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

The 9th International Conference on Open Repositories will be held from 9 to 13 June, 2014 in Helsinki,  Finland. It is the leading international conference in its field, and the attendance is likely to be around 400, with participants from all around the world. The main theme of the conference is "Towards Repository Ecosystems".

DataONE will host an all-day workshop at the conference on Monday, 9 June.

The full conference program is likely to published in late April, 2014, but there is a draft version of the schedule available.

Conference registration has been open since February 14, 2014. There are also sponsorship opportunities available.

The conference will be hosted by University of Helsinki‘s twin libraries: Helsinki University Library and the National Library of Finland. You can contact the organizers by e-mail: or-2014[at]helsinki.fi.

For more information and to register, please visit the conference wensite:http://or2014.helsinki.fi/

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

The international Conference will explore the potential of earth observations and thrust climate information transfer from the science to the stakeholder application realm, in order to develop suitable adaptation measures at national and regional levels. It will identify best adaptation programs and approaches to global environmental change in Mediterranean-climate cities. It will enhance and strengthen European and international cooperation in the context of the activities within the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), and promote tools and options for adaptation strategies. The Conference will help local and regional authorities and stakeholders to gain insight on the role of EO-based services in adapting to climate chance impacts in urban hot- spot areas. The Conference will be followed for one and a half day by the 8th GEO European Project Workshop which will be the opportunity to present concrete examples of Earth Observation activities relevant to adaptation strategies.

Information and registration: www.mariolopoulosfoundation.gr/medcity2014

The European Commission announces the 8th GEO European Projects Workshop (GEPW-8) which will take place in Athens, Greece, on 12 and 13 June, hosted by the Greek GEO Office - National Observatory of Athens and co-organized by the Mariolopoulos-Kanaginis Foundation for the Environmental Sciences.

The eighth of the annual series of GEO European Projects Workshops is intended to bring all those interested in and actively contributing to the Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS) from all over Europe together, in order to present their work and discuss how Europe can contribute to this international effort, especially in the wake of the launch of the new EU Framework Programme for Research, Horizon 2020, and renewal of the mandate of GEO for another 10 years through the endorsement of the 2014 Geneva Declaration.

Registration:

Registration is already open since 20th of March at the GEPW8 website.
Registration for attendance deadline: May 23, 2014
Registration of presentation deadline: April 30, 2014. Application form will be available at GEPW8 website.

For more information please visit the event's website at: www.gepw8.noa.gr 

The Integrated Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research (IMBER) Project will convene an Open Science Conference from 23-27 June 2014 in Bergen, Norway, with the goals of:

• highlighting research results from the IMBER project and activities,
• promoting integrated syntheses of IMBER-relevant research, and
• developing a new global research agenda for marine biogeochemistry and ecosystems in the Anthropocene.

The list of contributed sessions and workshops is available here.

The Call for Abstracts is open!  Deadline for abstract submission: 31 January 2014. Contributions are welcome from all marine research communities.

The next 11^th LifeWatch Stakeholders Board Meeting will be take place in Crete (Greece), on July 7-8, 2014. The meeting will be hosted by the HCMR Hellenic Centre for Marine Research.

• Meet and get to know fellow projects working on similar topics of relevance to ASEAN
• Discuss results and synergies, exchange on methodologies, plan for joint events, applications, publications, etc. or simply see what's going on in the other region in this topic.
• Plan concrete next joint steps with projects in the cluster.
• Benefit from SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN support (e.g. in your dissemination, exploitation and development activities) and inputs (on the funding environment)
• Share your views on thematic gaps in current research - SUSTAIN is mandated to carry the message to the European Commission

Distributed European School of Taxonomy (DEST) is organizing a Zoological Nomenclature training course targeted at MSc students, PhD students, early career researchers,  professional systematists/taxonomists and anyone who is interested in the philosophy of Biological Systematics. The course has a duration of one 5 days and will take place between 22-26 September 2014 at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, France.

Deadline for registration: 16 June 2014, extended until Friday 20 June 2014. To register and to learn more about the course visit the official webpage: http://www.taxonomytraining.eu/content/zoological-nomenclature-3

Course description:
Taxonomists need a common language worldwide. This is provided by the international codes of nomenclature. Although several codes exist, according to the organisms at stake, they all follow a similar mode of allocation of names to taxa (through "types") and of establishment of the valid name for a taxon (priority, first-reviser, usage). As biological nomenclature is rarely taught in academic formations, many taxonomists have difficulties mastering it. This training will provide an overview of the history and epistemology of biological nomenclature, and a discussion of the relationships between phylogeny, taxonomy and nomenclature. The zoological code will be presented in detail, the other codes (including the botanical one) more briefly. The recent problems and projects of nomenclature, including alternative systems, will be discussed.

