Dear Reader

I am writing this in Christchurch, New Zealand on the eve of our annual conference. I know that the conference will be history by the time you read this, but I personally am very excited to be able to be here, attending our first non-virtual meeting in two years, very appropriately designated ‘Reconnect’. And my wife and I are taking full advantage of having made the trip over here; we are exploring as much of New Zealand as we can, squeezed into a three-week vacation built around the conference. We have already had a great time for the past week and a half, exploring New Zealand’s South Island, getting to meet some of New Zealand’s great birds, and seeing some spectacular scenery. I know that many of you were unable to be here this year, so if any of you want to enjoy New Zealand vicariously, just send me an email indicating an interest and I will share photos of wild parrots and other exotic (at least to us) sights. After the conference, we are travelling to New Zealand’s North Island, not returning back home until November 17^th!

But by the time you read this, we will be preparing for or celebrating the December holidays. Now that the peak of COVID has passed, the holidays should be more festive this year. It is my hope that you will make time to write up some of your more recent discoveries and accomplishments and submit a manuscript or two for publication in our journal. We saw a steep decline in manuscript submissions this year, presumably due to COVID and its effects on society, and so we have almost no backlog. In other words, papers submitted in the next few months will be published much more quickly than was possible before.

This issue starts off with three sequential papers reporting on passive mine water remediation at the St. Louis Mine Tunnel in Colorado. Ironically, the second and third papers sailed through the review process quite smoothly and were published on-line a while ago, but the first paper took a lot longer. The authors promise a fourth paper, but they have not written it yet. Expect to see it published in this journal sometime in 2023. The rest of the papers include almost all of the papers that had been, or were ready to be, published on-line. I am sorry, but a few of them are missing abstract translations as we could not wait any longer for those and still publish and distribute this issue in December.

As is our custom in this December issue, I’d like to thank everyone who contributed as associate editors this year: Mostafa Benzaazoua, Melanie Blanchette, Robert Bowell, Carlos Ruiz Canovas, Dong Donglin, Dong Shuning, Grant Douglas, Rodrigo Jr. Embile, Braden Hanna (unfortunately, recently deceased), Henning Jasnowski-Peters, Gyozo Jordan, Candace L. Kairies-Beatty, Jeff Langmann, Li Peiyue, Li Wenping, Ann Maest, Steven Meyerhoff, Len Murray, Robert Nairn, Benoit Plante, Dyllon Randall, Pierre Rousseau, Abhay Kumar Singh, Gideon Steyl, Purushotham Tukkaraja, Viswananth Ravi Kumar Vadapalli, Teresa Valente, Robert Van Hille, John Douglas Waterhouse, Carl Williams, Wu Qiang, and Wanfang Zhou. Rob Bowell has just recently stepped down as an associate editor but was kind enough to recruit his successor, Carl Williams (also of SRK). I also need to thank Christian Wolkersdorfer (who, in addition to serving as IMWA’s president, is this journals Managing Editor) and of course, the fantastic Anne Weber, who coordinates the efforts of all of these wonderful folks.

Thanks also to our volunteer abstract translators: Edgardo Donati, Jorn Geletneky, Helmuth Landsmann, Joscha Opitz, Walter Pohl, Martin Schultze, Wilfried Uhlmann, Kai-Uwe Ulrich, Wang Changshen, and Josepha Zielke, who coordinates the abstract translation process.

I also thank the Springer Nature staff who we depend on to keep us on track and to publish and distribute this journal, especially Saranya Sekar and Srikanth Reddy. And of course, we thank our authors (without them there would be no journal), our reviewers (who I will give due credit to in our next issue), and you, our readers, for your continued interest and feedback.

Finally, on behalf of the entire editorial staff, I wish you a great holiday season and a wonderful new year.

Bob Kleinmann, PhD; Editor-in-Chief

editor@MWEN.info