The "International Conference on Experimentation in Ecosystem Research in a Changing World: Challenges and Opportunities" will take place on the 24th and 25th of September at the National Museum of Natural History (auditorium de la Grande Galerie de l'Evolution), Paris, France.

Context:

The Earth's rapidly changing environment is putting critical ecosystem services at risk. There are many challenges involved in understanding global environmental changes, and in providing societies with the policy-relevant knowledge base to deal with them. These challenges will reach across many aspects of scientific endeavour. Indeed, the research community requires state-of-the-art research infrastructures (RIs) to have the capability to explain and predict global environmental changes. In this context the Experimentation in Ecosystem Research conference will provide a platform for discussions on cutting-edge technological tools, large-scale integrative experimental design, technical constraints, data access and last but not least ecosystem modelling. The conference will attract speakers and delegates from around the world and will offer opportunities to reinforce global cooperation.  

Main topics:

• Grand challenges: With the current set of Experimental Research infrastructures in ecosystem science, do we have the capacity to tackle the grand challenges of today and tomorrow?
• In vitro and in natura : How realistic are they, and how they can be better linked?
• Technologies: Which emerging technologies could enhance (or are needed for) the performance and services offered by our RIs?
• Data: Towards an e-infrastructure for ecosystem research - challenges and opportunities
• Modelling:  How accurate is our capacity to forecast and upscale, and what is missing? How can we communicate uncertainty? How do we strike the right balance between modelling and experiments?

The conference is organized under the framework of the European FP7 project ExpeER ( www.expeeronline.eu )

Find out more in the flyer attached below or on the event's website: https://colloque6.inra.fr/expeer-conference

The final SCARCE International Conference "River Conservation under Water Scarcity: Integration of water quantity and quality in Iberian Rivers under global change" will take place on 20 - 21 October 2014 in Terragona, Spain.

SCARCE is a multipurpose project that aims to describe and predict the relevance of global change impacts on water availability, water quality and ecosystem services in Mediterranean river basins of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as their impacts on the human society and economy. The project has assembled a multidisciplinary team of leading scientists in the fields of hydrology, geomorphology, chemistry, ecology, ecotoxicology, economy, engineering and modelling, in an unknown effort in the CONSOLIDER framework. The topics of the Final SCARCE International Conference are:

•  Integrating the effects of chemical quality with environmental stressors on biodiversity and human risks
•  Linking chemical exposure and biological effects
•  Integrated assessment of water quantity and quality and Global Change
•  Integrating results to predict global change impacts on freshwater ecosystem services
•  Global change and adaptation and mitigation measures
• Prediction of future threats and mitigation proposals in the light of the analysis of the economic and social impacts
•  Water scarcity, freshwater ecosystem services and integration in RBMPs
•  Integrating science and policy

The Conference is planned in form of oral talks, posters and discussions, where experts from different fields can share their knowledge.

The conference invites to anyone working on water sustainability to share knowledge to face a changing world in water resources management.

The final conference programme is available an attachment below.

The goal is to identify science-based solutions for global sustainability focusing on the issues of biodiversity and food security. Current ecological, economic and societal challenges for development require a holistic understanding of food security and environmental management: from this perspective, biodiversity can be seen as key to overcome trade-offs and to develop synergies between the food system and the conservation of landscapes, ecosystems, and species. The conference seeks to attract scientists from basic and applied research. It involves policy makers and other stakeholders concerned with biodiversity and food security themes who are interested in developing new solutions and strategies. It will connect researchers and stakeholders from natural sciences, social sciences, economics, humanities, technology and related fields.

http://biodiv2014.sciencesconf.org/

The SciDataCon 2014 will take place on 2–5 November 2014 in New Delhi, India and will be hosted by the Indian National Science Academy. With high-level keynotes, a mix of plenary and parallel sessions, and a stimulating poster session, SciDataCon is conceived as a focussed—yet inclusive—conference to address the issues most important to the global scientific and research community as they pertain to data and information. The International Scientific Programme Committee will play a key role in implementing the scientific programme with innovative online consultation and input from research and data science communities worldwide.

The sustainability challenges facing society today cannot be solved without multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on global sustainability that requires the use, sharing and integration of data across scientific disciplines and domains and from international sources. The effectiveness and credibility of this research will rely on the availability to the scientific and research community of quality-assessed and interoperable datasets.

To facilitate the work of international research undertakings—including the Future Earth international research programme on global sustainability launched by ICSU and its partners in 2014—and amplify the message of like-minded global data initiatives promoting data sharing and interoperability—including the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the recently established Research Data Alliance (RDA)—SciDataCon 2014 will highlight the theme of Data Sharing and Integration for Global Sustainability.

Applications for expert members of the International Scientific Programme Committee are invited. Please submit applications no later than 14 February 2014 using the online form available here.