Lecture topics:

• What is taxonomy? What is nomenclature? Name, taxon, nomenclatural rank, taxonomic category. Species and supraspecific taxa. The relationships between phylogeny, taxonomy and nomenclature
• History and epistemology of the international codes of nomenclature
• The international code of zoological nomenclature
• The other international codes (plants and fungi, bacteria, viruses, cultivated plants)
• The alternative nomenclatural systems

Seminar topics:

• Nomenclature of higher taxa in zoology
• The Phylocode and other phylogenetic nomenclatural systems
• Zoobank and electronic publications

Practical experiences will include: exercises in zoological nomenclature and transforming phylogenetic data into a taxonomy and a nomenclature.

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 Creative-B project final even will take place on 26 Sep 2014 in Brussels. During this event, a roadmap of global data infrastructures supporting biodiversity and ecosystem research will be presented.

In the last two decades quite a number of activities emerged to manage, share and deploy the fast growing data volumes from observations, collections, sensors and other data sources in biodiversity and ecosystem research. This data "gravity" pushed new applications and services, resulting in the development and establishment of large-scale research infrastructures. Following an initiative of the European LifeWatch research infrastructure, a number of large-scale data research infrastructures* with a global outreach in this scientific area teamed together in the project Creative-B (Coordination of Research e-Infrastructures Activities Toward an International Virtual Environment for Biodiversity)**.

The collaboration resulted in drafting a global Roadmap focusing on common priorities and infrastructure engagement, enhancing infrastructure interoperability, and the legal and governance implications. Specific issues are addressing challenges to sustain data availability and services, user interaction and value delivery, cooperation for infrastructure interoperability as well as legal interoperability, and finally education and training. This Roadmap shows how global interaction is promoting complementary development while fostering synergy for supporting frontier research and addressing global and societal challenges. The event in Brussels will also highlight some implications for other stakeholders such as funding and governmental bodies.

Registration is now open here: http://creative-b-2014.sciencesconf.org/registration

Find out more on the event website, and in the event program.

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 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 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/

Distributed European School of Taxonomy (DEST) is organizing a Botanical Nomenclature training course targeted at MSc students, PhD students, early career researchers,  professional systematists/taxonomists and anyone who is interested in the philosophy of Biological Systematics. The course has a duration of one week and will take place between 26-30 January 2015 at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK.

Deadline for registrationis 10 October 2014. Participants will receive notification by 24 October 2014 whether accepted to the course. To register and to learn more about the course visit the official webpage: http://www.taxonomytraining.eu/content/botanical-nomenclature-3

Course description
This in-depth course will teach the principles of plant nomenclature according to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants (ICN) so that participants can apply good nomenclatural practice when undertaking taxonomic revisions, compiling checklists etc. This will be achieved by lectures illustrated with examples from the ICN, workshop sessions applying what has been learned to "real life" cases, and by encouraging participants to discuss nomenclatural problems they have encountered.

Participants will have time to pursue their own research interests using the collections at Kew, with the emphasis on identifying and solving nomenclatural problems.
Short seminars will give participants the opportunity to present nomenclatural problems relevant to their own research.

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 "Open Science at the Global Scale: Sharing e-Infrastructures, Sharing Knowledge, Sharing Progress" conference will take place on March 31, 2015 in Brussels, Belgium. The conference is organized under the aegis of the European Commission (DG CONNECT) to bring together policy and research stakeholders from all the regions targeted by the project (Asia, Africa, Arabia, India, Europe and Latin America) to discuss major developments and perspectives in the field of global e-Infrastructures for Research and Education.

