Biodiversity and Ecosystem eScience and the Triple Planetary Crisis: the LifeWatch ERIC Community meets in Heraklion at BEeS 2025!
The BEeS Conference 2025 is approaching! From 30 June to 3 July, Heraklion, Crete, will host the 2025 edition of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem eScience Conference (BEeS), LifeWatch ERIC’s flagship event, hosted this year by the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) and the Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture (IMBBC). The event will gather researchers, policy-makers and ecosystem experts to discuss some of today’s most urgent global challenges.
Under the overarching theme of the Triple Planetary Crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution), BEeS 2025 will explore how eScience and European Research Infrastructures (RIs) can contribute to understanding and addressing its complex impacts.
This year, contributions have been structured around six thematic areas, reflecting the priorities identified by LifeWatch ERIC in collaboration with its National Distributed Centres, and coordinated by the corresponding Thematic Services Working Groups:
- Biodiversity & Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change
- Mapping Life on Planet Earth: Biogeography in a Changing World
- Taxonomy: Identifying the Units of Diversity in Life
- Exploring Boundaries of Life Hosting Spaces: Habitat Mapping
- Biodiversity Observatory: Smart Systems for a Living Planet
- Tracking the Wild: Animal Movement, Behaviour, and Biologging
The Call for Abstracts closed in May, and the submissions are currently under evaluation by the Working Group coordinators. These abstracts will shape the content of the oral and poster presentations distributed across the four-day programme.
The event will begin with a closed round table for representatives of European Research Infrastructures, aimed at identifying complementarities and synergies between their activities. The session brings together infrastructures working on biodiversity, ecosystems and the social components of the biosphere, under the lens of the One Health approach.
The first day will be fully dedicated to Research Infrastructures and presentations from the plenary speakers:
- Prof. Anastasios Eleftheriou (HCMR), “Man and the Sea”
- Prof. Carole Goble (University of Manchester), “Sharing and Re-using Computational Workflows – WorkflowHub and FAIR Workflows in Biodiversity”
- Dr. Nikos Kyrpides (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), “The Dark Matter in Biology”.
The thematic sessions in the following days of the conference, will see the participation of Dr. Richard Field, (University of Nottingham), and Dr. Tammy Horton, (National Oceanography Centre).
In addition to scientific sessions and poster presentations, the conference will offer hands-on workshops focused on key LifeWatch ERIC services, including its Virtual Laboratories (vLabs) and Virtual Research Environments (VREs). The final day will be dedicated entirely to training activities.
Participation in BEeS 2025 is free of charge but subject to registration via the online form. The conference also offers special networking opportunities, including joint lunches and a social dinner with wine tasting and a vineyard tour at the stunning Scalarea Estate.
BEeS 2025 is supported by sponsors including Pensoft and Cretan Rhizotomists, and will see the participation of several related projects and initiatives.
Stay updated via the conference page, and keep an eye out for the upcoming publication of the Book of Abstracts through our website and newsletter.