​SeaLifeBase in CA server (www.sealifebase.ca) has been updated to date.

The second joint meeting BioSyst.EU 2013, is organized by NOBIS Austria and will take place in Vienna from February 18–22, 2013. The conference is hosted by the University of Vienna and the Natural History Museum Vienna. Within its frame the annual meetings of GfBS and NOBIS Austria will be held.
BioSyst.EU aims to provide a European platform to:
- hold joint meetings on a regular basis;
- promote research, teaching, and training in all areas of systematic biology, including phylogenetic, taxonomic, and biodiversity research;
- encourage collaboration and interchange among researchers, both individually and through their respective societies and institutions;
- coordinate national and international efforts without infringing on the autonomy of the member societies;
- encourage formation of additional national systematic societies, while continuing to represent systematists in countries still lacking formal societies;
- increase the profile and funding of systematic biology in the European parliamen.

Further Information: http://biosysteu.univie.ac.at/

The German working group on vegetation databases is dedicated to building, maintaining, linking and analysing electronic archives of vegetation plot data and provides the national repository "VegetWeb", hosted by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN). The 12th workshop will be hosted by the new German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Leipzig, Germany. The central mission of iDiv is to promote theory-driven experiments and synthesis as well as data-driven theory. The concept of iDiv encompasses the detection of biodiversity, understanding its emergence, exploring its consequences for ecosystem functions and services, and developing strategies to safeguard biodiversity under global change. In this context, the combined synthesis of species abundance and distribution data together with information on species characteristics is seen as a high potential to advance our understanding of community assembly and plant diversity patterns. For this reason, important databases have already become part of iDiv's data research platforms, such as the German Vegetation Reference Database (GVRD), the plant trait databases TRY and BIOLFLOR and the Chorology Database Halle (CDH) on plant distribution data. In this workshop, we seek to explore the potentials of such databases for future research, with a specific focus on vegetation databases.
Further Information: http://www.botanik.uni-greifswald.de/idiv_meeting_2013.html

The annual meeting of the European GBIF Nodes will be organised by GBIF Finland in Joensuu 6-8 March 2013.
The meeting is by invitation only, and available for staff of the GBIF Members in Europe. In addition, any EU-funded biodiversity research projects are welcome to attend as observers. 
Event web page: European GBIF Nodes Meeting 2013

The next GEO European Projects' Workshop (GEPW7) is planned to take place in Barcelona on 8 and 9 April 2013. The event, which will be hosted by CREAF (Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications) of the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona, is intended to bring all those interested in and actively contributing to the GEOSS from all over Europe together in order to present their work and actively discuss how Europe can contribute to GEO and GEOSS.
The proposed venue is the famous Catalan art nouveau building owned by the university: "La Casa de la Convalescència" (Convalescence House) located in the centre of the city.
All Coordinators of EC projects are informed and encouraged to notify members of their teams or colleagues who may be interested in participating.
Event web page: Geo European Projects Workshop 2013

Organizers: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ & Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries - IGB
Place: Schloß Machern, Leipzig, Germany
Event web page: BioFresh Annual Meeting 2013

iMarine e-Infrastructure for data driven decision making and research
iMarine  is organising an invitation-only workshop to discuss data driven decision making and research on 14th & 15th May 2013 at DG Connect, Avenue de Beaulieu 33 (BU33), Room 0/54, Brussels, Belgium.
The goal of iMarine is to facilitate policy makers in addressing the global challenges impacting on the marine ecosystem, the fisheries sector, local economies and communities and to demonstrate that science based policy making can benefit from a large and distributed e-Infrastructure for cross-disciplinary data collection, harmonization and analysis necessary for the management and conservation of marine living resources.

The ESWC 2013 takes place from May 26th, 2013 to May 30th, 2013 in Montpellier, France.
The ESWC is a major venue for discussing the latest scientific results and technology innovations around semantic technologies. Building on its past success, ESWC is seeking to broaden its focus to span other relevant research areas in which Web semantics plays an important role.
Event web site: ESWC 2013

The first EU BON Informatics Workshop will take place in Trondheim, Norway from 29 to 31 May 2013. The event aims at discussing the data standards and informatics architecture that will be followed by the EU BON project. The workshop will also focus on highlighting linkages to GEOSS Common Infrastructure and the GEO BON. Among the agenda on the list are also presentation of the plans and operations of the EU BON Helpdesk as well as the first assembly of the global Informatics Task Force of EU BON. The workshop is by invitation only. The agenda and travel details have been updated on 2 May 2013, see the below attachment.

