Biodiversity data are sparse, biased and collected at many resolutions. So techniques are needed to combine these data and provide some clarity. This is where downscaling comes in. Downscaling predicts the occupancy of a species in a given area. That is, the number of grid squares a species is predicted to occupy in a standard grid of equally sized squares. Downscaling uses the intrinsic patterns in the spatial organization of an organism’s distributions to predict what the occupancy would be, given the occupancy at a coarser resolution.

Groom et al. (2018) tests different downscaling models on birds and plants in four countries and in different landscapes and shows which models work best. The results show that all models work similarly, irrespective of the type of organism and landscape. However, some models were biased, either under- or overestimating occupancy. However, a few models were both reliable and unbiased. This means we can automate calculation of species occupancy. Workflows can harvest data from many sources and calculate species metrics in a timely manner, potentially delivering warnings so that interventions can be made.

Species invasions, habitat degradation and mass extinctions are not a future threat, they are happening now. Understanding how we should react, and what policies we need should be underpinned by solid evidence. Imagine if we had systems where we could monitor biodiversity just like we monitor the climate in easy to understand numbers that are both accurate and sensitive to change.

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 Research Infrastructures Unit of DG RTD and the infrastructure project LifeWatch invites you to a 1 and ½ day workshop : "Towards a Roadmap for Research Infrastructures on Biodiversity and Ecosystem research in Europe". The workshop will take place Brussels on 19 and 20 March 2013.
The overall objective of this workshop is to develop synergies between ESFRI research infrastructures (RI), existing research infrastructures implemented as Integrating Activities (IA), Integrated Projects (IP) and Joint Programming Initiatives (JPI) which are relevant to Biodiversity and Ecosystem research.
The following topics will be discussed:
1. Synergy between the biodiversity components of different initiatives, also in view of the supporting role of the European research infrastructures in this area.
2. A strategy for the development of biodiversity research infrastructures in the next ten years in view of emerging scientific and technical challenges.

Further information: EuroMarine

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

The OpenUp! meeting will be held in the new building of the National Museum in Prague  from April 24^th through 26^th, 2013. The second day (April 25^th) of the meeting is open for everyone, whereas the first and last days are for project participants and/or Steering Committee with officials from the EC only.

For more information please visit OpenUp! Meeting website - http://www.conferencepartners.cz/openup/index.htm

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.

Integrating mechanisms into macroecology 

8^th Annual Meeting of the Specialist Group for Macroecology of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (GfÖ)

Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Institute of Biology, Department Geobotany & Botanical Garden, Am Kirchtor 1, 06108 Halle (Saale), Germany

Linking processes and mechanistic approaches (e.g., from physiology, experimental ecology, demography, and evolution) with macroecological approaches, scales, and methods has long been discussed among macroecologists. Still, only few steps toward implementing such links have been taken, yet. With the 8th Annual Meeting of the Specialist Group for Macroecology of the GfÖ, we want to offer a forum for presenting and discussing both tested approaches and new ideas to make these links. Additionally, in order to move beyond discussion, we invite all participants to join the conference workshop on the 2nd day. Here, we plan to intensively discuss gaps in existing approaches and possible ways for bridging these gaps in several discussion groups and to take first steps towards publishing the summarized workshop results. 

http://www.macroecology.org/

On the 1st of April, between 9:30 and 16:30, the BiodiversityKnowledge project organises a conference where outcomes will be presented and widely discussed with policy makers, science and other stakeholders at the European parliament in Brussels. As final result, BiodiversityKnowledge will present a stakeholder’s document outlining a recommended design on how such a Network of Knowledge could operate and produce added value.

EU BON will be also presented at the confernce as one of the knowledge providers of the Network of Knowledge.

To counteract biodiversity loss, efforts have considerably increased over the past years to strengthen the science-policy-society interface on biodiversity and ecosystem services. There is indeed an active landscape of projects, institutions, organisations and individuals in Europe involved in this interface, all aiming to improve the knowledge flow so that decisions at different policy levels (from European, to national and local levels) are based on the best available knowledge.

With the 7th Environmental Action Programme and the start of Horizon2020 and its focus on innovative solutions for society, the need for more concerted activities in this context become even more important.

In this context, BiodiversityKnowledge (FP7 KNEU), an EU-funded coordination action has been set up to help to map, mobilise and organise this landscape focusing on the knowledge holders’ community. For this the project has been developing and testing a prototype Network of Knowledge since 2011 with more than 300 active participations of representatives of the biodiversity and ecosystems services knowledge community. Stakeholders involved ranged from practitioners and researchers to policy-makers.

Please find the conference agenda attached below.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is holding its 6th GBIF Eropean Nodes Meeting,  organized by the Belgian Biodiversity Platform. The event will take place in Brussels, 8-10 April 2014.

GBIF is an international open data infrastructure, funded by governments.It allows anyone, anywhere to access data about all types of life on Earth, shared across national boundaries via the Internet.

By encouraging and helping institutions to publish data according to common standards, GBIF enables research not possible before, and informs better decisions to conserve and sustainably use the biological resources of the planet.

More information is available on the event website.