Programme will be available in available in September, for registration: follow the link !

The University of Bayreuth welcomes the International Biogeography Society for its 7th international conference, taking place on 8-12 January 2015. This modern research university has a major focus on ecological research housed in the Bayreuth Center for Ecology and Environmental Research (BayCEER). Novel concepts for research and teaching are established such as the Ecological-Botanical Gardens and the Global Change Ecology study program.

The surroundings of Bayreuth are characterized by outstanding geological and climatic heterogeneity. Isolated fragments of natural ecosystems occur within a highly diverse cultural landscape. It was in the district of Bayreuth where Alexander von Humboldt, a leader in the early history of biogeography, gained his first experience in fieldwork after he finished his studies. At the end of the 18th century, before travelling the world, he worked as director of mining for the regional administration. Various places close to Bayreuth are linked to his scientific development.

The conference will be marked by four plenary symposia, keynote lectures by the awardees of the society’s Alfred Russel Wallace Award and the MacArthur and Wilson Award, contributed paper sessions, and dynamic poster sessions over the lunch and evening. Topical focus sessions will span the breadth of biogeography, from watersheds to the global scale, from Paleozoic to the Anthropocene, and from microbes to megafauna.   

Essential details about the conference, and about the surrounding area, are available via the links above. Information will be updated as details become available in the coming months, so please check back occasionally or stay informed via Facebook and Twitter.

Symposium: PS-2 Tracking Changes from Space: Advances of Remote Sensing in Biogeography

A key problem that biogeographers and ecologists have strived to understand is the spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of the biota. In this age of climatic and land use changes and rapid rates of species extinctions, such knowledge has become an essential component for management and conservation. The synoptic view provided by earth-imaging sensors constitutes an important source of information on the distribution of habitats and biodiversity patterns at different spatial and temporal scales. The traditional approach to using these data has involved the classification of discrete land cover types which are then related to species distributions. A critical limitation of this approach is that many important dynamics are obscured as the variance is lost within arbitrary land cover classes. In recent years, novel analytical techniques and open source software have been developed that more fully exploit the spatial, spectral and temporal information content of remotely sensed imagery in order to quantify a broader range of ecosystem characteristics. This symposium features advances in the synoptic assessment of species distributions and biodiversity patterns including the development of methodologies for assessment, monitoring, and modeling, as well as their implications for management and conservation.

More about the program and speakers available on the conference webpage: http://www.bayceer.uni-bayreuth.de/ibs2015/

From 22 to 24 March 2015, the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) will host an international conference at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, entitled, Africa Rising: Mobilising Biodiversity Data for Sustainable Development. The event is being organised in partnership with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the United Nations Environment Programme – World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). It aims to:

1. Accelerate regional understanding of the biodiversity data-science-policy value chain and draw attention to the opportunities and solutions that biodiversity data presents for sustainable development in Africa;
2. Strengthen regional engagement, learning networks, and collaborative synergies with a view to streamlining the data-science-policy value chain; and
3. Galvanise political commitment to mobilising Africa’s biodiversity data.

The event emanates from the project, Mobilising Africa’s Biodiversity Data, which is generously supported by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation and entails developing a strategy for capturing, digitising and publishing Africa’s policy-relevant biodiversity data whilst strengthening regional capacity and collaboration in biodiversity information management.

More information is available at: http://www.sanbi.org/news/sanbi-host-africa-rising-mobilising-biodiversity-data-sustainable-development-conference

The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren (Belgium) is part of the FishBase Consortium and responsible for the information on the fresh- and brackish water fishes of Africa. Through an agreement with the Belgian Development Cooperation and as part of the FishBase program, the RMCA has five grants available for a 3-month training program in the use of FishBase and the taxonomy of African fishes.

The training includes three subsets:

1. A detailed explanation of FishBase in all its aspects;
2. A training in the taxonomy of African fishes;
3. A case study based on data from FishBase or on taxa for which taxonomic problems have been encountered.

This course has been offered annually since 2005 and is held at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Leuvensesteenweg 13, B-3080 Tervuren, Belgium). To apply for traineeship and for more information, please click here or here. Please note that for 2015, this course will be given in English only.

Questions? Contact Dimitri Geelhand de Merxem (dimitri.geelhand@africamuseum.be).