A conference marking the start of the Natural History Museum’s Biodiversity Initiative has been announced to take place on 3-4 June, 2013 in the NHM, London.  A workshop of the Genomic Observatories Network will be also hosted during the conference

The conference will focus on how inter-disciplinary, genomic approaches can be developed to accelerate the study of biodiversity and function of tropical ecosystems.

More information on the conference can be found here.

The GI_Forum 2013 will take place on 02-05 July, in Salzburg, Austria. The GI_Forum 2013 will aim at communicating innovative research and learning in Geographic Information Science with focus on hardware, software, orgware and brainware for the GISociety, and their inter-relationships. The keynote speakers this year will be Sarah Elwood, Josef Strobl, Geoff Zeiss, Francis Harvey, Xavier Lopez and Carmel Mbizvo.

For more information please follow  the link: http://www.gi-forum.org/, or see the attached programme of the event.

The biennial International Congress for Conservation Biology is recognized as the most important global meeting for conservation professionals and students. The congress features a dynamic scientific program with more than 100 cutting edge symposia, workshops, posters, and focus groups; countless networking opportunities, fantastic field trips, and world-renowned speakers.
The 26th ICCB takes place in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  Chesapeake Bay is the world's most productive estuary and the region is rich in cultural and historical heritage and conservation challenges and success stories.
Event web page: ICCB 2013

From 18-23 August 2013, the 11th INTECOL Congress, Ecology: Into the next 100 years will be held in London as part of the centenary celebrations of the British Ecological Society.The theme of the Congress is advancing ecology and making it count, and will present world class ecological science that will truly move the science forward.
Event web site: http://www.intecol2013.org/

Biodiversity Informatics Horizons 2013 (BIH2013) is part of a continuing process that helps to structure and organise the biodiversity informatics community at the European level and beyond. BIH2013 will take place over 3 full days, from lunchtime on Tuesday 3rd September to lunchtime Friday 6th. The venue will be in Rome but is still awaiting final confirmation.

To respond to the challenges and priorities of the next decade in biodiversity and ecosystems research, structuring bottom-up and top-down interactions on informatics and cooperating across the community is now an essential activity. Cooperation avoids unnecessary duplication of activity. It helps to maximise and focus effort on building the information resources, tools and infrastructure the scientists and policymakers need. We all know the importance of this as we face environmental, societal and human health challenges on global scale. Science in support of policy to mitigate biodiversity loss due to climate and other man-made changes, to assure food security, and to combat invasive species (to give just a few examples) can only be achieved by full integration of the biodiversity research community through a commonly-shared, sustainable e-infrastructure across all sub-disciplines that reliably serves science and society alike. Hence, the need to coordinate.

Invited speakers will review challenging areas and promising technologies in biodiversity informatics, pathways to sustainable implementation and changing the community culture. A panel discussion with experts from regions of the world beyond Europe will explore opportunities for international cooperation that lead towards a sustainable global infrastructure. Demonstration and training activities, provided by some of the FP7 projects associated with the conference will allow delegates to see first-hand some of the new and exciting infrastructure building blocks that will come together to deliver the LifeWatch vision.

To read more and register for the conference, please click here.

For early registration conference fee, please register before 31 July.

The IALE 2013 European Congress "Changing European Landscapes: Landscape ecology, local to global" will take place on 9-12 September 2013, in Manchester, UK. This major international event, organised by IALE UK and IALE Europe, will examine how and why European landscapes are changing and how landscape ecology can help us to plan for the future at local to global scales. It will consider local projects alongside international programmes and provide many opportunities for researchers, policy makers and practitioners to interact. The congress will have a European focus but we look forward to welcoming participants from around the world.

More information and how to register find here.

The Open Knowledge Foundation is pleased to announce that the 2013 Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) will take place in Geneva, Switzerland on 17th-18th September.
The world’s leading open data and open knowledge event, OKCon is the latest in an annual series run since 2005. Last year’s installment in Helsinki had more than 1000 participants from over 50 countries and was the largest event of its kind to date.
Find out more about the conference here.
Registration and tickets are already available here.