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/

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.

Distributed European School of Taxonomy (DEST) is organizing a course in Philosophy of Biological Systematics 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 8-12 September 2014.

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/philosophy-biological-systematics

Approaching the subject from the perspective of the philosophical foundations of scientific inquiry, this course offers critical examinations of the principles required to judge the scientific merits of systematic/taxonomic procedures by way of the following topics:

• The goal of science
• The goal of biological systematics
• Causal relationships in systematics
• The nature of why-questions
• Three forms of reasoning: deduction, induction, abduction
• The uses of deduction, induction, and abduction in science
• Evidence and reasoning
• Fact, theory & hypothesis
• Theory & hypothesis testing
• Systematics involves abductive reasoning
• Inferences of systematics hypotheses, i.e. taxa
• Implications for ‘phylogenetic’ methods
• Causal explanations, not ‘trees’ or cladograms
• Parsimony, likelihood, Bayesianism: are they relevant to abductive reasoning, thus phylogenetic inference?
• The requirement of total evidence
• The errors of cladogram comparisons & character mapping
• Homology, homogeny & homoplasy
• Character coding
• Mechanics of hypothesis testing: implications for cladograms
• Character data cannot test phylogenetic hypotheses
• The nature evidential support
• The proper testing of phylogenetic hypotheses
• The myths of bootstrap, jack-knife & Bremer ‘support’
• Implications for nomenclature
• Defining biodiversity and conservation

Participants will be provided reprints covering the topics in the course, as well as a PDF file with all course slides (>800) and associated notes.

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

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

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.

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

The 9th GEO European Projects Workshop will take place on 15 and 16 June 2015 in Copenhagen, co-organised by the Danish Meteorological Institute, the European Commission and the European Environment Agency.

The objective of the GEO European Projects Workshop is to bring together European players interested in and actively contributing to the Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS). The aim is to enable participants to present their work and discuss how Europe can contribute to this international effort. Its timing has been set to maximise early insight and awareness of the new Implementation plan for the next decade of GEO as well as input to and awareness of Horizon 2020 work programme for 2016 and 2017.

Building on the experience from previous GEO European Projects Workshops, it is intended to continue working towards greater involvement of the European private sector, especially SMEs, in GEO.  The workshop will also focus on user engagement, and the priorities for future flagship initiatives, foreseen to be strengthened in the next phase of GEO, in order to fulfil GEO's ambition to provide information for decision making.

While registration is now closed, due to demand the event will be recorded and streamed live on  http://stream.dvc.dk/9thgeo/ 

More information available on the official event page: http://geo.pbe.eionet.europa.eu/

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

- Scenarios for impact studies: from global to local

- Climate services: the relation between scientists and stakeholders

- Ecosystem services: outputs from ecosystems, challenges and responses

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

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

- The climate change policies to mitigate climatic change

- Climatic change and biodiversity

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

- Peoples' perception of risk, how to improve communication

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

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

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

CETAF39 will be hosted by the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest on the 3-4 May 2016.

More information coming soon here: http://cetaf.org/cetaf-39-general-meeting-budapest

Representatives from science, business and public administration are invited to join the 2016 GEO Workshop for European projects on earth observation from 31 May to 2 June in Berlin.

2016 marks a turning point for the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) with the launch of the new Stategic Plan implementing the Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS). Now in its 10th edition, the GEO European Projects Workshop 2016 will present and discuss European initiatives contributing to GEOSS.

The conference is jointly organised by the European Commission, the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure of Germany, and the Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science.

For further information on the event (programme, registration, practical information) and most recent updates, please regularly check: https://ec.europa.eu/easme/en/geo-european-projects-workshop-2016

The Annual meetings of the LTER-Europe network and the eLTER H2020 project will take place between 13 and 17 June, 2016 in Latvia. 

The annual LTER-Europe meeting will take place during this week, along with the annual eLTER H2020 project meeting. The current outline schedule (subject to change) is:

• Monday 13 June, 18:00 - 22:00: Welcome party
• Tuesday 14 June, 09:00 - 17:00: LTER-Europe meeting
• Wednesday 15 June, 09:00 - 18:00: eLTER H2020 project meeting
• Thursday 16 June, 09:00 - 18:00: eLTER H2020 project meeting
• Friday 17 June, 09:00 - 12:00: eLTER Core Team meeting

For updated information go to: http://www.lter-europe.net/events/lter-europe-2016

The 2016 GEO BON Open Science Conference: "Biodiversity and ecosystem Services Monitoring for the 2020 Targets and beyond. Building on observations for user needs" and the GEO BON ALL-Hands-Meeting will take place from 4 to 9 July 2016 in Leipzig, Germany. Registration for the event is now open!

The GEO BON Open Science Conference & All Hands Meeting will be a major event to bring together all of those interested in developing biodiversity monitoring programs, biodiversity observations research, and sound biodiversity management. The first 2½ days will be organized as an Open Science Conference, with oral and poster presentations in parallel sessions.