European Geosciences Union
General Assembly 2015
Vienna | Austria | 12 – 17 April 2015

http://www.egu2015.eu/home.html

One Workshop partiicluarly relevant for EU BON: ESSI2.17 Aggregation, consolidation and coordination of Earth observation networks. Harmonization and gaps

Convener: Joan Masó
Co-Convener: Ivette Serral

Abstract
We are investing in many efforts in creating pan-European or global EO thematic networks but are managed independently and coordination between them is limited. Europe is investing in the Sentinel constellation an at the same time, several initiatives are setting out to create, maintain and operationalize networks of in-situ sensors. These observation networks are usually conceived with a specific purpose in mind (e.g., air quality monitoring in the main cities or coastal water contamination), and they often lack a general coverage, are scattered irregularly in the territory, and sometimes are removed when the measurement campaign ends. There is a need for integrating systems and coordinating them more efficiently, explore synergies and make progress in harmonized and extend them.
Some initiatives aim to coordinate several themes into a single observation set. This is the case of the Critical Zone Exploration (the Earth’s outer layer from vegetation canopy to the soil and groundwater that sustains human life). The CZEN (Critical Zone Exploration Network; http://www.czen.org) is a network of field sites investigating processes within the Critical Zone.

This session is asking for presentations on the coordination between observation network examples and solutions to overcome technical and political barriers that help to reduce the cost and increase value by combining and sharing structures. Papers discussing gaps or redundancies in the current Earth observation networks are also welcome.

http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2015/session/18560

The SETAC Europe 25^th Annual Meeting will be held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, from 3-7 May 2015.  

The innovative use of chemicals and nanomaterials in new technologies, industry and agriculture challenges many aspects of the ecosystem functioning of the global environment. However, these new technologies and materials also offer opportunities to remediate or minimise these anthropogenic insults. Finding innovative solutions to environmental problems is ever more important in the current economic scenario.  This international conference brings together experts from government, industry, consultancy and academia to meet this challenge. The conference will focus on the most recent advances in environmental sciences and will provide platforms for implementing this knowledge, for improving the protection of our environment and to shape policies from current viewpoints to future needs.

Learn more here: http://barcelona.setac.eu/general_info/welcome!/?contentid=790&pr_id=766&last=769&sub=790

36th International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment (ISRSE) will take place on May 11-15, 2015 in Berlin, Germany.

This 36th Symposium will represent a major event in the long series of internationally recognized ISRSE meetings. The overall theme of the symposium is the use of Earth Observation systems and related Remote Sensing techniques for understanding and managing the Earth environment and resources.

The event will also feature sessions "Biodiversity and Conservation" aiming to show the developments and potential of remote sensing within biodiversity and conservation science.

Find out more about this session in the brochure attached below or n the event website: www.isrse36.org

All 12 themes for abstract submission are listed in the Technical programme: http://www.isrse36.org/technical-programme/ and under Abstract submission: http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/ISRSE36/sessionprogramme and Deadline for Abstracts is latest 9 November 2014.

Registration: http://www.isrse36.org/registration/

There is a world of tools, standards and data out there, ready for you to use. Biodiversity Informatics deals with the application of informatics techniques to biodiversity information for improved management, presentation, discovery, exploration and analysis of scientific data. Combined with open data sources on the Internet, this is a powerful new approach in doing research. During this conference, organised by the Belgian Biodiversity Platform and several key institutes, we would like to take you on a trip to the world of biodiversity informatics & open data. After this conference a series of related workshops will be organized.

in Leipzig

The 13th European Ecological Federation (EEF) and 25th Italian Society of Ecology’s (S.It.E.) joint conference will take place in Rome from 21st - 25th September 2015.  

"Ecology at the Interface" focuses on interactions at all biological levels, from membrane exchanges to food web dynamics, in addition to physical ecotones, from deep sediment-bottom water to land-atmosphere, and disciplinary ecotones linking ecology to sociology, economics, law, technology and other fields of knowledge concerning daily human life.

For 5 full days the conference expects about 1500 participants from all over Europe, proposing a rich programme articulated in a number of plenary and contributed sessions, symposia, workshops andround tables.      

Deadlines for symposia and workshop proposals and abstract submission are available here and the first circular here.  

The proposed venue is the Congress Centre of Rome - EUR.

You can download the full brochure here.

For more information visit the official conference website.

The official Governing Board meeting, including the GBIF symposium, will take place on 8-10 October in Antananarivo, Madagascar. Prior to that there will be Training sessions for Nodes on 4-5 October, followed by the Global Nodes Meeting on 6-7 October. Committee meetings will take place on 6 October.

A special symposium will be hosted on 7 October where all delegates are invited to attend. After the Governing Board meeting, on 11 October, there is a possibility to visit the Andasibe National Park.  

The  4th edition of the DEST course ‘BASICS of TAXONOMY’ will take place from 5 to16 October 2015 at the Sven Lovén Centre for Marine Sciences, Kristineberg, Sweden.

Taught by renowned experts in their field, the course topics are:

- DELTA
- Digital drawing
- Scientific illustration
- Scientific writing and communication
- Scratchpads, a tool to build, publish and share information on the web

Target audience: MSc students, PhD students, early career researchers

Thanks to funding of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, this 2-weeks course is offered at a discounted rate of 550 EUR.