At its seventeenth meeting, the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is expected to address, among others, issues related to marine and coastal biodiversity, biodiversity and climate change, and collaboration with IPBES.
Event web page: http://www.cbd.int/meetings/

Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) will hold its annual conference in Florence, Italy on October 28 – November 1.  it  will be held at the Grand Hotel Mediterraneo but attendees will be free to choose from any of the accommodations in the area, many within a short distance.  Registration details will be provided early in 2013.

The "ICT 2013 – Create, Connect, Grow" will take place on 6-8 November, 2013 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The event will bring together more than 4000 researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs, industry representatives, young people and politicians. The focus of ICT 2013 will be placed on Horizon 2020 - the EU's Framework Programme for Research and Innovation for 2014-2020. The event will feature top ICT professionals from industry, academia, research, participating in discussions built around 3 thematic plenaries: ICT for Excellent science; ICT for Industrial Leadership; and ICT for Societal challenges. Experts will present details on how to participate in Horizon 2020. A special focus will be placed on Digital Futures - a journey into 2050's futures and policy challenges.

Apart from the conference the ICT 2013 will also feature an exhibition as a unique opportunity for projects and companies to showcase their research, ICT products and innovative creations. In total, 185 projects will showcase the latest findings in advanced research, technologies, new systems, innovation in services & business and ICT products just coming to market.

In addition networking sessions and investment forum are also planned within the event. ICT 2013 is also organizing activities for students and young researchers

For more information and to register visit: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/ict-2013

Continuing the successful mission of previous MTSR Conferences (MTSR'05, MTSR'07, MTSR'09, MTSR'10, MTSR'11 and MTSR’12), the seventh International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR'13) aims to bring together scholars and practitioners that share a common interest in the interdisciplinary field of metadata, linked data and ontologies. Participants will share novel knowledge and best practice in the implementation of these semantic technologies across diverse types of Information Environments and applications. These include Cultural Informatics; Open Access Repositories & Digital Libraries; E-learning applications; Search Engine Optimisation & Information Retrieval; Research Information Systems and Infrastructures; e-Science and e-Social Science applications; Agriculture, Food and Environment; Bio-Health & Medical Information Systems. 

The 2014 SCIENCE POLICY SYMPOSIUM to support the implementation of the 2020 Biodiversity strategy and the EU Water Framework Directive will be held between 29-30 Jan 2014 in the Museum of Natural Sciences (RBINS), Brussels. The symposium is jointly organised by the EU FP7 funded projects BioFresh and REFRESH.

Numerous EU biodiversity and water related policies have been designed to protect freshwater ecosystems and ensure their sustainable use. However, major challenges still persist in the implementation of these policies. Freshwater ecosystems support 10% of all animal species on Earth and provide a diverse array of functions and services that contribute to human well-being. In recent decades global freshwater biodiversity has declined at a greater rate compared to terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

The Science Policy Symposium for Freshwater Life is organised with the aim of bringing together policy makers and stakeholders from the water, energy and conservation sector, NGOs, the scientific community and selected experts to discuss challenges to implementing the 2020 Biodiversity strategy and the EU Water Framework Directive.

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 programme, the RMCA has five grants available for a 3-month training programme 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; and
3. A case study based on data from FishBase or on taxa for which taxonomic problems have been encountered.

The main focus of the training is on fish biodiversity data and their integration into FishBase, and on how to use and contribute data to FishBase. The context of these contributions may vary and can also include the knowledge on common names, fish ecology, fisheries statistics, aquaculture and many other areas of fish biology.

After the training, the participants should be able to make their own contribution to fish biology and continue to work on FishBase. They are encouraged to teach their newly apprehended skills to new/local users, to help in completing the database and keeping it up to date, and to spread the use of FishBase as a source of information and a fisheries tool.

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, go to:
http://www.africamuseum.be/research/collaborations/training/group?set_language=en&cl=en

Please note that for 2014, this course will be given in French only.

