prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What is the group's request to the Connecticut DEEP Commissioner?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 1: Outdoors	February 19, 2017
You are here: Home / Archives for Departments / OutdoorsActor Sam Waterson Hosts PBS Documentary on Lyme Land Trust January 14, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment Jack Tiffany, owner of Tiffany Farms on Rte  156 and an earlier pioneer in Lyme land preservation, is interviewed by PBS “Visionaries” documentary producers 
Filed Under: Lyme, Outdoors Application Deadline for Environmental Leadership Scholarship is Feb  1 January 8, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment Applications are now being accepted for the Virginia R  Rollefson Environmental Leadership Scholarship, a $1,000 award to recognize a high school student who has demonstrated leadership and initiative in promoting conservation, preservation, restoration, or environmental education 
Filed Under: Lyme, News, Old Lyme, Outdoors, Top Story Preserves in Lyme Now Closed for Hunting During Weekdays November 17, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment Starting yesterday, Wednesday, Nov  16, the following Preserves in Lyme will be closed Monday through Friday until Tuesday, Dec  20, 2016, except to licensed hunters with valid consent forms from the Town of Lyme Open Space Coordinator:
Banningwood Preserve
Beebe Preserve
Chestnut Hill Preserve
Eno Preserve
Hand Smith
Honey Hill Preserve
Jewett Preserve
Mount Archer Woods
Pickwick’s Preserve
Plimpton Preserve
Slawson Preserve
These preserves, owned by the Town of Lyme or the Lyme Land Conservation Trust, will be open on Saturdays and Sundays during this hunting period as no hunting is allowed on weekends 
The hunting program is fully subscribed 
For more information on the hunting program in Lyme, visit http://www lymelandtrust org/stewardship/hunting-program/
Filed Under: Lyme, Outdoors, Top Story Town of Old Lyme Offers Part-time Land Steward Opportunity October 11, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment The Town of Old Lyme is seeking a part-time individual to maintain and manage the trail systems on its major preserves  Keeping trails cleared, maintaining markers, kiosks, entrances, parking areas, and managing for wildlife and other natural resources are the priorities 
For more information, visit the job posting on the home page of the Town’s web page at http://www oldlyme-ct gov/Pages/index 
To learn about the Open Space Commission and the properties it manages, visit http://www oldlyme-ct gov/Pages/OldLymeCT_Bcomm/open_space
Filed Under: Old Lyme, Outdoors, Top Story CT Fund for the Environment Annual Meeting to be Held Sunday in Hartford September 22, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment Engaging and educating communities for preservation of the Long Island Sound tidal estuary
Save the Sound is celebrating National Estuaries Week Sept  17 – 24 with a series of interactive and educational events throughout the Long Island Sound region  This annual celebration of estuaries—the vital coastal zones where freshwater rivers meet salty seas—is sponsored by Restore America’s Estuaries and its member organizations including Save the Sound  This year’s events call attention to the many benefits of thriving coastal ecosystems, including how estuary conservation efforts support our quality of life and economic well-being 
“The Long Island Sound estuary is not only where freshwater rivers meet the saltwater Atlantic, but where wildlife habitat meets beaches and boating, and where modern industry meets traditional oystering,” said Curt Johnson, executive director of Save the Sound, which is a bi-state program of Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE) 
Johnson continued, “All over the country, estuaries are the lifeblood of coastal economies  From serving as natural buffers to protect our coastlines from storms to providing unique habitat for countless birds, fish, and wildlife, estuaries deserve our protection and our thanks ”
Save the Sound is celebrating estuaries with a number of events this week, including the release of a new video, a presentation on Plum Island at the Old Lyme-Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library and the CFE/Save the Sound annual meeting:
Aerial view of Plum Island lighthouse  (From Preserve Plum Island website)
Chris Cryder, Special Projects Coordinator for Save the Sound and Outreach Coordinator for the Preserve Plum Island Coalition, will host Preserving Plum Island for Future Generations, a special presentation on the importance of conserving the wildlife habitats and historic buildings of Plum Island, New York 
Plum Island flanks Plum Gut in the Long Island Sound estuary’s eastern end, where fast-moving tides create highly productive fishing grounds  The talk is part of a multi-week series featuring photographs and paintings of Plum Island, and lectures on its ecology, geology, and history 
Old Lyme-Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library, 2 Library Lane, Old Lyme, Connecticut
Register by calling the library at 860-434-1684 
The Annual Meeting of Connecticut Fund for the Environment and its bi-state program Save the Sound will take place in the Planet Earth exhibit at the Connecticut Science Center  The event is open to the public with registration, and will feature a keynote address from Curt Spalding, administrator of EPA’s New England Region  Spalding is a leader in combatting nitrogen pollution and in climate change resilience planning efforts for New England 
Connecticut Science Center, 250 Columbus Blvd, Hartford, Connecticut
4 – 7 p m
RSVP to mlemere@ctenvironment org
To celebrate the contributions of volunteers to restoring the Long Island Sound estuary, Save the Sound has released a new video of a habitat restoration planting at Hyde Pond in Mystic  Following removal of the old Hyde Pond dam and opening 4 1 miles of stream habitat for migratory fish last winter (see time lapse video here), in May about 30 volunteers planted native vegetation along the Whitford Brook stream bank, under the direction of U S  Fish and Wildlife Service, CT DEEP’s Fisheries division, and Save the Sound staff 
Find more information on the project’s benefits and funders here 
Look for the planting video on Save the Sound’s website, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts 
Filed Under: Old Lyme, Outdoors 750+ Volunteers Clean Beaches from Norwalk to New London Including Griswold Point in Old Lyme September 17, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment Kendall Perkins displays a skull she found during Save The Sound‘s Coastal Clean-up Day held yesterday at White Sand Beach 
Save the Sound, a bi-state program of Connecticut Fund for the environment, organized 31 cleanups across Connecticut’s shoreline this weekend  The efforts are part of International Coastal Cleanup, which brings together hundreds of thousands of people each year to remove plastic bags, broken glass, cigarette butts, and other trash from the world’s shores and waterways  One of the areas included in the cleanup effort was from White Sand Beach to the tip of Griswold Point in Old Lyme 
The event was founded by Ocean Conservancy in 1985, and Save the Sound has served as the official Connecticut coordinator for the last 14 years 
“We didn’t plan it this way, but I can’t imagine a better way to celebrate the 31st anniversary of International Coastal Cleanup Day than with 31 cleanups!” said Chris Cryder, special projects coordinator for Save the Sound  “The cleanup just keeps growing, in Connecticut and worldwide  We have some terrific new and returning partners this year, including the SECONN Divers, folks from the U S  District Court, multiple National Charity League chapters, and many more ”
Cryder continued, “The diversity of the groups involved really reflects the truth that ocean health affects all of us  Clean beaches and oceans are safer for beachgoers and boaters, they’re healthier for wildlife that aren’t eating plastic or getting tangled up in trash, and they’re economic powerhouses for the fishing and tourism industries ”
The cleanups are co-hosted by a wide array of local partners including high schools, youth groups, and scout troops; churches; boaters and divers; watershed associations, park stewards, and land trusts  Twenty-eight cleanups will be held Saturday, with three more on Sunday and others through mid-October, for a total of 70 cleanups statewide 