Fee includes accommodation and meals.                                                                                                                                          

More info: http://taxonomytraining.eu/content/basics-taxonomy-describing-illustrating-and-communicating-biodiversity

The International Symposium "What can Remote Sensing do for the Conservation of Wetlands?" will take place on 23 October 2015 in parallel with the XVI Congreso de la Asociación Española de Teledetección (XVI Meeting of the Spanish Remote Sensing Association) in Seville, Spain.

The Symposium aims to become an interdisciplinary meeting for wetland managers and scientists interested in remote sensing as well as remote sensing experts doing research in wetlands.

Wetlands are fragile and dynamic ecosystems sensitive to changes in climate and land-use, and rich in biodiversity. For centuries they were considered to have little or no value, and most have been drained or transformed. In 1971 the first international convention for the protection of Wetlands, the Ramsar Convention, was signed to promote their conservation and sustainable use. Now it is recognized that wetlands provide fundamental ecosystem services, such as water regulation, filtering and purification, as well as scientific, cultural, and recreational values. Wetlands constitute an extensive array of ecosystems ranging from lakes and rivers to marshes and tidal flats. An increasing number of wetlands have some kind of legal protection, and many wetlands are monitored and actively managed.

For more information on the symposium, please visit the official webpage: http://wetlandssymposium.com/

The Europena Conference "Nature-based Solutions to Climate Change  in Urban Areas and their Rural Surroundings: Linkages between science, policy and practice" will take place from 17 to 19 November 2015 in Bonn, Germany.

The event is a joint European Conference held by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) and the European Network of Heads of Nature Conservation Agencies (ENCA) in co-operation with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) / German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv).

Climate change has significant impact on society and biodiversity in Europe. Urban inhabitants are most likely to experience climate change effects directly because currently 73 per cent of Europeans live in urban areas. Here, management of urban ecosystems offer sustainable and cost-effective solutions to climate change mitigation and adaptation while contributing to human well-being.

This European conference will bring together experts from science, policy and practice to highlight and debate the importance of nature-based solutions to climate change in urban areas and their rural surroundings. Emphasize is given to the potential of nature-based approaches to create multiple-benefits.

The conference is divided into three main areas (day 1: science, day 2: practice and implementation, day 3: policy and business), each of which will be opened by keynote speakers including:

• Hans Bruyninckx (Executive Director European Environmental Agency, EEA)
• Wilhelm Krull (Chair of the H2020 expert group on nature-based solutions and re-naturing cities, Secretary General Volkswagen Foundation)
• Georgina Mace (University College London – UCL, Director of Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research)
• Christine Wamsler (Lund University, Centre for Sustainability Studies)
• Nataša Jazbinšek (Head of Department for Environmental Protection City of Ljubljana and Head of working group for European Green Capital programme 2016)
• Wolfgang Teubner (ICLEI Regional Director for Europe)
• Kurt Vandenberghe (Director for Climate action and resource efficiency at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research and Innovation)
• Chantal van Ham (IUCN – EU Programme Manager Nature Based Solutions)
• Dirk Sijmons (Delft University of Technology)

Keynote speeches are complemented by plenary presentations given by leading experts in the fields of urban biodiversity, climate change, and socio-economic effects of nature-based solutions, interactive sessions and a poster exhibition.

Deadline for abstract submission is 24 July 2015 (abstract submission guidelines)

Registration:

Early bird registration deadline: 18 September 2015

Final registration deadline: 30 October 2015

For more information and to register please visit: http://www.ecbcc2015.com/

The Global Bioeconomy Summit 2015 will take place on 25 & 26 November at the Berlin Congress Center (BCC), Berlin, Germany.

Food security, sustainable development, economic growth and the conservation of scarce natural resources – the promises of bioeconomy are manifold. The Global Bioeconomy Summit is the first community building platform to discuss bioeconomy policies globally. This summit builds on the post 2015 development goals to start a multilateral agenda setting process for a sustainable bioeconomy. For this purpose the German Bioeconomy Council invites more than 500 leaders from policy, research, industry and civil society to Berlin.

For more information about the congress and registrtion, please visit: http://www.gbs2015.com/home/

The 3rd EU BON Stakeholder Round Table "Biodiversity data workflow - from data mobilisation to practice" will take place on 10&11 December 2015 Granada, Spain.

One main objective of the round table is to understand how the workflow from data mobilisation to decision making functions in practice, including within the context of EU BON.

Firstly, we want to evaluate what kind of (biodiversity) data are available and what workflows and best practices already exist. Secondly, we want to assess which gaps still exist and what will be needed to improve the current situation to overcome existing barriers.

Please register here: http://societas.biodiv.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/?q=node/64

More information available on teh official conference website.

