Call for abstracts
The challenges of our time, such as the climate crisis and the threats posed by biodiversity loss, calls for a deeper understanding of ecological phenomena to identify patterns and underlying mechanisms of biodiversity organisation and ecosystem functioning at different scales while designing scenarios of future change. Science is changing, informatics and data are becoming ever more prominent and are opening up new opportunities to advance our knowledge and provide science-based solutions to society’s needs.
The call for abstracts of the LifeWatch ERIC BEeS 2023 is now open. The conference offers a selected range of topics for which abstracts for oral presentations can be submitted. We aim at collecting contributions exploring the drivers and mechanisms of biodiversity loss, the macroecology and biogeography of biodiversity, ecosystem and habitat mapping for the potential identification of biodiversity hotspots and the optimisation of the current restoration strategies, animal biology and behavioural traits, biodiversity observation and bio-monitoring, the effects of climate change on biodiversity, the potential of natural capital and the One Health approach for a sustainable transition. For further information, please have a look at their detailed description before submitting an abstract.
How to submit an abstract
Click on the button below, create your profile and activate your account. After logging in, you will be redirected to your personal area, where you can click on “+ New Abstract” and fill in the form. Each abstract should not be longer than 250 words.
Submission opening: February 2023
Submission deadline: 30 April 2023
Session topics
Biodiversity loss is the most pervasive change occurring within ecosystems, since it affects all ecosystem processes and functions (Cardinale et al., 2012). Moreover, biodiversity loss appears to increase the risk of human exposure to both new and established zoonotic pathogens (Keesing at al., 2020). Therefore, understanding the drivers and mechanisms of biodiversity loss is a major scientific research challenge. To this aim, and in order to support scientists, LifeWatch ERIC has developed key services for the standardisation of taxonomic and species-related information across distributed biodiversity data repositories and operating facilities.
Macroecology and biogeography of biodiversity are currently advancing quickly owing to an unprecedented accumulation of biodiversity data. LifeWatch ERIC has developed thematic services supporting macroecological and biogeographical research on biodiversity change at local to global scales through the LifeWatch Species Information Backbones. These include mapping of hidden and dark biodiversity and biodiversity ignorance, patterns of biodiversity change in model ecosystem types, such as mountain ecosystems, analytical tools assessing the strength of abiotic drivers of biodiversity change, such as essential biophysical variables.
All ecosystems are exposed to gradual changes in their abiotic and biotic components. Currently, strong drivers of change, such as human demographic increase, habitat pollution and consumption, resource over-exploitation and changes in climate are triggering ecosystem level changes and within-ecosystem changes, highlighting real tipping points (Scheffer et al., 2001; Carrier-Belleau, 2021). Besides mapping the actual habitat, it is of paramount importance to identify biodiversity hotspots as well as potential components of the ecological networks in order to optimise restoration strategies. LifeWatch ERIC thematic ecosystem and habitat mapping services support scientific research in this area of interest through remote sensing approaches and modelling tool developments.
The understanding of both community assembly rules and coexistence mechanisms, at both intra-population and interspecific levels, is largely based on differences within and between species in animal biology and behavioural traits. LifeWatch ERIC has developed thematic services to address hypothesis testing on individual reproductive, space use and resource use behaviour in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. More efforts in this direction are planned for the next 5-year period, following the requirements of the scientific community of practice in this area of interest, following a bottom-up approach.
Scientific research on biodiversity monitoring and conservation has an unprecedented potential availability of data, collected by different types of sensors and by sampling activities of researchers worldwide. Harmonising and achieving interoperability of the impressive flows of data collected and improving data organisation and analysis are major challenges which are receiving high levels of attention from LifeWatch ERIC, which is continuously building new and more effective tools as thematic services. These include semantic, bioinformatic, modelling and AI services, addressing both niche shift opportunities for many species, changes in species distribution and metabolic rate changes among individuals, impacting on overall standing biomass and potential species loss.
Impacts of climate change and global warming are likely to have a significant effect on the species and ecosystems global distribution and service provision. Addressing biodiversity and ecosystem responses, and particularly mitigation responses, to climate change and global warming is a major priority and challenge for the scientific community. LifeWatch ERIC is searching to support global research on this issue through the development of thematic services, as VREs designed to address ecological responses to global warming. Further developments are also planned over the coming years.
Provisioning of data resources and services connecting the conceptual framework of ecosystem health to the “One Health” conceptual framework. These components will assist society’s transition towards restoring the balance between nature assets/natural capital and anthropic activities, agroecosystems and ecosystems. LifeWatch ERIC is investing in this area with services to monitor the impact of the agriculture and fisheries sectors on biodiversity and ecosystems. In particular, the focus is on web services designed to integrate satellite data into the biodiversity and ecosystem service monitoring, and to collect and manage big and real-time data coming from networks of sensors located in various locations, using multiple dataset protocols, and from autonomous vehicles and intelligent irrigation platforms, as well as from other sources.