The FP7 Coordination action BiodiversityKnowledge on "designing a network of knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services to inform decision-making in Europe" is organizing its second international conference on September 24th to 26th in Berlin.
The objective of this second conference is to discuss and finalize the recommended design of a future Network of Knowledge (NoK) on biodiversity and ecosystem services in Europe.
Considering the importance of this future Network of Knowledge, representatives of the biodiversity and ecosystem service knowledge community - from practitioners, researchers to policy makers - are warmly invited to actively participate in this conference and to contribute to the design process of a European Network of Knowledge during 2013.
Event web page: Biodiversity Knowledge 2nd Conference

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

The training includes three subsets:

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

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

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

This course has been offered annually since 2005 and is held at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Leuvensesteenweg 13, B-3080 Tervuren, Belgium).

To apply for traineeship and for more information, go to:
http://www.africamuseum.be/research/collaborations/training/group?set_language=en&cl=en

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

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.

• 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 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.

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/

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

The training includes three subsets:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fee includes accommodation and meals.                                                                                                                                          

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The training course will have three (3) subsets:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BIOTALENT is a multilingual blended e-learning training programme to gain crucial skills and knowledge in biodiversity. Protecting life on earth in all its forms also involves introducing innovative ways to address pressing environmental issues of today. A strong investment in environmental education and a passion for science is therefore essential to this programme.

This one-day event, Taking place on 18 May 2017, in Brussels, will illustrate the uniqueness of the BIOTALENT project and programme in the way environmental education is brought to the course participant. The various expert speakers that are invited are all very passionate about innovation in education and the new ways in which scientific and environmental education can contribute to conserving biodiversity.  

To register and find out more visit the official announcement.

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