The first Group on Earth Observations GEO Appathon 2014, an exciting new worldwide data science competition, is announced to be be launched on 7 May 2014. 

he GEO Appathon is a global applications (App) development competition that aims to develop new, exciting and - most importantly - useful Apps using Earth observation data from the open and expansive Earth Observation data sets in the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI). See www.geoportal.org

The Appathon kicks off on 7 May 2014 and runs until 31 August 2014. Participation is open to any non-commercial entity, individual or team from any background in any country. Apps can be created for any of the main operating systems, and can be designed for any type of portable device. All Apps will be judged and the top three winners will receive a cash prize and a year-long GEO network endorsement and publicity for the App. 

Visit our GEO Appathon website (www.geoappathon.org) for more rules, details of how to register and information about how you can help us unleash the power of Earth observation data.

For further questions, please do not hesitate to email Dan Williams at: dan@geoappathon.org

Digital applications in nature conservation have rapidly gained prominence and now span a range of areas, including:

• Digital public engagement, learning, citizen science, crowd-sourcing
• e-learning and e-gaming
• Novel monitoring tools
• Database connectivity and access
• Online decision-making support systems

Building on the optimistic view that digital technology has a huge potential to aid nature conservation, this  conference will also critically address the multidisciplinary dimensions of the impacts of digital applications on this societally important field.

Digital Conservation seeks to establish a new research agenda, by fostering the exchange of ideas, insights and experiences between scientists and practitioners in a field that will increasingly shape human interactions with nature.

Event Flyer

Agentschap Plententuin Meise (Botanic Garden Meise), Bouchout Castle – Meise (Brussels), Belgium

The pro-iBiosphere project supported by the European Commission (DG CONNECT) through its FP7 research funding programme has the pleasure to invite you to join its Final Event.

The project has the vision of implementing an Open Knowledge Biodiversity Management System (OBKMS), i.e. an integration platform that will allow to produce Biotas (i.e. Floras, Faunas, Mycotas and other revisionary taxonomic literature) of the future in a flexible semantically-driven online environment.

During its two year duration, pro-iBiosphere contributed to making fundamental biodiversity data digital, open and re-usable. The achievements of the project will be presented in a series of activities (Event Flyer) detailed below that will take place from Tuesday the 10^th to Thursday the 12^th of June 2014 at the Bouchout Castle (Botanic Garden Meise, Belgium).

Tuesday June 10 (PM)

Workshop on Model Evaluation

Wednesday June 11 (all day)

• Demonstrations on pro-iBiosphere pilots

• Demonstrations on outcomes of pro-iBiosphere Data Enrichment Hackathon

• Workshop on Biodiversity Catalogue

• Training on WikiMedia

• Poster session

Thursday June 12 (all day)

• Final Conference 

• Networking Cocktail

For more information on the Final Event (agenda, logistics,…), visit the dedicated wiki page.

Registration is free of charge but compulsory due to room capacity constraints. You can register by filling out the online registration form at http://tiny.cc/pib-final-event.

In case you are interested in giving a presentation during the Final Event activities or in submitting a poster in the poster session, please contact us at final-event@pro-ibiosphere.eu

• Analyze the objectives and priorities of the media;
• Define a storyline and create persuasive and innovative messages;
• Improve skills in presenting to large audiences;
• Gain control of interviews with journalists using effective verbal skills;
• Manage energy and project confidence in interviews with journalists.

Read more in the Draft agenda below.

In 2014, the University of Hildesheim will host the 44th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The meeting will take place from September 8th to 12th, 2014 in Hildesheim, Germany. The guiding theme of the 44th Annual Meeting is "Integrating ecological knowledge into nature conservation and ecosystem management".

Along the lines of this guiding theme, we will stimulate scientific discussions on basic and applied ecological topics as well as on nature conservation and management. Special focus will be given to:

• biodiversity research (e.g. diversity of genes, species and ecosystems; threats and conservation)
• ecosystem functioning (e.g. ecosystem services, processes and functions, ecological dynamics)
• species and populations (e.g. interactions, competition, adaption, survival, community assembly, past and current pattern)
• ecosystem types (e.g. marine, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems; from polar to tropical regions, from lowlands to mountains)
• global change effects (e.g. climate change, land use change, nutrient deposition, invasive species)
• management (e.g. general and international approaches, restoration ecology, sustainable land management)
• conservation approaches (e.g. linking ecological knowledge to nature conservation, environmental education, sustainability, community conservation, socio-ecological approaches, policy advice)

Call for Sessions started on December 18, 2013.  The deadline for proposals has been extended until 28 February, 2013. Proposals addressing the guiding theme of the meeting as well as all other topics relevant to ecologists are welcomed.

