A new EU BON derived paper, publsihed recently in the journal Remote Sensing, introduces eHabitat+, a habitat modelling service supporting the European Commission’s Digital Observatory for Protected Areas.

Abstract:

Protected areas (PAs) need to be assessed systematically according to biodiversity values and threats in order to support decision-making processes. For this, PAs can be characterized according to their species, ecosystems and threats, but such information is often difficult to access and usually not comparable across regions. There are currently over 200,000 PAs in the world, and assessing these systematically according to their ecological values remains a huge challenge. However, linking remote sensing with ecological modelling can help to overcome some limitations of conservation studies, such as the sampling bias of biodiversity inventories. The aim of this paper is to introduce eHabitat+, a habitat modelling service supporting the European Commission’s Digital Observatory for Protected Areas, and specifically to discuss a component that systematically stratifies PAs into different habitat functional types based on remote sensing data. eHabitat+ uses an optimized procedure of automatic image segmentation based on several environmental variables to identify the main biophysical gradients in each PA. This allows a systematic production of key indicators on PAs that can be compared globally. Results from a few case studies are illustrated to show the benefits and limitations of this open-source tool.

Original Source: 

Martínez-López, J.; Bertzky, B.; Bonet-García, F.J.; Bastin, L.; Dubois, G. Biophysical Characterization of Protected Areas Globally through Optimized Image Segmentation and Classification. Remote Sens. 2016, 8, 780. DOI: 0.3390/rs8090780

In 2013, the University of Vienna will host the Annual Conference of the Society for Tropical Ecology (Gesellschaft für Tropenökologie, gtö), focusing on Tropical Ecology in a Changing World. The conference will run from April 02 to 05, 2013 in Vienna, Austria. The conference aims at maximizing interactions among scientists of all disciplines and backgrounds who are interested in tropical ecology and biodiversity.
Ongoing global change processes along the inter-twined dimensions of climate and land-use pose tremendous challenges for maintaining ecosystem functions. Traditionally, ecological research on climate change had its focus on high altitude and latitude biomes that severely and rapidly suffer from warming. Yet, effects of climate change on tropical ecosystems and organisms can be equally strong. In addition, changes in land-use exert ever increasing pressures especially on tropical biota. Understanding these processes is crucial to allow for predicting and mitigating adverse effects of forthcoming changes on tropical biodiversity and its role in ecosystem functioning. The annual conference of the Society for Tropical Ecology (gtö) will provide an interdisciplinary platform for discussion, particularly on the following topics:
- Climate change effects on tropical biota
- Influence of land-use changes on tropical biota
- Tropical biodiversity and ecosystem functioning under Global Change

Further Information: http://www.gtoe-conference.de/

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

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

More information on the conference can be found here.

In 2013, the University of Potsdam will host the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The meeting (www.gfoe-2013.de) will take place from September 9 to 13, 2013 in Potsdam, Germany.

The guiding theme of the 43rd Annual Meeting is "Building bridges in ecology - linking systems, scales and disciplines".
Along the lines of this guiding theme, we will stimulate scientific discussions about all aspects in basic and applied ecological research contributing to better connect.

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.

Target group: programmers, developers and system engineers. The workshop is also open to anybody who might be interested to learn more about the DINA-system.

Preliminary agenda:

• Presentations from all DINA-partners
• APIs, service oriented architecture and road map for distributed development guidelines and principles on how to build a module and join the DINA-system
• Case studies
• Delivery options: creating installations from hosted environment, virtual machines down to code.

Workshop Program.

There will be a SETF-meeting for DINA consortium members on the 15th of September.

Welcome to register for the workshop here:

DINA - Technical Workshop 16-18 September, Stockholm

The workshop is an activity within WP 1 Task 1.4

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 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/

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 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.

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.

DINA Technical Comittee will have a workshop in Copenhagen with updates on ongoing module developments and coding sessions.

http://www.dina-project.net/wiki/Physical_TC_meeting_2015

The 5th International EcoSummit Congress, EcoSummit 2016 - Ecological Sustainability: Engineering Change, will take place at The Corum Convention Centre, Montpellier from 29 August – 1 September 2016.

This conference series was founded in 1996 in Copenhagen, as a forum to meet the demands of scientists working in several new ecological disciplines, and who required a better understanding of the concepts and methods for a holistic use of ecology in environmental management. Since 1996, EcoSummit has been taken around the world (Canada and China), with EcoSummit 2012 hosting 1600 participants from 75 countries in Columbus, Ohio, USA.

EcoSummit 2016 will centre on the ecology of terrestrial ecosystems and all habitats that are integrated within those ecosystems, including river networks, wetlands and coastlines. 

More information: http://www.ecosummit2016.org/

The 3rd edition of the DEST course "Philosophy of Biological Systematics" is co-organised with the Scandinavian Research School in Biosystematics (ForBio) and will take place from 10 to 14 October 2016.

Target Audience

MSc students, PhD students, early career researchers, professional systematists/taxonomists and anyone who is interested in the philosophy of Biological Systematics.

Criteria for selection will be scientific merit, motivation and usefulness of the training course for the applicant's career.