The 1st GLOBAQUA International Conference will be held on 11-12 January 2016 in Freising, Germany. The interdisciplinary conference will go under the motto "Managing The Effects Of Multiple Stressors On Aquatic Ecosystems Under Water Scarcity".

The conference will serve as a platform for exchange and discus­sion of innovative scientific findings and methods in aquatic ecosys­tems research. It will focus on novel methods of environmental monitor­ing and modeling of various scopes, scales and structural complexity to improve process understanding the interconnectivity and feedback mechanisms of climate (regional), land use (regional), economy, hydrol­ogy and hydraulics (catchment and river), water quality (river), biology and aquatic ecosystems (reach scale). Further, the conference builds the bridge to the scientific assessment of implications on policy and management.

The deadine for submitting an abstract for the conference has been now extended until 7 Nov 2015.

More information on the conference, registration, abstract submitting is available on the GLOBAQUA website

The "International Workshop Decision Models and Population Management" will take place from 2 to 4 February, 2014 in Paris, France. The three days international and interdisciplinary workshop is devoted to the decision making, in particular in presence of multiple actors with or without interaction. These problems occur in a natural way in management of populations, where the dynamics are strongly related to the decisions. The workshop aims to bring together Mathematicians, Computer Scientists and Ecologists around the problem of populations management. The population dynamics, viability theory and game theory form an umbrella of helpful mathematical tools in this context. On the other hand, the computer sciences bring the online and algorithmic mechanism design.

The workshop is motivated by concrete problems proposed by ecologists and aims to create a synergy between scientists from different backgrounds to address the challenging modelling of decision making in the context of ecological paradigms.

Invited Speakers
- Michel BENAIM (Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Swtizerland)
- Renato CASAGRANDI (Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
- Denis COUVET (Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France)
- Sylvain DUCTOR (LIP6, UPMC, Paris, France)
- Marino GATTO (Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria-Politecnico di Milano, Italy) 
- Ihab HAIDAR (Sorbonne Universités, Paris, France)
- Sophie MARTIN (UR LISC - IRSTEA)
- Nicolas MAUDET (LIP6, UPMC, Paris, France) 
- Paco MELIÀ (Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
- Jean-Baptiste MIHOUB (UPMC-Sorbonne Universités, Paris, France)
- Vianney PERCHET (Université Denis Diderot, Paris, France)
 - Karl SIGMUND (University of Vienna, Wien, Austria)
- Sylvain SORIN (IMJ-PRG, UPMC, Paris, France)
- Jean-Philippe TERREAUX (IRSTEA-ADBX, Bordeaux, France)
- Tristan TOMALA (École des hautes études commerciales de Paris, Paris, France)
- Vladimir VELIOV (Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria)
- Yannick VIOSSAT (Université Paris-Dauphine, Paris, France)

The Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) is organising the GFOI Plenary and Open Forum to be hosted by the European Space Agency in Frascati, Italy from 22 February 2016 – 26 February 2016.

"Global Biodiversity Assessment and Monitoring: Science, Data and Infrastructure Needs for IPBES and Beyond" is a joint symposium of the Future Earth Clusters ‘Global Biodiversity Assessment and Monitoring, Prediction and Reporting’ and "Support for IPBES", which will take place from 6 to 10 March 2016 in Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland. 

The symposium follows up on the initial meeting on "Global Biodiversity Monitoring" at Yale University in May 2015. The 2016 event will in particular bring biodiversity and global change scientists from Europe, Africa, and Asia to this discussion and add as additional focus the scientific needs for IPBES, in particular on indicators and scenarios. Key goals of the conference are to link the main research groups active in this area, improve data sharing, develop collaborative analyses, realize potential synergies and advance international cooperation. Work efforts to date have been organized into several working groups and the meeting will provide opportunity for these groups to advance or complete their work and for new initiatives to form. Future Earth is entering the next formative stage and the symposium is a forum to advance the role of biodiversity within Future Earth as well as develop or engage in new research and funding opportunities under its umbrella.

Please see here for the draft program and logistical information, and http://biodiversitymonitoring.org for more background about the Future Earth Biodiversity Monitoring cluster.

Further information on the event is available in the official announcement here.

The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren (Belgium), member of the FishBase Consortium and responsible for the information on the fresh- and brackish water fishes of Africa in the FishBase database, is organizing  the 'FishBase and Fish Taxonomy Training Session 2016'. This course has been offered annually since 2005 and held regularly in the RMCA located at Leuvensesteenweg 13, B-3080 Tervuren, Belgium. Through an agreement with the Belgian Development Cooperation and as part of the FishBase program, the RMCA has five (5) grants available for this year's 3-month training program (from 07 March up to 27 May 2016) in the use of FishBase and the taxonomy of African fishes. To apply for traineeship and for more information, see: http://fishbase.africamuseum.be or  www.fishbaseforafrica.org.