The main outcomes of the CHAIN-REDS project will be also presented on this occasion:

• The development of a Distributed Computing Infrastructure interoperation model between Europe and other regions
• The promotion of international standards and technical guidelines for interoperability of cloud services across continents
• One of the largest existing e-Infrastructure-related digital information systems, the CHAIN-REDS Knowledge Base
• A complete methodology for better sharing and using scientific data
• The CHAIN-REDS Science Gateway: a single portal for accessing remote computing and data services anywhere in the world
• The support of the creation of Identity Federations to make Authentification and Authorisation easier for users and service providers worldwide
• The main outcomes of the six awareness-raising workshops organised by CHAIN-REDS in Asia, Africa, Arabia, and Latin America

For Registration and more information, please visit the oficial conference webpage: https://agenda.ct.infn.it/event/1110/

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.

The 2015 edition of Green Week, the biggest annual conference on European environment policy, will take place from 3 to 5 June at The Egg Conference Centre, Rue Bara, in Brussels. The theme will be nature and biodiversity.

Green Week is open to the public and participation is free of charge.

For more inforation about the conference, programme and registartion, please visit the official conference webpage: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/greenweek/

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.

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/

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 Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) is a worldwide network, founded in 2008, to enhance the science and practical application of ecosystem services. To facilitate the needed dialogue between scientists, policy makers and practitioners ESP organises an annual international conference in different parts of the world.

8th ESP World Coference will be held in South Africa from 9-13 November 2015 and is hosted at a very special location: Spier Wine farm and Conference Centre in Stellenbosch.

The central theme is ‘Ecosystem Services for Nature, People and Prosperity’. The conference will pay special attention to the public and private sector dialogue on how the ecosystem services concept can be used to support conservation, improve livelihoods and engage the business community.

We especially encourage delegates from businesses to attend the ESP conference in order to discuss challenges and opportunities in using the concept of ecosystem services to achieve conservation and sustainable use of our ‘natural capital’ within a market-context. The conference will provide an excellent platform to engage with experts who can generate solutions to these challenges and start making a difference in practice.

For more information and for registration, please visit the conference website: http://espconference.org/espconference2015

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/

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. 

Immediately following the project Annual Conference iDiv is organizing its first Science Hackathon: 4 - 6 December, Leipzig.

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 and a link to the website will be available soon.

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 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 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 

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

Green Week 2016 will take place from 30 May to 3 June. Focusing on the theme "Investing for a greener future", it hopes to contribute to answering a broader question of how to achieve smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe. Elements such as, for example, innovation for greener cities, sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems or the role of innovative instruments in mobilising adequate financing and 'blue growth' would naturally fit into the programme.

More infromation: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/greenweek/index_en.html

From 7 to 9 June 2016 the city of Venice will host an International Conference titled: "Citizen Observatories for Water Management". The Conference will focus on the potential of Citizen Science in the European water innovation landscape, and in particular in the fields of flood risk management, environmental monitoring and meeting the challenges of the Water Framework Directive (WFD).

The Conference will be an opportunity for actors in the field of science and innovation to exchange experiences on the development, implementation and use of new technologies to bring water-related issues closer to citizens.

Introduction

Citizen observatories are emerging as a virtual and physical place where citizens and decision makers cooperate to gather and share information to promote innovative and shared solutions. Strategic decisions and policies that impact society and the environment require intensive data collection and interpretation. Such information provides an important basis for long term planning as well as short term response (e.g. to flooding, drought,  pollution events, cyanobacterial blooms).

The COWM 2016 conference will explore the role and opportunities for active citizen participation in environmental monitoring and policy making. The event will provide opportunities to engage with researchers, policy makers and practitioners actively involved in improving our understanding of citizen science initiatives. Participants will discuss the growing potential of Citizens’ Observatories in empowering the society and improving the resilience at the community scale.

The meeting will bring together social scientists, surveyors, engineers, scientists, and other professionals from many countries involved in research and development activities in a wide range of technical and management topics related to citizen observatories and their impacts on society and how to maximize the benefit of data emerging from citizen observatories.

More information available here: http://www.conwater2016.eu/index.php/en/

The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin are organizing the 31st Annual Meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) to be held from June 20 through 25, 2016, in Berlin, Germany.

Under the heading "Green Museum – How to practice what we preach?" this meeting of the society evaluates green thinking in collections, museums and botanical gardens. In a world of climate change and ever decreasing biodiversity, sustainability  should be the criterion that ideally determines all planning and decisions, ranging from field work to construction projects,  from ethical aspects to cost-benefit analyses.

In practice this often is compromised by constraints beyond the control of the institution, be it monetary, legal or other. The conference will offer a forum to discuss possible ways of reconciling the seemingly opposing requirements. 

More information here.

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.