Proposals should include the following information:

1.       A session title

2.       A short title (max 5 words or 50 characters)

3.       The goal of the session (half A4 page)

4.       Names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of chairs (up to three chairs per session)

5.       List of potential speakers

(Please note: all potential speakers will have to register and pay registration fee)

If you would like to propose and chair a session, please submit your proposal to http://www.gfoe-2014.de/index.php?cat=call_sessions.

The 21^st GBIF Governing Board meeting (GB21) and related events will take place in New Delhi, India, in the week of 15-19 September 2014. More information and a link to the registration website will be available closer to the meeting dates.

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 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.

Held once every 10 years, the IUCN World Parks Congress provides a unique opportunity to bring about change, not only for today, or tomorrow, but for the decade ahead. It will be a gathering not just for protected area professionals but for everyone who cares about the health of humanity and our natural world.  On behalf of the IUCN and its partners, Parks Australia and NSW National Parks and Wildlife Services,  I encourage you all to join us on this journey and help provide inspiring solutions for our planet’s most precious natural areas.

Congress registration is now open online. The ‘Early Bird’ registration fee is available until 30 June, and you can also benefit from the preferential rates for IUCN Members, Commission members and staff.

An excellent way to keep up to date is to visit the World Parks Congress website and to subscribe to the Congress newsletter.

The British Ecological Society and the French Ecology Society are pleased to invite you to Lille for a joint conference which will bring together for the first time ecologists of our two countries. The aim of the conference will promote exchanges and debates on major advances in scientific ecology, and strengthen cooperation between the French and British researchers of tomorrow. The meeting will be held on 9 – 12 December at the Grand Palais, Lille, France.

The British Ecological Society and French Ecological Society invite proposals for symposia sessions at their 2014 Annual Meeting. Symposia sessions at the Annual Meeting highlight some of the most important and timely science in ecology.  They provide the overarching structure and scientific focal point to the meeting.

The topics provide a showcase and forum for the discussion of key ecological questions, vision for the future and encourage integration among disciplines. As ever, timely and well organised submissions from across the breadth of ecology are welcome; however, building on the bi-national meeting and the introduction of the EU Horizon 2020 programme of research funding, we particularly encourage submissions that highlight international and EU focused topics:

•    Agro-ecology and the CAP
•    Biodiversity and ecosystem services
•    Evolutionary ecology and disease
•    Marine ecology and the EU Marine Directive
•    Freshwater ecology and the EU Water Directive
•    Horizon 2020 Tackling Societal Challenges: http://bit.ly/193Fbo3

The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2014.

The three full days of science can accommodate 18 half day symposia sessions.  Symposia proposals should include one keynote speaker allocated a 30 minute presentation and then five invited speakers, each allocated 15 minute slots.  Time devoted to synthesis and discussion is possible, but at the discretion of the organisers.  In exceptional circumstances, we will consider a full day session.

Proposers are responsible for the speakers submitting their abstracts and registrations on time.

- See more at: http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/events/current_future_meetings/2014-annual-meeting/

The aim of the event is to inform and guide prospective applicants preparing project proposals, to facilitate sharing of ideas and experiences. It will give participants the chance to network and to find partners for their projects.

ICT-16 is part of Horizon 2020's ICT work programme 2014-2015

The activities supported under this topic contribute to the Big Data challenge by addressing the fundamental research problems related to the scalability and responsiveness of analytics capabilities (such as privacy-aware machine learning, language understanding, data mining and visualization). Special focus is on industry-validated, user-defined challenges like predictions, and rigorous processes for monitoring and measurement.

The current outline of the draft agenda can be found HERE

Registration

The registration to the event is now open and is on the first-come-first-serve basis. Click HERE to register. The closing date is 8 January 2015.

After the registration you will have the possibility to upload a presentation for the ICT-16 networking and partner finding session which will take place in the afternoon (max 3 slides for 3 minutes presentation).

In parallel to the ICT-16 networking session a workshop on multilingual data value chains will be organised. Therefore, you should pay attention to which part of the event you enrol.

