News archive

At the beginning of March, 2017, a collection of participants from Work Package 7, and various other work packages connected to it, met in the Netherlands in order to discuss the current status of Ecosystem Service(ES) Assessment for the various Protected Areas(PAs) in the ECOPOTENTIAL project. During this meeting, the implementation of frameworks developed within the project was discussed and a synthesis of ecosystem functions and their relation to services and monitoring/modeling applications was undertaken. This served as a kick-off point for the further evaluation thereof across all sites who have participated in the Mind Mapping exercise, which seeks to connect functions to data sources and services within PAs. The distillation of this work will prove as input for the generation of Bayesian Belief Networks(BBNs). To this end, a participant from ETH in Switzerland attended and provided a hands-on workshop for the development of BBNs as well as assisting those present further develop their personal BBNs.

2nd International Conference on Forests - Temperate and Boreal Forest Conservation in a rapidly changing world "New scientific findings and implications for future management"

The Bavarian Forest National Park and the University of Würzburg host the 2nd International Conference on Forests, which will take place from 26. to 29.04.2017 in Neuschönau, Germany.

National Parks Austria (www.nationalparksaustria.at) & Hohe Tauern National Park (www.hohetauern.at) are pleased to invite you to present your latest protected areas research at the 6^th International Symposium for Research in Protected Areas, 2-4 November 2017.

The symposium will be held at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Salzburg, Austria.

The European Climate Research Alliance (ECRA) is an association of leading European research institutions in climate research. ECRA aims to bring together, to expand and to optimise European expertise in climate research and advising through a bottom-up process.

Two upcoming ECRA meetings will take place in Brussels. If you like to register, please use the online registration tool (www.ecra-climate.eu) or contact the event organizers.

6-8 July 2017, Ceresole Reale, Italy

The Gran Paradiso National Park, within the LIFE+ BIOAQUAE and the LIFE+ Limnopirineus, is pleased to invite you to the International Meeting on the Conservation of High Mountain Lakes that will be held in Ceresole Reale (Torino, Italy) on 6-8 July 2017.
High mountain lakes host peculiar aquatic biota and are considered biodiversity reservoirs. Most high altitude lakes are endangered by several global, regional and local threats, and more specifically by introduced fish. This meeting will focus on the role of the Natura2000 sites and protected areas, on the recent research advances, and also on management strategies and specific experiences to achieve a long term conservation of high mountain lake ecosystems.

Shenzhen, China, 11-15 December 2017

The 9th world conference of the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) will be held in Shenzhen, China 11-15 December 2017. This conference will boast a broad range of topics on the latest state-of-the-art on the science, policy and practice of Ecosystem Services. The overarching theme this year will likely focus on the role of ecosystem services in ecosystem restoration and nature based solutions in natural, rural and urban areas.

(20th-21st April 2017, Florence, Italy)

Data Providers are invited to attend the Second GEO Data Providers workshop. Whether your data is already brokered by the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), or your data could be integrated as a new resource in GEOSS, this workshop is for you.
The First GEO Data Providers workshop was held as a side event at the GEO-XIII Plenary in St Petersburg, Russia, to strengthen dialogue with data providers and to improve the discoverability, accessibility and usability of GEOSS resources.
Given the high level of interest and success of the initial workshop, a more comprehensive event of two days will be hosted by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in Florence, Italy, from 20th to 21st of April, 2017, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA).

From 6 to 12 February a Workshop on the use of GIS in the analysis of change from Remote Sensing for the Protected Areas of ECOPOTENTIAL is taking place in the Sede Boker campus of Ben Gurion University, Israel, for interested partners.  The workshop is primarily based on open-source codes (presenting an overview of several open source software options, and focusing in particular in QGis and the MOLUSCE plugin), and some applications on the ArcGIS software (with the Land Change Modeler software) has been demonstrated.

Seville, 4-6 April 2017

We are organizing a workshop on the Doñana Storyline (O3 - Conserving dynamic wetlands under combined global, regional and local stressors) in Doñana National Park (Spain), that will take place in Seville on Tuesday 4th April 2017. The meeting will be followed by a field visit to Doñana National Park on Wednesday 5th April.

