Bill Mitsch and Rattan Lal, both of our School of Environment and Natural Resources, are two of the nearly dozen keynote speakers set so far for EcoSummit 2012, which takes place just less than a year from now in Columbus. The conference, says its website, “will bring together the world’s most respected minds in ecological science to discuss restoring the planet’s ecosystems.” Harvard’s E.O. Wilson (author of Biophilia and The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, among many) and UCLA’s Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed) are also in the lineup. See the full list of speakers and the program.