The training course will have three (3) subsets:

1. A detailed explanation of FishBase in all its aspects;
2. A training in the taxonomy of African fishes;
3. A case study based on data from FishBase or on taxa for which taxonomic problems have been encountered.

*For 2016, this course will be given in French only.

Questions? Contact Dimitri Geelhand de Merxem (dimitri.geelhand@africamuseum.be).

EU BON is organising a "Biodiversity data sharing and data publishing workshop" to take place in Sofia, Bulgaria on 22-23 March 2016. The event is directed to biologists and other life scientists from Eastern Europe who are actively involved in monitoring  and managing biodiversity data. A core topic of this training will be the  publishing of biodiversity data, in particular species occurrences, sample-based and citizen science data. The training will include a practical session during which participants will be assisted by experienced trainers from the EU BON project.

Addressing global problems, such as biodiversity loss and impacts of climate change requires open access to data. This was concluded by world leaders at Johannesburg Summit in 2002 when they established the Group for Earth Observations (GEO).  EU BON (Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network) seeks to enhance biodiversity data availability and integration, and is the European contribution to the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network.

All biodiversity databases need to be integrated in GEO. Therefore, EU BON undertakes capacity building of biodiversity communities (e.g. researchers, citizen scientists, non-governmental organisations) that are involved in collecting and disseminating biodiversity information, including monitoring initiatives.

The sessions on data sharing will cover introductory overview of key concepts,  demonstration and  practical  exercise using the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit  (IPT). The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is the world's largest initiative for enabling free access to biodiversity data via internet.

Special attention will be paid to data paper publishing led by specialists from Pensoft Publishers - a company well known among biodiversity scientists worldwide for technologically cutting-edge open access journals, such as: Research Ideas and Outcomes, ZooKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal, Nature Conservation, and a strong advocate of data publishing. Registration of data in GEO registry system will be also addressed during the workshop.

The following topics will be covered (detailed program will follow):

• The data publishing landscape, gaps and mobilization efforts
• Demonstration and practical session on data publishing using the GBIF IPT: step-by-step demo will show in detail (and in practice) how to publish a dataset using IPT.
• Data papers: types, structure, opportunities
• Citizen Science gateway and demo of PlutoF Citizen Science module
• GoldenGate Imagine tool and copyright issues
• Registration of data in the GEO Registry System

To register and for more information, click here.

The 54^th International Conference of the Association of German Taxidermists, organised by the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, wiill take place from 5 - 9 April 2016, in Berlin, Germany.

More information: http://www.praeparation.de/aktuelles/54_internationale_arbeitstagung 

European Geosciences Union, General assembly: Interdisciplinary Approaches in Climatic Change Research and Assessment will take place in Vienna from 17 to 22 April 2016.

Adequate response to the challenges associated with climate change requires new formats of scientific research and assessment. In the past, linear approaches, starting from the recognition of climate change, through the analysis of observed or expected impacts and ending with policy recommendations, have been the mainstream. It is now widely recognised that these approaches mostly fail to reach their objectives since they do not account for feedbacks between the physical environment and societal action, nor for the feedbacks in the various subsystems. The objective of this session is to review and discuss the problem of climatic change in all its dimensions, with a special focus on interdisciplinary approaches. Climate change science concerns a number of disciplines, such as physics, biology, economics, social sciences etc. It is essential that new forms for interact between disciplines are found in order to produce innovative results.

We do not expect to cover all the aspects of the climate change science but we hope that as well researchers in physical and natural sciences than researchers in social sciences will find interest to participate at the session to present and discuss a few exciting issues within one of several of these scopes (and more):

- The link between global climate scenarios and the socio-economic developments

- Scenarios for impact studies: from global to local

- Climate services: the relation between scientists and stakeholders

- Ecosystem services: outputs from ecosystems, challenges and responses

- Climate – societal interactions in the last millennia: can we learn from past experience?

- Socio-ecosystems, towards a comprehensive approach to sustainability Science

- The climate change policies to mitigate climatic change

- Climatic change and biodiversity

- How to couple physical, ecological and socio-economic models

- Peoples' perception of risk, how to improve communication

- Sea level change and the problems of low lying areas.

Information: http://egu2016.eu/information/general_information.html

The call for abstracts for the EGU 2016 General Assembly is now open: make sure to submit your abstract by 13 January 2016, 13:00 CET. If you would like to apply for funding from the EGU to attend, please submit your abstract within the next few days, by 1 December. This month the EGU has also open a call for proposals for EGU 2016 co-sponsored meetings and has announced a new grant scheme for EGU members interested in developing an outreach and public engagement project.       