Upon request of the European project officer, a joint project meeting took place at the Tour du Valat, Camargue, France, between the EU projects SWOS and ECOPOTENTIAL. These two projects both use the newest earth observation data, but apply different approaches, to monitor areas of particular interest for biodiversity and ecosystem services. SWOS focuses on wetlands and ECOPOTENTIAL focuses on protected areas. This shared interest lead to a series of active discussions and several possibilities for future collaboration have been identified. In the coming months, partners from both projects will work on transforming these possibilities in concrete collaborations and hopefully the first joint manuscript will be submitted  end of this year.

From 16 to 18 of January 2017 a joint meeting between the two sister Horizon2020 projects SWOS (http://swos-service.eu/) and ECOPOTENTIAL (http://ecopotential-project.eu/) will take place at the Research Institute for the conservation of Mediterranean wetlands “Tour du Valat”, in Arles, France. The Institute is located in the heart of the Camargue Regional Park, study site of both projects. Participants from both teams will present the characteristics and the current status of the projects, focusing on research questions and methods used to respond them. The two projects are looking how they can have a scientific collaboration, identifying common fields of interest and concrete actions.
The review of the EU takes place simultaneously for both projects.

During the following days (19 and 20 January) there will be in the same location the ECOPOTENTIAL CCT (Coordination and WP leaders) meeting and Internal workshops of SWOS and ECOPOTENTIAL.

Vienna, 23–28 April 2017

The EGU General Assembly 2017 will bring together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. The EGU aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career researchers, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geoscience.
Ecopotential scientists will be present with a number of contributions covering the different aspects of the project!

Deadline for submitting an abstract is 11 January 2017. Early career scientists are invited to take part in the "EGU’s Communicate Your Science Video Competition" to communicate their research to a wider audience.
More information at:  http://www.egu2017.eu/

As in previous years, the Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting 2017 (14-15 February 2017) will be held in Conference Centre De Werelt in Lunteren. You are now invited to submit your presentation abstracts to the conveners of the relevant parallel sessions.

Skukuza, South Africa, 12-17 March 2017

Learn from world-changing thinkers and innovators in the Savanna Science community.
 
The Science Network Meeting provides an opportunity for scientists to share their latest research findings conducted in national parks and other conservation areas within the savanna biome. This includes numerous research projects from conservation areas mostly within South Africa (with Kruger National Park the best represented), but also drawing in relevant research and understanding from other savanna protected areas across the globe, including Australia, South America, USA and Asia. The conference is also an important forum for dialogue and debate about ecological science and conservation matters; and a pivotal point for future research collaborations.

For more information visit: http://www.savannascience.com/

Earth Observation for Development and Adaptation to a Changing World
Tshwane, South Africa, 8-12 May 2017

The International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment (ISRSE) will take place in Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa 8-12 May 2017 under the overarching theme “Earth Observation for Development and Adaptation to a Changing World”.

The University of Leeds is seeking candidates for a Research Fellow position. The PDRA project will be using remote sensing, social data (e.g. Flickr, CS) and possibly field data to assess cultural services and recreational values and use. This is a 100% full-time position until 31 May 2019. Applications are accepted until 11/12/2016 with a start date early 2017. For more information visit: https://jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=ENVGE1044

Let's be honest, scientific research projects can sometimes be difficult to understand and explain to those around you. For this reason, the ECOPOTENTIAL team is proud and excited to launch a new video explaining this important Horizon 2020 project!

The next La Palma Science School will take place from February 17th to March 3rd on the island of La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. It is focused on interactions between climate and biodiversity. Particularly, remote sensing approaches shall be linked with field data. We will develop and implement research concepts for short studies that student groups will apply during 2-week field period.

Several Ecopotential scientists participated in the first International Open Science Meeting of the International LTER network (Oct 9-13), hosted by The Kruger National Park, South Africa, one of the Protected Areas studied in our project.

Frascati (Rome), Italy, 14-16 March 2017

The European Space Agency together with GEO, FAO and EU are organising the WorldCover 2017 Conference.
The event will be hosted in ESA-ESRIN from 14 to 16 March 2017.
The conference is open to Land Cover users, scientists, students, representatives from National, European and International Space Agencies, Value Adding Industries, Laboratories and Universities.