For more information and to register, please go to: http://taxonomytraining.eu/content/philosophy-biological-systematics-1

Sfécologie2016, the 2016 International Conference of the French Ecological Society, will take place  in Marseille (France), from 24-28 October 2016. Local organizer is the 'Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d’Ecologie' (IMBE).

Following the former successful events (Ecologie 2010 in Montpellier and Joint Meeting British Ecological Society/Sfé 2014 in Lille), Sfécologie 2016 will promote and support exchanges around the latest developments in research and the most exciting challenges raised from the different disciplines of ecology, sharing scientific evidences, confronting experiences, developing collaborations around the Mediterranean Sea, across Europe, across the world.

The 4-days programme will be extensive, including 5 plenary speakers, thematic sessions and 14 symposia as well as inviting social events (conference outline here). 

For more information visit the official event's page.

The 10th  International Conference on Ecological Informatics 'Facing Global Change by Sharing Data and Models' wil take place on 24‐28 October 2016 in Dubrovnik, Croatia  

The 4th EU BON roundtable will take place on Thursday, 17 November 2016 at the premises of the Museum fuer Naturkunde in Berlin with the motto "Pathways to sustainability for EU BONs network of collaborators and technical infrastructure".  

One of the key questions will be how to achieve sustainability for the many different products of EU BON, such as tools, software, models and infrastructure after the project ends. It should be discussed how a European Biodiversity Observation Network and its essential components could be sustained after the project will end in May 2017, by which institutions or networks and how the products can be used in the best way for European policy and research needs.  

The 13th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will take place from 4 to 17 December 2016 - Cancun, Mexico.

More information to follow here: https://www.cbd.int/doc/?meeting=cop-13

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/  

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IADL
3 Dec 2018
 

JOAQUIM Forn was Catalonia’s interior minister until he was arrested for his role in the October 2017 independence referendum. He has been in jail since.

THE NATIONAL

18th December 2018

Exclusive by GREG RUSSELL

Forn has also been on hunger strike for two weeks, one of four prisoners taking this drastic course of action. Here, he talks about his incarceration, the forthcoming trials and Europe.

What is your view of events such as the continuing refusal of European leaders to take up your cases; and the way Spain is lurching further to the right almost every day?

I am worried that Europe turns its back on the situation we are in. What is happening is a clear violation of civil rights and liberties. In Spain, an involution is happening as a consequence of a weak left that is being dragged by the discourse of the PP (People’s Party) and Ciudadanos (Citizens) and also due to the rise of the extreme right with Vox.

Europe should not be unconnected to this regression and should position itself in defence of our liberties.

The political prisoners have a huge amount of support with daily protests outside Lledoners – does that support give you more strength?

Absolutely. Some of us have been for more than a year in pretrial and preventative detention. First in prison in Madrid and now in Catalunya.

These last few months have been very tough and we have been able to overcome them thanks to the support from our families and the societal mobilisation that there is in Catalunya.

From the prison courtyard we can hear the chants and shouts of support. Without this great support, the situation would have been more difficult to bear.

You have been on hunger strike now for two weeks, are you not worried that this protest can damage you?

We have not imposed a time limit upon ourselves. Our hunger strike aims to denounce the inaction of the Constitutional Court (TC), which has not reviewed our appeals. Some of these were submitted a year ago. The court, who should be the guarantor of our rights, is acting subordinate to political interests and is denying us access to European justice.

What we are enduring in Spain should not only worry independence supporters. Any democrat should react to this arbitrariness. We are clearly worried about the possible consequences to our health. The medical services from jail check us daily. We cannot forget that our trial is starting next month and that we should confront it in the best possible condition, both physical and mentally.

The TC judges have said they will hear you appeals next month (and will hear some cases before then) – do you believe that they will stick to that timetable?

From the moment we started the hunger strike, the TC made some moves. This week, it has started to resolve five of almost 30 appeals that all the defendants have presented.

Next week it will continue to resolve other appeals. It is clear that the TC knows it has not acted according to the law and should face our complaint.

How do you view the world’s response to what is happening in Catalonia?

I would like there to be a bigger awareness of what is happening in Spain. The governments of both PP and PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party) have dismissed dialogue, which is the political way, and have ended up imposing criminal law solutions against the political demands of millions of Catalans.

The fact that in Europe, in the 21st century, we are talking about exiled and imprisoned politicians should worry the European states and citizens. The crisis being lived in Catalunya should speak to all democrats. The debate about liberties is very alive in Europe and the world, so we cannot turn our backs as if this debate does not concern us.

How worrying is the prospect of not receiving a fair trial?

Without a doubt, we are very worried. In any case, I see the trial as an opportunity. We are not in the pretrial proceedings any more, so now the accusations need to be argued with proof.

The prosecution wanted to create the narrative of rebellion and sedition, based on the police reports from the Civil Guard and the National Police. The German courts have compellingly ruled out these crimes. The trial will be broadcast live, with the presence of international observers.

I have not lost faith and I truly think that with the criminal code in hand, the only possible sentence is absolution.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

I would like to thank the Scottish people for showing their solidarity and support. We have received hundreds of letters and postcards. We cannot answer them all which is why I want to take this opportunity to thank them for their gesture.

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