Please note that bilateral meetings with EC Project Officers to discuss proposal ideas (proposal clinics) will *not* be possible, in compliance with H2020 regulations.

More information available here.

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).

The GEO Workplan Symposium 2015 is planned to take place on 5-7 May 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland.

For more information, please consult the GEO meetings list.

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 2015 Biodiversity Informatics TDWG Annual Conference will be held from 28 September to 3 October 2015 in Nairobi, Kenya. The theme of the conference is Applications, Standards and Capacity Building for Sustaining Global Biodiversity.  Subprograms will include: Digitization, Semantic Technologies, Phyloinformatics, Outreach and Collaboration, ePublications, Trait Data, and Conservation informatics. 

A  5-day capacity building workshop for African participants in the conference is being organized for the week before the conference (21-25 September). The primary focus of the training is on biodiversity collection digitization, biodiversity databases, data cleaning, and georeferencing, but other topics are being considered. 

For more information about the conference, how to register, programme and call for papers, please visit the ofiicial event webpage.

• How to best evolve environmental monitoring, in order to make use of new and smart technologies for improved and cost-effective monitoring?
• How do we assess and document the value of data and knowledge of environmental ecosystems?

The Eye on Earth Summit 2015 is the foremost gathering of global thought leaders from government, the private sector, academia and civil society, all committed to filling the economic, social and environmental data gap to inform and improve decision-making for sustainable development. The event will take place from 6 to 8 October 2015 in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Attendees will learn about the pioneering work of the Eye on Earth movement and network with a growing body of like-minded experts and influencers to revolutionise the way we collect, access and use data for positive change. Join the Eye on Earth community, create opportunities for future action and share your knowledge. Make a difference to current and future generations.

For more information on the event and registration. please visit: http://www.eoesummit.org/

SBSTTA 19 - Nineteenth meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice will take place from 2 to 5 November 2015 in Montreal, Canada.

PECS 2015 will take plave fro 3 to 5 November 2015 and will gather scientists from various disciplines, from within and beyond the PECS network, to share cutting-edge research insights on social-ecological dynamics in the Anthropocene. The conference will engage and involve multiple stakeholders concerned with sustainable development and who are interested in developing new solutions and strategies. The conference is intended to highlight PECS achievements and ambitions, and to synthesize and integrate PECS-related research to provide a basis for a future social-ecological research agenda, especially in light of Future Earth.

PECS 2015 will be complemented by several side events such as topical workshops with regional focus and methods workshops. It will also include a science-policy-practice dialogue, involving a total of around 100 participants, building on a South African series of workshops and the broader Future Earth project on "Seeds of the Good Anthropocene".

For important deadlines, registration and further information, please visit the conference official website: http://www.pecs2015.org/

The GEO-XII Plenary and the Ministerial Summit, as well as all the associated meetings and events will be hosted by the Mexican Government and will take place at the Hotel Hilton Reforma and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Mexico City from 9 to 13 November 2015.

The Twelfth Plenary Session of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO-XII), hosted by Mexico, will take place in Mexico City, from 11 to 12 November 2015. The GEO 2015 Mexico City Ministerial Summit will take place on 13 November 2015.

The GEO-XII Plenary will take place at the Hilton Reforma, Mexico City, on its first meeting day, Nov 11th 2015.

On November 12th 2015, the second day of GEO-XII Plenary, the meeting will be held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores - SRE), Plaza Juárez #20, located a few steps away from the Hilton Reforma.

Caucus Meetings and the Executive Committee Meeting, will take place from 9th-12th November, 2015, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

GEO Side Events will take place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Hotel Hilton.

The GEO exhibit will be held at the Hilton Reforma Mexico City, from November, 10th–12th, in conjunction with the LAGF 2015 exhibits, and will be open exclusively for Ministers on Thursday afternoon  12th November, 2015.

Call for side events is also open now, all submissions should be sent by 12 June 2015.

More information is available on the offical event website: http://www.earthobservations.org/geo12.php

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/

Post-conference event: The first iDiv Science Hackathon will immediately follow the conference (4 - 6 December). The aim of this hackathon is to attract researchers from a variety of iDiv member groups to catalyze the efficient realization of highly novel collaborative projects focusing on evolution and adaptation. 

More information available on teh official conference website.