Based on the estimates of cleanup captains, between 750 and 900 volunteers were expected to pitch in on Saturday alone  Last year, a total of 1,512 volunteers participated in Save the Sound cleanups throughout the fall  They collected more than three tons of litter and debris from 58 sites on Connecticut beaches, marshes, and riverbanks 
Over the event’s three-decade history, 11 5 million volunteers have collected 210 million pounds of trash worldwide  Every piece of trash volunteers find is tracked, reported to Save the Sound, and included in Ocean Conservancy’s annual index of global marine debris  The data is used to track trends in litter and devise policies to stop it at its source 
Filed Under: Old Lyme, Outdoors, Top Story Stonewell Farm Hosts Two-Day Workshop on Dry Stone Wall Building, Sept  24, 25 September 13, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment Andrew Pighill’s work includes outdoor kitchens, wine cellars, fire-pits, fireplaces and garden features that include follies and other whimsical structures in stone 
KILLINGWORTH — On Sept  24 and 25, from 9 a m  to 4 p m  daily, Andrew Pighills, master stone mason, will teach a two-day, weekend long workshop on the art of dry stone wall building at Stonewell Farm in Killingworth, CT 
Participants will learn the basic principles of wall building, from establishing foundations, to the methods of dry laid (sometimes called dry-stacked) construction and ‘hearting’ the wall  This hands-on workshop will address not only the structure and principles behind wall building but also the aesthetic considerations of balance and proportion 
This workshop expresses Pighill’s commitment to preserve New England’s heritage and promote and cultivate the dry stone wall building skills that will ensure the preservation of our vernacular landscape 
This workshop is open to participants, 18 years of age or older, of all levels of experience  Note the workshop is limited to 16 participants, and spaces fill up quickly 
You must pre-register to attend the workshop  The price for the workshop is $350 per person  Stonewell Farm is located at 39 Beckwith Rd , Killingworth CT 06419
If you have any questions or to register for the workshop, contact the Workshop Administrator Michelle Becker at 860-322-0060 or mb@mbeckerco com
At the end of the day on Saturday you’ll be hungry, tired and ready for some rest and relaxation, so the wood-fired Stone pizza oven will be fired up and beer, wine and Pizza Rustica will be served 
About the instructor: Born in Yorkshire, England, Andrew Pighills is an accomplished stone artisan, gardener and horticulturist  He received his formal horticulture training with The Royal Horticultural Society and has spent 40+ years creating gardens and building dry stone walls in his native England in and around the spectacular Yorkshire Dales and the English Lake District  Today, Pighills is one of a small, but dedicated group of US-based, certified, professional members of The Dry Stone Walling Association (DSWA) of Great Britain  Having moved to the United States more than 10 years ago, he now continues this venerable craft here in the US, building dry stone walls, stone structures and creating gardens throughout New England and beyond 
His particular technique of building walls adheres to the ancient methods of generations of dry stone wallers in his native Yorkshire Dales  Pighills’ commitment to preserving the integrity and endurance of this traditional building art has earned him a devoted list of private and public clients here and abroad including the English National Trust, the English National Parks, and the Duke of Devonshire estates  His stone work has been featured on British and American television, in Charles McCraven’s book The Stone Primer, and Jeffrey Matz’s Midcentury Houses Today, A study of residential modernism in New Canaan Connecticut  He has featured in the N Y Times, on Martha Stewart Living radio, and in the Graham Deneen film short “Dry Stone”, as well as various media outlets both here and in the UK, including an article in the Jan/Feb 2015 issue of Yankee Magazine 
Pighills is a DSWA fully qualified dry stone walling instructor  In addition to building in stone and creating gardens, Pighills teaches dry stone wall building workshops in and around New England  He is a frequent lecturer on the art of dry stone walling, and how traditional UK walling styles compare to those found in New England  His blog, Heave and Hoe; A Day in the Life of a Dry Stone Waller and Gardener, provides more information about Pighills 
For more information, visit www englishgardensandlandscaping com
Filed Under: Outdoors CT Port Authority Chair Tells Lower CT River Local Officials, “We’re All on One Team” August 27, 2016 by Olwen Logan 2 Comments Enjoying a boat ride on the Connecticut River, but still finding time for discussions, are (from left to right) Chester First Selectwoman Lauren Gister, Old Lyme First Selectwoman and Connecticut Port Authority (CPA) board member Bonnie Reemsnyder, Essex First Selectman Norm Needleman, CPA Chairman Scott Bates and Deep River First Selectman Angus McDonald, Jr 
Filed Under: Chester, Deep River, Essex, News, Old Lyme, Outdoors, Politics, Top Story House Approves Courtney-Sponsored Amendment Restricting Sale of Plum Island July 10, 2016 by admin 2 Comments Representative Joe Courtney
Local Congressional Representative Joe Courtney (CT-02) announced Thursday (July 7) that a bipartisan amendment he had led, along with Representatives Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and Peter King (R-NY), to prohibit the sale of Plum Island was passed by the House of Representatives 
The amendment, which will prohibit the General Services Administration (GSA) from using any of its operational funding to process or complete a sale of Plum Island, was made to the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act of 2017  
In a joint statement, the Representatives said, “Our amendment passed today is a big step toward permanently protecting Plum Island as a natural area  Plum Island is a scenic and biological treasure located right in the middle of Long Island Sound  It is home to a rich assortment of rare plant and animal species that need to be walled off from human interference ”
The statement continued, “Nearly everyone involved in this issue agrees that it should be preserved as a natural sanctuary – not sold off to the highest bidder for development ” Presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump had shown interest in the property at one time 
In 2008, the federal government announced plans to close the research facility on Plum Island and relocate to Manhattan, Kansas  Current law states that Plum Island must be sold publicly to help finance the new research facility 
Aerial view of Plum Island 
The lawmakers joint statement explained, “The amendment will prevent the federal agency in charge of the island from moving forward with a sale by prohibiting it from using any of its operational funding provided by Congress for that purpose,” concluding, ” This will not be the end of the fight to preserve Plum Island, but this will provide us with more time to find a permanent solution for protecting the Island for generations to come ”
For several years, members from both sides of Long Island Sound have been working in a bipartisan manner to delay and, ultimately, repeal the mandated sale of this ecological treasure  Earlier this year, the representatives, along with the whole Connecticut delegation, cosponsored legislation that passed the House unanimously to delay the sale of Plum Island 
Filed Under: Outdoors July 1 Update: Aquatic Treatment Planned for Rogers Lake, July 5 July 1, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment We received this updated information from the Old Lyme Selectman’s office at 11:05 a m  this morning:
Filed Under: Lyme, Old Lyme, Outdoors, Town Hall They’re Everywhere! All About Gypsy Moth Caterpillars — Advice from CT Agricultural Experiment Station June 2, 2016 by Adina Ripin Leave a Comment Gypsy moth caterpillars – photo by Peter Trenchard, CAES 
The potential for gypsy moth outbreak exists every year in our community 
Dr  Kirby Stafford III, head of the Department of Entomology at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, has written a fact sheet on the gypsy moth available on the CAES website  The following information is from this fact sheet 
The gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar, was introduced into the US (Massachusetts) by Etienne Leopold Trouvelot in about 1860  The escaped larvae led to small outbreaks in the area in 1882, increasing rapidly  It was first detected in Connecticut in 1905  By 1952, it had spread to 169 towns  In 1981, 1 5 million acres were defoliated in Connecticut  During the outbreak of 1989, CAES scientists discovered that an entomopathogenic fungus, Entomophaga maimaiga, was killing the caterpillars  Since then the fungus has been the most important agent suppressing gypsy moth activity 
The fungus, however, cannot prevent all outbreaks and hotspots have been reported in some areas, in 2005-06 and again in 2015 
The life cycle of the gypsy moth is one generation a year  Caterpillars hatch from buff-colored egg masses in late April to early May  An egg mass may contain 100 to more than 1000 eggs and are laid in several layers  The caterpillars (larvae) hatch a few days later and ascend the host trees and begin to feed on new leaves  The young caterpillars, buff to black-colored, lay down silk safety lines as they crawl and, as they drop from branches on these threads, they may be picked up on the wind and spread 
There are four or five larval stages (instars) each lasting 4-10 days  Instars 1-3 remain in the trees  The fourth instar caterpillars, with distinctive double rows of blue and red spots, crawl up and down the tree trunks feeding mainly at night  They seek cool, shaded protective sites during the day, often on the ground  If the outbreak is dense, caterpillars may feed continuously and crawl at any time 
With the feeding completed late June to early July, caterpillars seek a protected place to pupate and transform into a moth in about 10-14 days  Male moths are brown and fly  Female moths are white and cannot fly despite having wings  They do not feed and live for only 6-10 days  After mating, the female will lay a single egg mass and die  The egg masses can be laid anywhere: trees, fence posts, brick/rock walls, outdoor furniture, cars, recreational vehicles, firewood  The egg masses are hard  The eggs will survive the winter and larvae hatch the following spring during late April through early May 
The impact of the gypsy moth can be extensive since the caterpillar will feed on a wide diversity of trees and shrubs  Oak trees are their preferred food  Other favored tree species include apple, birch, poplar and willow  If the infestation is heavy, they will also attack certain conifers and other less favored species  The feeding causes extensive defoliation 
Healthy trees can generally withstand one or two partial to one complete defoliation  Trees will regrow leaves before the end of the summer  Nonetheless, there can be die-back of branches  Older trees may become more vulnerable to stress after defoliation  Weakened trees can also be attacked by other organisms or lack energy reserves for winter dormancy and growth during the following spring  Three years of heavy defoliation may result in high oak mortality 
The gypsy moth caterpillars drop leaf fragments and frass (droppings) while feeding creating a mess for decks, patios, outdoor furniture, cars and driveways  Crawling caterpillars can be a nuisance and their hairs irritating  The egg masses can be transported by vehicles to areas where the moth is not yet established  Under state quarantine laws, the CAES inspects certain plant shipments destined to areas free of the gypsy moth, particularly for egg masses 
There are several ways to manage the gypsy moth: biological, physical and chemical 
Biologically, the major gypsy moth control agent has been the fungus E  maimaiga  This fungus can provide complete control of the gypsy moth but is dependent on early season moisture from rains in May and June to achieve effective infection rates and propagation of the fungus to other caterpillars  The dry spring of 2015 resulted in little or no apparent fungal inoculation or spread until it killed late-stage caterpillars in some areas of the state, after most defoliation 
Infected caterpillars hang vertically from the tree trunk, head down  Some die in an upside down “V” position, a characteristic of caterpillars killed by the less common gypsy moth nucleopolyhedrosis virus (NPV)  This was not detected in caterpillars examined in 2015 
Physical controls include removing and destroying egg masses, which can be drowned in a soapy water and disposed of  Another method is to use burlap refuge/barrier bands wrapped around tree trunks so that migrating caterpillars will crawl into or under the folded burlap or be trapped by the sticky band 
There are a number of crop protection chemicals labeled for the control of gypsy moth on ornamental trees and shrubs  There are treatments for egg masses, larvae and adult moths  Detailed information about these chemical treatments is available in the CAES factsheet 
For complete information about the gypsy moth and its management, visit the CAES website and look for the fact sheet on gypsy moth 
Filed Under: News, Outdoors East Lyme Public Trust Invites Community to Celebrate Boardwalk Re-dedication May 25, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment On Saturday, May 28, at 11 a m , the East Lyme Public Trust Foundation, in co-operation with East Lyme Parks and Recreation Department, will sponsor A Dream Fulfilled, the official re-dedication of the East Lyme Boardwalk  The re-dedication ceremony, which will be held on the Boardwalk, will feature keynote speaker, Sen  Paul Formica, former First Selectman of East Lyme 
Other speakers will include East Lyme First Selectman Mark Nickerson, Public Trust President Joe Legg, Public Trust Past-President Bob DeSanto, Public Trust Vice-President John Hoye, and Parks and Recreation Director Dave Putnam; all the speakers will recognize the many people who have helped made this dream a reality 
The East Lyme Public Trust Foundation would like to invite the general public to witness this historic occasion  In addition, the members would especially like to encourage the participation of the 200 people who dedicated benches and the innumerable people who sponsored plaques  They would also love to welcome all members of the Trust – past and present – and all those who originally helped make the Boardwalk a reality 
Participants should enter the Boardwalk at Hole-in-the Wall on Baptist Lane, Niantic  Then, there will be a short walk to the area of the monument where the ceremony will take place  At the entrance to Hole-in-the Wall, the Public Trust will have a display of historical information and memorabilia related to the construction and re-construction of the Boardwalk  Public Trust members, Pat and Jack Lewis will be on hand to host the exhibit titled Before and After and to welcome participants  After the ceremony, participants will have the opportunity to visit “their bench” and re-visit “their plaque ” During and after the dedication, music will be provided by Trust member, Bill Rinoski, who is a “D J  for all occasions ” Rinoski will feature “Boardwalk-related” music and Oldies plus Top 40 selections  This historic occasion will be videotaped as a public service by Mike Rydene of Media Potions of East Lyme  High school volunteers will be on hand to greet participants and help with directions 
The organizing committee is chaired by Michelle Maitland  Her committee consists of Joe Legg, President of the East Lyme Public Trust, Carol Marelli, Bob and Polly DeSanto, June Hoye, and Kathie Cassidy 
Visit Facebook – East Lyme Public Trust Foundation – for more information on the re-dedication ceremony  For more information on the Boardwalk, explore this website 
Filed Under: Outdoors Lyme Land Trust Seeks to Preserve Whalebone Cove Headwaters May 8, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment Lyme Land Trust Preservation Vice President Don Gerber stands with Chairman Anthony Irving (kneeling) next to Whalebone Creek in the proposed Hawthorne Preserve in Hadlyme 
The Lyme Land Conservation Trust has announced a fund raising drive to protect 82 acres of ecologically strategic upland forest and swamp wildlife habitat in Hadlyme on the headwaters of Whalebone Cove, one of the freshwater tidal wetlands that comprises the internationally celebrated Connecticut River estuary complex 
The new proposed preserve is part of a forested landscape just south of Hadlyme Four Corners and Ferry Road (Rt  148), and forms a large part of the watershed for Whalebone Creek, a key tributary feeding Whalebone Cove, most of which is a national wildlife refuge under the management of the US Fish & Wildlife Service 
The Land Trust said it hopes to name the new nature refuge in honor of William Hawthorne of Hadlyme, whose family has owned the property for several generations and who has agreed to sell the property to the Land Trust at a discount from its market value if the rest of the money necessary for the purchase can be raised by the Land Trust 