Biodiversity without Boundaries (BWB) 2016 takes place on 18-22 April in the biodiversity-rich, abundant, and beautiful Puerto Rico.

In collaboration with our Puerto Rico Network Partners - the Puerto Rico Department of Environmental and Natural Resources (DRNA) and the leading environmental and educational nonprofit Para la Naturaleza - the NatureServe Network’s annual conference will convene hundreds of the world’s leading conservationists for a week of plenaries, symposiums, workshops, panels, presentations, and field sessions.

To register and for more information, please visit the official event's page.

Workshop on beta versions of data mobilization systems at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm.

Registration link: http://goo.gl/forms/pCvjglXpcN

The ZSL Institute of Zoology is organizing a one day symposim "Space - the final frontier for biodiversity monitoring?" to take place on 29 April 2016. The event will bring together leading experts in biodiversity monitoring and satellite remote sensing to discuss ways to better capitalise on this technology to monitor biological diversity globally.

For more information on participation and logistics, please visit the official event 's page.

The European Citizen Science Association organizes the First International ECSA Conference at the Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, Germany to take place from 19 to 21 May 2016.

The event will involve three days of talks, interactive sessions and panels to discuss and network with Citizen Scientist enthusiasts, practitioners, academic researchers, policy makers, science funders, non-governmental organisations, interested citizens and other stakeholders. The conference focuses on demonstrating and further exploring the innovation potential of Citizen Science for science, society and policy and its role within open science and innovation.

Attached below please find our Save-the-date Announcement in English and German. Please feel free to distribute it further or to print it for your institution's bill-board. Conference language will be English.

Subscribe now on the conference website and you will be sure to get all conference information: http://www.ecsa2016

The Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin are glad to welcome you to the 2016 GGBN conference, held from June 21 through June 24, 2016, in Berlin, Germany.

The 33rd (International Society of Limnology) SIL conference "Science for sustainable freshwater use" will be held from 31 July until 5 August 2016 in torino, Italy. 

Our planet is under pressure due to increased demand for freshwater. The availability and suitability of water resources are threatened by human influences, directly, through globally unbalancing the slow and fast water cycles and impairing water quality, and indirectly through the adverse effects of climate change. Many freshwater ecosystems are deteriorating in quantity and quality. As a result, an increasing number of people are chronically short of water.

In this context, limnology must represent the answer to the planetary water crisis as we need more science and more scientists to urgently face a sustainable and effective freshwater recovery. This need can be satisfied only improving our knowledge in Limnological Sciences and the people awareness of what science can do for a more sustainable use of freshwater ecosystems.

More information available here: http://www.sil2016.it/

The conference covers scenarios and modelling applications in marine, freshwater and terrestrial systems, across all relevant disciplines of natural and social sciences. It is open to scientists and experts working in the field, policy makers and practioners. The conference focuses on: (i) Exploring recent advances in modelling human impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, (ii) Addressing the use of scenarios and models for decision support, (iii) Mobilising observations of biodiversity and ecosystem services for model development and testing, (iv) Capacity building for developing scenarios and models and for their use in decision making, (v) Horizon scanning and addressing gaps in knowledge.

More information available on the conference website.

Held once every four years, the IUCN World Conservation Congress brings together several thousand leaders and decision-makers from government, civil society, indigenous peoples, business, and academia, with the goal of conserving the environment and harnessing the solutions nature offers to global challenges. The next Congress will take place 1-10 September in the Hawaiʻi Convention Center, in the Hawaiian capital, Honolulu. It is being hosted by the State of Hawaiʻi with the support of the Department of State of the USA.

The Congress aims to improve how we manage our natural environment for human, social and economic development, but this cannot be achieved by conservationists alone. The IUCN Congress is the place to put aside differences and work together to create good environmental governance, engaging all parts of society to share both the responsibilities and the benefits of conservation.

The Congress is the place where IUCN’s more than 1,300 Member organisations exercise their rights, influence the global conservation agenda and guide IUCN’s work plan for the four years to follow.

Find out more here: http://www.iucnworldconservationcongress.org/

Theme:  FishBase and SeaLifeBase: a diversity of uses for biodiversity studies  

Date:      September 9, 2016

Venue:   Amphitheatre Rouelle, Museum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN), Paris

See tentative program/agenda below..

Open to all interested. If you wish to attend this event, contact:

Patrice Pruvost
Chargé de conservation d'ichtyologie
UMR Borea-7208
Département milieux et peuplements aquatiques
Museum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN)
CP26 - 43 rue cuvier
tel : 33 1 40 79 37 60
fax : 33 1 40 79 37 71
75005 Paris
E-mail: pruvost@mnhn.fr

ESA is honored to host ICE 2016, the XXV International Congress of Entomology, under the theme Entomology without Borders. The event is expected to bring together the largest delegation of scientists and experts in the history of the discipline, who will meet between 25-30 Sep 2016, in exciting, easily-accessible, and affordable Orlando, Florida, USA.