There will be also some keynotes from renown speakers. This conference is an opportunity to open GEO BON to anyone interested in joining our community. The second 2½ will be the All Hands Meeting and organized as parallel workshops on specific topics. These workshops may have products (e.g. a guide to monitor an EBV) and/or may lay out a work plan for a working group for 2016-2019. The All Hands Meeting is open to everybody active or wanting to be active in GEO BON.

Deadline abstract submission: 1 April 2016

For more information and to register, please see the official event's page.

The EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) is a biennial, pan-European, general science conference dedicated to scientific research and innovation. Each conference aims to deliver stimulating content and lively debate around the latest advancements and discoveries in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. Now in its seventh iteration, ESOF attracts thousands of delegates to the host city during the week of the conference, which, in 2016, will be held between 23 and 27 July in Manchester. 

ESOF brings together over 4,500 leading thinkers, innovators, policy makers, journalists and educators from more than 90 countries, to discuss current and future breakthroughs in contemporary science.

ESOF is one of the best opportunities for everyone from leading scientists, early careers researchers, business people, policy makers, science and technology communicators to the general public to come together to find out more about how science is helping us advance today.

Registration and more information: http://www.esof.eu/about/introduction-to-esof.html

The European Ecosystem Services 2016 conference will take place from 19 to 23 September 2016 in Antwerp, Belgium. The theme 'Helping nature to help us' focuses on the important role that healthy ecosystems play in supporting human well-being and the protection of nature.

This conference will be the biggest European event in 2016 that links science, policy and practice on ecosystem services and natural capital. It will have a strong focus on practice and implementation.

The conference programme offers an attractive mix of:

• keynote presentations from policy, practice and science;
• a networking day where businesses, practitioners, policymakers and researchers meet and showcase their work;
• interactive sessions to demonstrate working examples of ecosystem services and natural capital;
• field excursions to see ecosystem services in action; and
• scientific sessions.

Key dates:

Registration opens on 2 May 2016.

Call for abstracts - 1 Apr - 15 May 2016.

To register and find out more about teh event, please visit the official website.

• Nitrogen impacts on ecosystems structures and functioning.
• Carbon and water cycles under climate change.
• Towards sustainable usage of ecosystem services (local, regional & global).
• Drivers of biodiversity across scales.
• Data integration and interoperability enabling global scale ecosystem research and linking with environmental monitoring.
• Linking local, regional and global Earth system observations and models.

• LTER researchers and scientific site coordinators (PIs).
• LTER stakeholders and partners
• The participation of early career scholars and postgraduate researchers is encouraged.

More information here.

The GEO XIII Plenary will take place on 9 & 10 Nov 2016 in St. Petersburg, Russia. More information to follow.

The "European Conference of Tropical Ecology" - the annual scientific meeting of the Society for Tropical Ecology (Gesellschaft für Tropenökologie, gtö) - will be organized in 2017 in Brussels, Belgium, by three Universities and three research-museum institutions. It will take place from Monday 6 to Friday 10 February 2017, on the campus "Etterbeek" from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, a location easily reached from the city centre by public transport. 

The overarching topic will be "(re)connecting tropical biodiversity in space and time". It highlights both the importance of integrating fundamental sciences inferring past processes (e.g. paleoecology, evolution, social history…) to understand current patterns of biodiversity, and the urgent need to reconnect patches of fragmented landscapes if we wish to conserve tropical biodiversity and ecological services of tropical ecosystems for future generations.

For more information and to register, please visit the official event's page: http://www.soctropecol-2017.eu/  

The 11th GEO European Projects Workshop will take place in Helsinki between 19-21 June 2017.  

The purpose of the conference is to bring together European stakeholders interested in and actively contributing to the Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS). The event is a forum to exchange ideas and inform participants about work and initiatives undertaken in the context of GEOSS. 

The conference is organised by the European Commission and Finish Meteorological Institute. 

More information to come at: https://ec.europa.eu/easme/en/11th-geo-european-projects-workshop-2017

Edgar Award© Mystery Writers of America. DB here: Some good news for Perplexing Plots. It’s gotten positive reviews in various places; they’re sampled on its Amazon page. Most recently, Geoffrey O’Brien has written a very generous review for the New York Review of Books (February 8, 2024). He has, needless to say, kind words for […]

Back on February 10, less than three weeks before his death, David blogged about the positive reception that Perplexing Plots had had including a nomination for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He didn’t live to learn the result, but it didn’t win. Now, however, comes news that the International Crime Fiction […]

Russians close to the Kremlin voiced optimism that Donald J. Trump could help end the war in Ukraine on Russia’s terms. But Moscow also remembers Trump’s first term as a disappointment.

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Boston College senior, Sarah Dansreau, takes us through her perfect day in Boston's Brighton neighborhood.

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“We need to make sure that the hour of sunlight, of daylight, is in the evening so people’s mouths can be turned upwards in a smile,” Markey said in a recent video.

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The 44-year-old supermodel is expecting with her boyfriend, Joaquim Valente, according to reports.

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"We just weren't good enough. You guys can write what you guys think is the malaise on the team and what's going on."

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“It's something that I'll look back at and bring with me forever."

The post Linus Ullmark relishes his return to TD Garden, especially after beating Bruins  appeared first on Boston.com.