“This new wildlife preserve will represent a triple play for habitat conservation,” said Anthony Irving, chairman of the Land Trust’s Preservation Committee 
“First, it helps to protect the watershed feeding the fragile Whalebone Cove eco-system, which is listed as one of North America’s important freshwater tidal marshes in international treaties that cite the Connecticut River estuary as a wetland complex of global importance  Whalebone Creek, one of the primary streams feeding Whalebone Cove, originates from vernal pools and upland swamps just south of the Hawthorne tract on the Land Trust’s Ravine Trail Preserve and adjacent conservation easements and flows through the proposed preserve  Virtually all of the Hawthorne property comprises much of the watershed for Whalebone Creek 
“Second, the 82 acres we are hoping to acquire with this fund raising effort represents a large block of wetlands and forested wildlife habitat between Brush Hill and Joshuatown roads, which in itself is home to a kaleidoscope of animals from amphibians and reptiles that thrive in several vernal pools and swamp land, to turkey, coyote, bobcat and fisher  It also serves as seasonal nesting and migratory stops for several species of deep woods birds, which are losing habitat all over Connecticut due to forest fragmentation 
“Third, this particular preserve will also conserve a key link in the wildlife corridors that connects more than 1,000 acres of protected woodland and swamp habitat in the Hadlyme area ” Irving explained that the preserve is at the center of a landscape-scale wildlife habitat greenway that includes Selden Island State Park, property of the US Fish & Wild Life’s Silvio O Conte Wildlife Refuge, The Nature Conservancy’s Selden Preserve, and several other properties protected by the Lyme Land Conservation Trust 
“Because of its central location as a hub between these protected habitat refuges,” said Irving, “this preserve will protect forever the uninterrupted access that wildlife throughout the Hadlyme landscape now has for migration and breeding between otherwise isolated communities and families of many terrestrial species that are important to the continued robust bio-diversity of southeastern Connecticut and the Connecticut River estuary ”
Irving noted that the Hawthorne property is the largest parcel targeted for conservation in the Whalebone Cove watershed by the recently developed US Fish & Wildlife Service Silvio O Conte Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan  Irving said the Land Trust hopes to create a network of hiking trails on the property with access from both Brush Hill Road on the east and Joshuatown Road on the west and connection to the Land Trust’s Ravine Trail to the south and the network of trails on the Nature Conservancy’s Selden Preserve 
Irving said there is strong support for the Land Trust’s proposal to preserve the property both within the Hadlyme and Lyme communities and among regional and state conservation groups  He noted letters of support have come from the Hadlyme Garden Club, the Hadlyme Public Hall Association, the Lyme Inland Wetlands & Watercourses Agency, the Lyme Planning and Zoning Commission, the Lyme Open Space Committee, the Lower Connecticut River Valley Council of Governments, the Lyme Garden Club, the Lyme Public Hall, The Nature Conservancy, The Silvio O Conte Refuge, the Connecticut River Watershed Council, and the Friends of Whalebone Cove, Inc 
He reported that between Hawthorne’s gift and several other pledges the Land Trust has already received commitments of 25 percent of the cost of the property 
Filed Under: Lyme, Outdoors, Top Story, vnn Old Lyme Tree Commission Celebrates Arbor Day April 29, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment Members of the three groups gather around the new oak tree  From left to right are Kathy Burton, Joanne DiCamillo, Joan Flynn  Anne Bing, Emily Griswold and Barbara Rayel 
Filed Under: Old Lyme, Outdoors, Top Story, Town Hall Enjoy a Tour of Private Gardens in Essex, June 4 April 28, 2016 by Adina Ripin Leave a Comment See this beautiful private garden in Essex on June 4 
ESSEX – On Saturday, June 4, from 10 a m  to 3 p m , plan to stroll through eight of the loveliest and most unusual private gardens in Essex  Some are in the heart of Essex Village while others are hidden along lanes most visitors never see  While exploring, you will find both formal and informal settings, lovely sweeping lawns and panoramic views of the Connecticut River or its coves  One garden you will visit is considered to be a ‘laboratory’ for cultivation of native plants  Master Gardeners will be available to point out specific features, offer gardening tips, and answer questions 
The garden tour is sponsored by the Friends of the Essex Library  Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the Essex Library the day of the event  Cash, checks, Visa or Master Card will be accepted  Tickets can be reserved by visiting the library or by completing the form included in flyers available at the library and throughout Essex beginning May 2  Completed forms can be mailed to the library  Confirmations will be sent to the email addresses on the completed forms 
Your ticket will be a booklet containing a brief description of each garden along with a map of the tour and designated parking  Tickets must be picked up at the library beginning at 9:45 a m  the day of the event 
Richard Conroy, library director, has said, “The Essex Library receives only about half of its operating revenue from the Town  The financial assistance we receive each year from the Friends is critical  It enables us to provide important resources such as Ancestry com and museum passes, as well as practical improvements like the automatic front doors that were recently installed  I urge you to help your Library by helping our Friends make this event a success! Thank you for your support ”
The tour will take place rain or shine  For more information, call 860-767-1560  All proceeds will benefit Friends of the Essex Library 
Filed Under: Outdoors Potapaug Presents Plum Island Program April 7, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment Potapaug Audubon presents “Preserving Plum Island” on Thursday, April 7, at 7 p m  at Old Lyme Town Hall, 52 Lyme St , Old Lyme, with guest speaker Chris Cryder, from the Preserve Plum Island Coalition 
Cryder will discuss the efforts to protect the island, which provides vital habitat for threatened and endangered birds 
This is a free program and all are welcome 
Filed Under: Old Lyme, Outdoors CT Legislators Support Study to Preserve Plum Island From Commercial Development March 28, 2016 by Jerome Wilson 1 Comment Aerial view of Plum Island lighthouse  (From Preserve Plum Island website)
Last Thursday, March 24, at a press conference in Old Saybrook, a triumvirate of Congressional legislators from Connecticut, State Senator Richard Blumenthal and US Representatives Joe Courtney (D-2nd District) and Rosa DeLauro (D-3rd District) confirmed their support for a study to determine the future of Plum Island located in Long Island Sound 
Members of the Plum Island Coalition — which has some 65 member organizations all dedicated to preserving the island — were in attendance to hear the good news 
The island still houses a high-security, federal animal disease research facility, but the decision has already been taken to move the facility to a new location in Kansas with an opening slated for 2022  The current facility takes up only a small percentage of the land on the island and significantly for environmentalists, the remainder of the island has for years been left to nature in the wild 
In supporting a federal study on the future of Plum Island, Sen  Blumenthal said, “This study is a step towards saving a precious, irreplaceable national treasure from developers and polluters  It will provide the science and fact-based evidence to make our case for stopping the current Congressional plan to sell Plum Island to the highest bidder ” He continued, “The stark truth is the sale of Plum Island is no longer necessary to build a new bioresearch facility because Congress has fully appropriated the funds  There is no need for this sale – and in fact, Congress needs to rescind the sale ” Congress, however, still has a law on the books that authorizes the sale of Plum Island land to the highest bidder  Therefore, opponents of the sale will have the burden of convincing Congress to change a law that is currently in place 