• Make important connections with entomologists and scientists from around the world.
• Present to this global audience and compete in global competitions.
• Participate in forums and discussions covering every aspect of the discipline.
• Build global networks and collaborative research with others in your field of interest.
• Showcase your products and services to an important global audience.

The Congress will allow scientists and students to interact with the world’s leading experts in many specialties to exchange ideas and build on their research. Symposia will highlight the most recent advances in a wide diversity of entomological subjects around the global theme.

The next International Conference on Research Infrastructures will take place in Cape Town, South Africa, from 3 to 5 October 2016, hosted by the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) in collaboration with the European Commission. It will be the 3rd Conference on Research Infrastructures and the event will have an international dimension. The conference aims at:

• highlighting the essential role of global research infrastructures in addressing grand challenges and as hubs for innovation;
• reflecting on needs, development and sustainability of global/regional research infrastructures;
• discussing the possibility to move towards an international roadmap.

Several hundreds of participants from more than 50 countries are expected to take part to this event. Speakers representing high-level stakeholders from across the globe, as well as highly profiled key political Institutions, including the UN, European Commission, African Union, OECD and others, will intervene in the debate.

More information to follow.

The 3rd edition of the DEST course "Philosophy of Biological Systematics" is co-organised with the Scandinavian Research School in Biosystematics (ForBio) and will take place from 10 to 14 October 2016.

Target Audience

MSc students, PhD students, early career researchers, professional systematists/taxonomists and anyone who is interested in the philosophy of Biological Systematics.

Criteria for selection will be scientific merit, motivation and usefulness of the training course for the applicant's career.

For more information and to register, please go to: http://taxonomytraining.eu/content/philosophy-biological-systematics-1

The ConnectinGEO Workshop on Gap Analysis and Prioritization will will take place on 10 & 11 October 2106 in Asutia to address key issues associated with the societal benefits of Earth observations and the exploitation of Earth observation for societal policy and decision making.

The Gap Analysis workshop will discuss the outcomes of the gap analysis and prioritization performed in the ConnectinGEO project. This gap analysis was guided by the information and knowledge needs resulting from humanity's "Road to Dignity" detailed in the Agenda 2030 and specified in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed upon by the United Nations. Both the monitoring and implementation of actions to achieve these goals require extensive support from Earth observation and science communities. Several directives and crosscuting issues in Europe provided further guidance for the gap analysis.

The workshop will provide a forum to review the methodology for gap analysis and prioritization, discuss the relevant gaps and priorities in the European Earth observation networks and develop a strategy to address those gaps that have a high priority assigned.

The objectives of the gap analysis and prioritization workshop are to:

• Assess the ConnectinGEO methodology for gap analysis and prioritization;
• Review the list of gaps identified and the prioritization achieved;
• Produce a final list of gaps with high priority;
• Discuss a strategy to address these gaps and provide recommendations for the European Network of Earth Observation Networks (ENEON) and the European Commission concerning high-priority gaps.

More on the event's website.

The 5th edition of the DEST course "Basics of Taxonomy" is co-organised with the Scandinavian Research School in Biosystematics (ForBio). The course will take place from 10 to 21 October 2016 at the Sven Lovén Centre for Marine Sciences, Kristineberg.

Course topics covered: DELTA, digital drawing, scientific illustration, scientific writing and communication, Scratchpads.

For more infromation and to register, please go to: http://taxonomytraining.eu/content/basics-taxonomy-describing-illustrating-and-communicating-biodiversity-0

The EU ABS Regulation workshop aims at providing the participants with knowledge about their obligations under the EU ABS Regulation and what they practically imply for their everyday work. In the first part of the workshop, the new legal framework will be explained, providing insight into the main provisions of the EU ABS Regulation. In the second part of the workshop, participants will have a chance to put the knowledge gained into practice through interactive case studies, based on real-life examples and realistic scenarios.

Registration page: http://www.euconf.eu/abs/en/registration/index.html

Sfécologie2016, the 2016 International Conference of the French Ecological Society, will take place  in Marseille (France), from 24-28 October 2016. Local organizer is the 'Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d’Ecologie' (IMBE).

Following the former successful events (Ecologie 2010 in Montpellier and Joint Meeting British Ecological Society/Sfé 2014 in Lille), Sfécologie 2016 will promote and support exchanges around the latest developments in research and the most exciting challenges raised from the different disciplines of ecology, sharing scientific evidences, confronting experiences, developing collaborations around the Mediterranean Sea, across Europe, across the world.

The 4-days programme will be extensive, including 5 plenary speakers, thematic sessions and 14 symposia as well as inviting social events (conference outline here). 

For more information visit the official event's page.