free pages.

SSSAJ will allow authors to identify a second division in Manuscript Tracker for interdisciplinary papers and when the paper is published it will have a cross reference to the other division.


Rien van Genuchten made the VZJ report:

Tables were used to illustrate the progress being made by the journal. The number of papers submitted has dramatically increased from 92 in 2002 to 149 as of November 2003. A number of special issues are planned. He mentioned that the journal is under pressure to become solvent. There are around 203 member subscriptions but only 31library subscriptions. Members were encouraged to promote the journal to their libraries. By comparison, SSSAJ has 2400 member subscriptions and 1125 library subscriptions.

David Nofziger made the SSSA Board report:

Membership continues to rapidly decline. It is down 29% since 1999. Journal subscriptions are declining even more rapidly. Individual subscriptions will be zero by 2010 at the current rate. SSSA is losing an estimated $67K this year and owes ASA $800K in loans provided mainly for forward financing the World Congress of Soil Science and the Vadose Zone Journal. SSSA expects to repay most of the loan after the World Congress in 2006.The intent is to use journals for revenue or at least not have the journals lose money.

Plans are to sell journals as a bundle to libraries. The VZJ will be included for free in the bundle for 2003 whenever SSSA is part of the bundle.

Bundle 1: AJ, SSSAJ, CS, JEQ, JNRLSE for $1800
Bundle 2: any 2 of first 4 + JNRLSE for $1100
Individual rates: $600 for first four, $300 for VZJ, $100 for JNRLSE
Membership dues were authorized to increase by as much as 20% in 2005 if necessary. This is a $13 /yr increase.

Organizers of the World Congress of Soil Science are seeking symposium topics for the Philadelphia meeting in 2006. They need to raise $255,000 from sponsors to offset some of the meeting costs. Suggestions of sponsors are welcomed.
Student chapters will now be associated with all three societies, not just ASA.

Karl Glasner, the ASA Science Policy Representative, discussed the success of the Rapid Response Teams made up of division chairs, and on the development of a knowledge base of key words. Once the key words are selected, names of members with expertise in the area will be sought.
Certification of soil scientists under ARCPACS will be moved from ASA to SSSA.
There was a call by USGS to get involved in the geochemical survey of North America. NRCS is participating. Anyone interested should contact Michael Wilson (mike.wilson@nssc.nrcs.usda.gov).

David said that the SSSA Board is seeking input from members on six topics:

- How to reach more people with environmental interests
- Organizing meetings by themes rather than divisions
- Planning meetings further in advance
- Elimination of division structure in journals and/or meetings
- What the responsibilities of division officers should be
- Developing a strategic plan.

Since there was not enough time at the business meeting to discuss a response, it was decided that the S-1 Division listserv would be used to gather input on these topics and present a summary to the SSSA Board within six months.

Bob Luxmoore moved that the six items above be discussed by S-1 members through the S-1 listserve. Luxmoore offered to work with the S-1 leadership and Dave Nofziger to summarize member responses and opinions on the six items and forward these to the SSSA Executive Committee. Motion carried.

The new SSSA President, Tom Sims, spoke to the group and emphasized the point made by David Nofziger that the Board was seeking input from the membership. He was encouraged by the members to continue the VZJ through 2006 and to promote it at the IUSS meetings in 2006. Don Nielsen reminded him that our society has supported other journals in the past that have lost money for decades. He stressed that the VZJ financial situation was a special case due to its initiation.

Bob Luxmoore made a motion for the SSSA Board Representative to relay a statement of support for VZJ that would make two points:

VZJ is becoming well established scientifically and is making a substantial contribution to the scientific credibility of SSSA and in outreach to nonmembers.

Division S1 is grateful for the Boards efforts to expand library contributions by providing VZJ for free for one year to libraries subscribing to other Tri-Society journals.

The motion was amended to add a third point: Other divisions should be encouraged to submit articles and promote VZJ to their libraries

The amended motion was passed unanimously.

Jan Hopmans moved that the S1 Division request the SSSA extend the deadline for evaluating the viability of VZJ to at least after the IUSS meeting in 2006. Scott Tyler seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.

David Radcliffe will start a project to contact a member at each land grant university and determine if the library subscribes to VZJ. The results will be reported back to the membership.

New Business:
Dani Or reported on this year's meeting program. 147 papers were presented this year, which is up slightly from last year's total of 134. He stressed the need for a feed-back mechanisms in the program planning such that the program could be modified after abstract submission is complete.

Nominations for S-1 Chair-Elect are Jon Wraith and Jirka Simunek.

Don Nielsen spoke about the Kirkham Conference Oct. 28-30, 2004 in Logan Utah, just before the SSSA meeting in Seattle. The topic is "Fundamental Processes of Pore Scale and Continuum Scale". Members were encouraged to attend as it is the equivalent to a Chapman Conference. Don will match any donations to the conference up to $1,000. He said that all papers are invited and there will be 10 invited student papers.

The Canadian Soil Science Society will meet jointly with SSSA next year in Seattle. Chi Chang of the CSSS addressed the group briefly and suggested several topics as potential joint symposiums.

Keith Bristow spoke about a proposal for a Bouyocous Conference. The theme is Contaminant Transport and Water Quality Linkages to Land Practices. A decision on whether the proposal will be approved will be made next year.

Bob Luxmoore moved that the S-1 Board Representative encourage the ASA Board to act upon items before the board in considering the feasibility of the federation structure and to get this idea passed to the society divisions for feedback. Glenn Wilson seconded the motion. The motion carried unanimously.

Bob Luxmoore encouraged the Division to use the listserv to gather feedback from members on the federation structure along with the other items on which the SSSA Board has sought input.

There was a motion by Steve Everett to have the Methods of Soil Analysis put on CD for sale. It was seconded and the motion passed unanimously. President Tom Sims encouraged us to purchase the CD of past SSSAJ issues and to get our libraries to purchase this to raise funds.

The gavel was passed from Dani Or to David Radcliffe and the meeting adjourned.