Filed Under: Old Lyme, Outdoors, Top Story, vnn Land Trusts’ Photo Contest Winners Announced March 24, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment Winner of the top prize, the John G  Mitchell Environmental Conservation Award – Hank Golet
The 10th Annual Land Trust’s Photo Contest winners were announced at a March 11 reception highlighting the winning photos and displaying all entered photos  Land trusts in Lyme, Old Lyme, Salem, Essex and East Haddam jointly sponsor the annual amateur photo contest to celebrate the scenic countryside and diverse wildlife and plants in these towns  The ages of the photographers ranged from children to senior citizens 
Hank Golet won the top prize, the John G  Mitchell Environmental Conservation Award, with his beautiful photograph of a juvenile yellow crowned night heron in the Black Hall River in Old Lyme  Alison Mitchell personally presented the award, created in memory of her late husband John G  Mitchell, an editor at National Geographic, who championed the cause of the environment 
William Burt, a naturalist and acclaimed wildlife photographer, who has been a contest judge for ten years, received a special mention  Judges Burt; Amy Kurtz Lansing, an accomplished art historian and curator at the Florence Griswold Museum; and Skip Broom, a respected, award-winning local photographer and antique house restoration housewright, chose the winning photographs from 219 entries 
The sponsoring land trusts – Lyme Land Conservation Trust, Essex Land Trust, the Old Lyme Land Trust, Salem Land Trust, and East Haddam Land Trust – thank the judges as well as generous supporters RiverQuest/ CT River Expeditions, Lorensen Auto Group, the Oakley Wing Group at Morgan Stanley, Evan Griswold at Coldwell Banker, Ballek’s Garden Center, Essex Savings Bank, Chelsea Groton Bank, and Alison Mitchell in honor of her late husband John G  Mitchell  Big Y and Fromage Fine Foods & Coffee provided support for the reception 
The winning photographers are:
John G  Mitchell Environmental Award, Hank Golet, Old Lyme
1st: Patrick Burns, East Haddam
2nd: Judah Waldo, Old Lyme
3rd: James Beckman, Ivoryton
Honorable Mention Gabriel Waldo, Old Lyme
Honorable Mention Sarah Gada, East Haddam
Honorable Mention Shawn Parent, East Haddam
Cultural/Historic
1st: Marcus Maronne, Mystic
2nd: Normand L  Charlette, Manchester
3rd: Tammy Marseli, Rocky Hill
Honorable Mention Jud Perkins, Salem
Honorable Mention Pat Duncan, Norwalk
Honorable Mention John Kolb, Essex
Landscapes/Waterscapes
1st: Cheryl Philopena, Salem
2nd: Marian Morrissette, New London
3rd: Harcourt Davis, Old Lyme
Honorable Mention Cynthia Kovak, Old Lyme
Honorable Mention Bopha Smith, Salem
1st: Mary Waldron, Old Lyme
2nd: Courtney Briggs, Old Saybrook
3rd: Linda Waters, Salem
Honorable Mention Pete Govert, East Haddam
Honorable Mention Marcus Maronne, Mystic
Honorable Mention Marian Morrissette, New London
First place winner of the Wildlife category – Chris Pimley
1st: Chris Pimley, Essex
2nd: Harcourt Davis, Old Lyme
Honorable Mention Thomas Nemeth, Salem
Honorable Mention Jeri Duefrene, Niantic
Honorable Mention Elizabeth Gentile, Old Lyme
The winning photos will be on display at the Lymes’ Senior Center for the month of March and Lyme Public Library in April  For more information go to lymelandtrust org 
Filed Under: Outdoors Old Lyme’s Open Space Commission Hosts Talk on Sea Level Rise, Salt Marsh Advance March 11, 2016 by admin 1 Comment The Town of Old Lyme’s Open Space Commission invites all interested parties to a workshop by Adam Whelchel, PhD, Director of Science at The Nature Conservancy’s Connecticut Chapter  The workshop will be held on Friday, March 11, at 9 a m  in the Old Lyme Town Hall 
Filed Under: Outdoors, Town Hall Inaugural Meeting of ‘Friends of Whalebone Cove’ Held, Group Plans to Protect Famous Tidal Wetland March 7, 2016 by admin Leave a Comment The newly formed ‘Friends of Whalebone Cove’ are working to preserve and protect the Cove’s fragile ecosystem 
A new community conservation group to protect Whalebone Cove, a freshwater tidal marsh along the Connecticut river in Hadlyme recognized internationally for its wildlife habitat, will hold its first organizational meeting this coming Sunday, March 6, at 4 p m 
Calling the group “Friends of Whalebone Cove” (FOWC), the organizers say their purpose is to “create a proactive, community-based constituency whose mission is to preserve and protect the habitat and fragile eco-systems of Whalebone Cove ”
Much of Whalebone Cove is a nature preserve that is part of the Silvio O  Conte National Wildlife Refuge (www fws gov/refuge/silvio_o_conte) under the jurisdiction of the U S  Fish & Wildlife Service (USFW)  The Refuge owns and manages 116 acres of marshland in Whalebone Cove and upland along its shores 
Prior to being taken over by USFW, the Whalebone Cove preserve was under the protection of The Nature Conservancy 
As part of the Connecticut River estuary, the Cove is listed in the Ramsar Convention on International Wetlands (www ramsar org) as tidal marshlands on the Connecticut River that constitute a “wetlands complex of international importance ”
The Ramsar citation specifically notes that Whalebone Cove has one of the largest stands of wild rice in the state  Except at high tide, most of the Cove is open marshland covered by wild rice stands with relatively narrow channels where Whalebone Creek winds its way through the Cove to the main stem of the Connecticut River 
Brian Slater, one of the group’s leaders who is filing the incorporation documents creating FOWC, said the creation of the organization was conceived by many of those living around the Cove and others in the Hadlyme area because of increased speeding motor boat and jet ski traffic in the Cove in recent years, damaging wetland plants and disrupting birds and other wildlife that make the Cove their home 
Slater said “Our goal is to develop a master plan for protection of the Cove through a collaborative effort involving all those who have a stake in Whalebone Cove – homeowners along its shores and those living nearby, the Silvio O  Conte Refuge, the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP), hunters, fishing enthusiasts, canoeing and kayaking groups, Audubon groups, the Towns of Lyme and East Haddam, The Nature Conservancy, the Connecticut River Watershed Council, the Lyme Land Conservation Trust, the Connecticut River Gateway Commission, and others who want to protect the Cove ”
“Such a plan”, said Slater, “should carefully evaluate the habitat, plants, wildlife and eco-systems of the Cove and the surrounding uplands and watershed and propose an environmental management plan that can be both implemented and enforced by those entrusted with stewarding the Cove and its fragile ecosystems for the public trust ”
FOWC has written a letter to Connecticut DEEP Commissioner Rob Klee asking that he appoint a blue ribbon commission to conduct the research and develop the management plan  FOWC also asked that Commissioner Klee either deny or defer approval on any applications for new docks in the Cove until the management plan can be developed and implemented  Currently there are no docks in the Cove 
“We are very concerned that the installation of docks permitted for motor boat use will greatly increase the amount of motorized watercraft in the Cove,” said Slater  “There’s already too much jet ski and speeding motorboat traffic in the Cove  Those living on the Cove have even seen boats towing water skiers crisscrossing the wild rice plants at high tide  Something has to be done to protect the birds and marine life that give birth and raise their young in the Cove ”
Slater urged all those “who treasure Whalebone Cove and the many species of birds, turtles, fish, reptiles, amphibians, beaver, and rare flora and fauna that make their home in it to attend the meeting, whether they live in the Hadlyme area or beyond ”
Expected to be at the meeting will be representatives from USFW, DEEP, the Connecticut River Watershed Council, and several other conservation organizations 
The meeting will be held at Hadlyme Public Hall, 1 Day Hill Rd , in Lyme, which is at the intersection of Ferry Rd  (Rte  148), Joshuatown Rd , and Day Hill Rd  Representatives from the Silvio O  Conte Refuge will make a short presentation on the history and mission of the Conte Refuge system, which includes nature preserves throughout the Connecticut River Valley in four states 
For more information, call 860-322-4021 or email fowchadlyme@gmail com
Filed Under: Lyme, News, Outdoors Next Page »



ground_truth: Appointing a blue ribbon commission to conduct the research and develop the management plan and denying or defering approval on any applications for new docks in the Cove until the management plan can be developed and implemented.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: Where was Margaret Way born and where did she die?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 2: Margaret Way (b  Brisbane d  Cleveland, Queensland, Australia ) was an Australian writer of romance novels and women's fiction  A prolific author, Way wrote more than 120 novels since 1970, many through Mills & Boon, a romance imprint of British publisher Harlequin UK Ltd , owned by Harlequin Enterprises 

Biography
Before her marriage, she was a well-known pianist, teacher, vocal coach and accompanist  She began writing when her son, Laurence Way, was born, a friend took a pile of Mills & Boon books to her, she read all and decided that she also could write these types of novels  She began to write and promote her country with her stories set in Australia  She sold her first novels in 1970  Margaret Way lives with her family in her native Brisbane  Beginning in 2013, Margaret began to self-publish, releasing her first "e-book" mid-July 

Margaret died on the 10th of August 2022 in Cleveland, Queensland 

Bibliography

Single Novels
King Country (1970)
Blaze of Silk (1970)
The Time of the Jacaranda (1970)
Bauhinia Junction (1971)
Man from Bahl Bahla (1971)
Summer Magic (1971)
Return to Belle Amber (1971)
Ring of Jade (1972)
Copper Moon (1972)
Rainbow Bird (1972)
Man Like Daintree (1972)
Noonfire (1972)
Storm Over Mandargi (1973)
Wind River (1973)
Love Theme (1974)
McCabe's Kingdom (1974)
Sweet Sundown (1974)
Reeds of Honey (1975)
Storm Flower (1975)
Lesson in Loving (1975)
Flight into Yesterday (1976)
Red Cliffs of Malpara (1976)
Man on Half-moon (1976)
Swan's Reach (1976)
Mutiny in Paradise (1977)
One Way Ticket (1977)
Portrait of Jaime (1977)
Black Ingo (1977)
Awakening Flame (1978)
Wild Swan (1978)
Ring of Fire (1978)
Wake the Sleeping Tiger (1978)
Valley of the Moon (1979)
White Magnolia (1979)
Winds of Heaven (1979)
Blue Lotus (1979)
Butterfly and the Baron (1979)
Golden Puma (1980)
Temple of Fire (1980)
Lord of the High Valley (1980)
Flamingo Park (1980)
North of Capricorn (1981)
Season for Change (1981)
Shadow Dance (1981)
McIvor Affair (1981)
Home to Morning Star (1981)
Broken Rhapsody (1982)
The Silver Veil (1982)
Spellbound (1982)
Hunter's Moon (1982)
Girl at Cobalt Creek (1983)
No Alternative (1983)
House of Memories (1983)
Almost a Stranger (1984)
A place called Rambulara (1984)
Fallen Idol (1984)
Hunt the Sun (1985)
Eagle's Ridge (1985)
The Tiger's Cage (1986)
Innocent in Eden (1986)
Diamond Valley (1986)
Morning Glory (1988)
Devil Moon (1988)
Mowana Magic (1988)
Hungry Heart (1988)
Rise of an Eagle (1988)
One Fateful Summer (1993)
The Carradine Brand (1994)
Holding on to Alex (1997)
The Australian Heiress (1997)
Claiming His Child (1999)
The Cattleman's Bride (2000)
The Cattle Baron (2001)
The Husbands of the Outback (2001)
Secrets of the Outback (2002)
With This Ring (2003)
Innocent Mistress (2004)
Cattle Rancher, Convenient Wife (2007)
Outback Marriages (2007)
Promoted: Nanny to Wife (2007)
Cattle Rancher, Secret Son (2007)
Genni's Dilemma (2008)
Bride At Briar Ridge (2009)
Outback Heiress, Surprise Proposal (2009)
Cattle Baron, Nanny Needed (2009)

Legends of the Outback Series
Mail Order Marriage (1999)
The Bridesmaid's Wedding (2000)
The English Bride (2000)
A Wife at Kimbara (2000)

Koomera Crossing Series
Sarah's Baby (2003)
Runaway Wife (2003)
Outback Bridegroom (2003)
Outback Surrender (2003)
Home to Eden (2004)

McIvor Sisters Series
The Outback Engagement (2005)
Marriage at Murraree (2005)

Men Of The Outback Series
The Cattleman (2006)
The Cattle Baron's Bride (2006)
Her Outback Protector (2006)
The Horseman (2006)

Outback Marriages Series
Outback Man Seeks Wife (2007)
Cattle Rancher, Convenient Wife (2007)

Barons of the Outback Series Multi-Author
Wedding At Wangaree Valley (2008)
Bride At Briar's Ridge (2008)

Family Ties Multi-Author
Once Burned (1995)

Hitched! Multi-Author
A Faulkner Possession (1996)

Simply the Best Multi-Author
Georgia and the Tycoon (1997)

The Big Event Multi-Author
Beresford's Bride (1998)

Guardian Angels Multi-Author
Gabriel's Mission (1998)

Australians Series Multi-Author
7  Her Outback Man (1998)
17  Master of Maramba (2001)
19  Outback Fire (2001)
22  Mistaken Mistress (2002)
24  Outback Angel (2002)
33  The Australian Tycoon's Proposal (2004)
35  His Heiress Wife (2004)

Marrying the Boss Series Multi-Author
Boardroom Proposal (1999)

Contract Brides Series Multi-Author
Strategy for Marriage (2002)

Everlasting Love Series Multi-Author
Hidden Legacy (2008)

Diamond Brides Series Multi-Author
The Australian's Society Bride (2008)

Collections
Summer Magic / Ring of Jade / Noonfire (1981)
Wife at Kimbara / Bridesmaid's Wedding (2005)

Omnibus in Collaboration
Pretty Witch / Without Any Amazement / Storm Over Mandargi (1977) (with Lucy Gillen and Margaret Malcolm)
Dear Caliban / Heart of the Eagle / Swans' Reach (1978) (with Jane Donnelly and Elizabeth Graham)
The Bonds of Matrimony / Dragon Island / Reeds of Honey (1979) (with Elizabeth Hunter and Henrietta Reid)
The Man Outside / Castles in Spain / McCabe's Kingdom (1979) (with Jane Donnelly and Rebecca Stratton)
Winds From The Sea / Island of Darkness / Wind River (1979) (with Margaret Pargeter and Rebecca Stratton)
Moorland Magic / Tree of Idleness / Sweet Sundown (1980) (with Elizabeth Ashton and Elizabeth Hunter)
The Shifting Sands / Portrait of Jaime / Touched by Fire (1982) (with Jane Donnelly and Kay Thorpe)
Head of Chancery / Wild Heart / One-Way Ticket (1986) (with Betty Beaty and Doris Smith)
Heart of the Scorpion / The Winds of Heaven / Sweet Compulsion (1987) (with Janice Gray and Victoria Woolf)
One Brief Sweet Hour / Once More With Feeling / Blue Lotus (1990) (with Jane Arbor and Natalie Sparks)
Marry Me Cowboy (1995) (with Janet Dailey, Susan Fox and Anne McAllister)
Husbands on Horseback (1996) (with Diana Palmer)
Wedlocked (1999) (with Day Leclaire and Anne McAllister)
Mistletoe Magic (1999) (with Betty Neels and Rebecca Winters)
The Australians (2000) (with Helen Bianchin and Miranda Lee)
Weddings Down Under (2001) (with Helen Bianchin and Jessica Hart)
Outback Husbands (2002) (with Marion Lennox)
The Mother's Day Collection (2002) (with Helen Dickson and Kate Hoffmann)
Australian Nights (2003) (with Miranda Lee)
Outback Weddings (2003) (with Barbara Hannay)
Australian Playboys (2003) (with Helen Bianchin and Marion Lennox)
Australian Tycoons (2004) (with Emma Darcy and Marion Lennox)
A Mother's Day Gift (2004) (with Anne Ashley and Lucy Monroe)
White Wedding (2004) (with Judy Christenberry and Jessica Steele)
A Christmas Engagement (2004) (with Sara Craven and Jessica Matthews)
A Very Special Mother's Day (2005) (with Anne Herries)
All I Want for Christmas    (2005) (with Betty Neels and Jessica Steele)
The Mills and Boon Collection (2006) (with Caroline Anderson and Penny Jordan)
Outback Desire (2006) (with Emma Darcy and Carol Marinelli)
To Mum, with Love (2006) (with Rebecca Winters)
Australian Heroes (2007) (with Marion Lennox and Fiona McArthur)
Tall, Dark and Sexy (2008) (with Caroline Anderson and Helen Bianchin)
The Boss's Proposal (2008) (with Jessica Steele and Patricia Thayer)
Island Heat / Outback Man Seeks Wife / Prince's Forbidden Virgin / One Night Before Marriage / Their Lost-and-found Family / Single Dad's Marriage Wish (2008) (with Robyn Donald, Marion Lennox, Carol Marinelli, Sarah Mayberry and Anne Oliver)
Australian Billionaires (2009) (with Jennie Adams and Amy Andrews)
Cattle Baron : Nanny Needed / Bachelor Dad on Her Doorstep (2009) (with Michelle Douglas)

External links
Margaret Way at Harlequin Enterprises Ltd

Australian romantic fiction writers
Australian women novelists
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Women romantic fiction writers
Context 3: Paper Info

Title: Two-stage Pipeline for Multilingual Dialect Detection
Publish Date: Unkown
Author List: Ankit Vaidya (from Pune Institute of Computer Technology), Aditya Kane (from Pune Institute of Computer Technology)

Figure

Figure 1: Class distribution of dialects
Figure 2: System diagram for dialect classification The LID classifies the input into one of 3 languages The sample is then further classified into dialects by language specific models 
Figure 3: Confusion matrix of 9-way classification Note that rows are normalized according to the number of samples is that class 
Our complete results for Track-1 using the two-stage dialect detection pipeline Model-* denotes the language of the models used for the experiments 
Performance on Track-1 validation dataset of individual models used in the two-stage pipeline "Lg" stands for language of the model used 
Comparative results of two-way classification using the finetuned (F T ) predictions and predictions adapted from three-way classification models 

abstract

Dialect Identification is a crucial task for localizing various Large Language Models  This paper outlines our approach to the VarDial 2023 DSL-TL shared task  Here we have to identify three or two dialects from three languages each which results in a 9-way classification for Track-1 and 6-way classification for Track-2 respectively 
Our proposed approach consists of a two-stage system and outperforms other participants' systems and previous works in this domain  We achieve a score of 58 54% for Track-1 and 85 61% for Track-2  Our codebase is available publicly 1  

Introduction

Language has been the primary mode of communication for humans since the pre-historic ages  Studies have explored the evolution of language and outlined mathematical models that govern the intricacies of natural language   Inevitably, as humans established civilization in various parts of the world, this language was modified by, and for the group of people occupied by that particular geographical region 
This gave rise to multiple national dialects of the same language  The VarDial workshop (colocated with EACL 2023) explores various dialects and variations of the same language  We participated in the Discriminating Between Similar Languages -True Labels (DSL-TL) shared task  In this task, the participants were provided with data from three languages, with each language having three varieties 
This shared task consisted of two tracks -Track-1 featuring nine-way classification and Track-2 featuring six-way classification  The second track included two particular national dialects of each language (eg  American English and British English), and the first track had one general  We ranked 1 st in both of the tracks 
Moreover, we beat the next best submission by a margin of 4 5% in the first task and 5 6% in the second task We were the only team to surpass the organizer baseline scores  We present our winning solution in this paper  We used an end-to-end deep learning pipeline which consisted of a language identification model and three language-specific models, one for each language 
We converged upon the best combination by doing an elaborate analysis of various models available  Furthermore, in this work we also analyze the performance of the pipeline as a whole and also provide an ablation study  Lastly, we provide some future directions in this area of research 

Related Work

The present literature encompasses various aspects of dialect identification  We study this from three perspectives: large language models, language identification and dialect classification problems 

Large Language Models

The success of transformers and BERT based models was inevitable since the initial boom of the transformer  2017) model  In recent years, many other architectures like RoBERTa and ELECTRA have further pushed the state-of-the-art in this domain  Moreover, autoregressive models like GPT and GPT-2 have also shown their prowess 
Multilingual versions of RoBERTA, namely XLM-RoBERTa are also available  Lastly, language specific models like Spanish BERT (la Rosa y Eduardo G  Ponferrada y Manu Romero y Paulo Villegas y Pablo González de Prado Salas y María Grandury, 2022) and Portuguese BERT are available as well  Our winning solution makes use of these large language models trained on specific languages 

Language Identification Models

Many multilingual language identification models have been developed in order to classify the language of the input sentence beforehand  Even though the initial works used n-gram models and generative mixture models or even conditional random fields and other classical machine learning methods like naive bayes , modern methods have shifted to the use of deep learning for language identification  
Recent works have mainly focused on deep learning based language identification, where handling codemixed data is a big challenge in the domain  For our experiments, we use a version of XLM-RoBERTa finetuned on a language identification dataset 2   This model has near-perfect test accuracy of 99 6% 

Dialect Classification

Dialect classification has been previously solved using statistical methods like Gaussian Mixture Models and Frame Selection Decoding or Support Vector Machines (SVM)   It has been explored relatively sparsely, mostly in the case for local languages   Deep learning approaches have been explored in previous editions of the VarDial workshop shared tasks and otherwise  
Dialect classification was also explored previously as a part of other shared tasks   We want to stress that given the multilingual nature of the dataset, using the present methods directly was not an option  In our work, although we take inspiration from the previous works, we propose a novel system that surpasses the performance of the previous systems by a large margin 

Data

The dataset  We observed that the class PT-BR had the most number of samples (2,724) and the class EN had the least number of samples (349), and thus the imbalance ratio was almost 1:8  We have illustrated the data distribution in Figure   We tried to mitigate this imbalance using over-sampling and weighted sampling methods 
However, the improved data sampling method did not affect the performance 

System Description

This was a problem of multi-class classification having 9 classes for Track-1 and 6 classes for Track-2  The samples were belonging to 3 languages having 3 varieties each, so the classification pipeline was made in 2 stages  The Language Identification (LID) model which is the first stage classifies the sentence into 3 languages: English (EN), Spanish (ES) and Portuguese (PT) 
The LID is a pretrained XLM-RoBERTa that is fine-tuned for the task of language identification  It is able to classify the input sentence into 20 languages  We classify and separate the samples according to their language  The samples corresponding to the specific languages are then fed into the language specific models for dialect identification 
For dialect identification we have used models like BERT and RoBERTa with a linear layer connected to the pooler output of the models  Then fine-tuning is done on the models for dialect identification   using the samples corresponding to the specific languages  For the task of dialect identification we experimented with several pretrained models like XLM-RoBERTa, BERT, ELECTRA, GPT-2 and RoBERTa 
All models were fine-tuned for 20 epochs with a learning rate of 1e-6 and weight decay 1e-6 with a batch size of 8



ground_truth: Margaret Way was born in Brisbane and died in Cleveland, Queensland, Australia.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What was the best performing model for the Spanish language in Track-1?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 3:  The best performing model checkpoint was chosen according to the epoch-wise validation macro-F1 score  5 Experiments and Results

Experiments using Large Language Models

For the task of Dialect Identification we have tried various language specific models like XLM-RoBERTa, BERT, ELECTRA, RoBERTa and GPT- 2  The base variant of all these models were used and all the models were used through the Hugging-Face library  The pooler output of these models was passed through a linear layer and the models were fine-tuned 
First, we experimented with different models for Track-1  All the models were trained for 20 epochs with learning rate 1e-6, weight decay 1e-6 and a batch size of 8  We used XLM-RoBERTa as the baseline for all 3 languages  The best performing models for the English language were RoBERTa and BERT whereas GPT-2 was the worst performing 
Similarly the language specific versions of RoBERTa and BERT performed well for the Spanish and Portuguese respectively  Overall the worst performing model was GPT-2 across all 3 languages  The validation F1 scores are present in Table   The two best-performing models for every language were chosen for Track-2 
The same procedure as specified above was used and the F1 scores are present in Table   The train and validation F1 scores for 2-class classification are higher for all models as compared to the F1 score of the same models for 3-class classification  This was mainly due to the poor representation and accuracy of classification of the third class 
We observed symptoms of overfitting in all models after 12-15 epochs and the best validation F1 score was obtained in the range of 4-8 epochs 

LID experiments

The pipeline for dialect identification is divided into two parts as the sentences in the dataset belong to different languages  The stages are described in Section 4  The XLM-RoBERTa we have used for language classification has a test accuracy of 99 6% meaning it correctly classifies all input sentences and hence, can be considered as a perfect classifier 
For the final pipeline we experimented using the two best performing models for each language in Track-1 and Track-2  For both the tracks we experimented with all 8 (2 3 ) possible combinations of models and calculated the validation F1 score for the combined validation dataset which had sentences belonging to all languages 
The validation scores for Track-1 and Track-2 are shown in Table and Table respectively  For both the tracks, the three pipelines with the best validation F1 scores were chosen for submission 

Using 3-way classifier as a 2-way classifier

In Track-1, participants are expected to train a classifier which classifies amongst 9 classes, and in Track-2, participants are expected to train a classifier which classifies amongst 6 classes  These 6 classes are a proper subset of the 9 classes from Track-1  Thus, an intuitive baseline for Track-2 is to use the model finetuned for Track-1, whilst considering only the relevant classes for the latter task 
The classes EN , ES and P T , i e  the classes without any national dialect associated with them are not included in Track-2 as compared to Track-1  Thus, we calculate the predictions for the Track-2 validation dataset using the models for Track-1 and exclude the metrics for Track-1 specific classes to get the metrics for this "adapted" 2-way classification 
We show the results of this experiment in Table and observe that, as expected, the adapted 2-way classification performs worse compared to the explicitly finetuned variant 

Results for Track-1 and Track-2

We now present our experiments and their performance for both tracks  Our experiments for Track-1 are described in Table and our experiments for Track-2 are described in Table   The participants were allowed three submissions for evaluation on the test set, so we submitted predictions using the three systems which performed the best on the validation set 
As mentioned in Section 5 2, we performed 2 3 , i e  a total of 8 experiments using the two best models for each language  We observed that RoBERTa base on English, Spanish BERT base on Spanish and Portuguese BERT base performed the best on the testing set for Track-1  The same combination, with RoBERTa base for English, worked best for Track-2 
All of our submissions were the top submissions for each track, which surpassed the next best competitors by a margin of 4 5% and 5 6% for Track-1 and Track-2 respectively 

Ablation of best submissions

We hereby make some observations of our submissions and other experiments  To assist this, we plot the confusion matrices of our best submissions for Track-1 and Track-2 in Figures respectively  Note that these confusion matrices have their rows (i e  true labels axes) normalized according to the number of samples in the class 
Here are observations from our experiments: 1  BERT-based models outperform other models across all languages: We observe that BERT-based models outperform ELECTRA-based and GPT-2-based models, as shown in Table   We speculate this is because of the inherent architecture of BERT, which combines semantic learning with knowledge retention 
This combination of traits is particularly useful for this task  2  Common labels perform the worst across all languages: We observe that the common labels EN , ES and P T perform the worst, both in the individual as well as the two-stage setup  We hypothesize this is because of the absence of dialect specific words, or words that are specific to the geographical origin of the national dialect (for example, "Yankees" for EN-US and "Oxford" for EN-GB) 
3  English models work better than models of other languages: It can be noted from Figures 4 and 3 that the English models have the best performance across all classes  This can be attributed to two reasons: absence of national dialect specific words and lesser pretraining data in the case of Portuguese 
4  British English is most correctly classified class: We can observe that the Spanish or Portuguese models make equal number of mistakes in the case of either national dialect, in the case of Track-2 (see Figure )  However, in the case of English, the label EN − GB is correctly classified for more than 95% of the cases 
We speculate this is because British English involves slightly distinctive grammar and semantics, which help the model separate it from other classes  5  The proposed 2-step method is scalable for multiple language dialect classification: We can strongly assert that the novel 2-step deep learning method for multilingual dialect classification is a scalable method for the task due to two specific reasons: firstly, the multilingual models (like XLM-RoBERTa) might not have the vocabulary as well as the learning capabilities to learn the minute differences between individual dialects 
Secondly, this system can be quickly expanded for a new language by simply adding a language specific dialect classifier, provided the language identification model supports that particular language 

Conclusion

In this paper we propose a two-stage classification pipeline for dialect identification for multilingual corpora  We conduct thorough ablations on this setup and provide valuable insights  We foresee multiple future directions for this work  The first is to expand this work to many languages and dialects 
Secondly, it is a worthwhile research direction to distill this multi-model setup into a single model with multiple prediction heads  The obvious limitation of this system is the excessive memory consumption due to the usage of language specific models  For low resource languages this system is difficult to train and scale 
We hope that these problems will be addressed by researchers in future works 



ground_truth: The best performing model for the Spanish language in Track-1 was Spanish BERT.