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Masaryk University in Brno, team members of CzechPolar project in particular organize a workshop focusing actual state-of-art in the field of functioning of polar ecosystems under ongoing global changes.

Please feel free to learn more about the ECOSYS-2014 workshop - a satellite meeting to PEC - in an Invitation.

 

Functioning of Antarctic Terrestrial Ecosystems in Changing Environment

 Invitation
 

 

Dear colleagues,

Allow me to invite you to participate in ECOSYS 2014, a workshop that is organized as a satellite meeting to PEC. In a historical perspective, it is a follow-up meeting of the conference Structure  and  Function  of  Antarctic  Terrestrial  Ecosystems, organized in Brno, Czech Republic, in 2009. Now, after 5 years, funcioning of polar ecosystems is still an actual issue, especially when seen from the point of view of ongoing climate change. Moreover, some important impacts of climate change are expected to accelerate in near future in Earth polar regions. Therefore, the ECOSYS 2014 Organizing Committee decided to consider the relation between structure and function of polar terrestrial ecosystems as a central point of the workshop. The Committee believes that  functioning of polar ecosystem as evaluated at different levels of complexity will attract your attention.  

ECOSYS 2014 will focus on recent state-of-art in the research focused on structure and function of polar terrestrial ecosystems. The scope of the workshop will range from a variety of abiotic factors forming polar habitats to biodiversity and ecophysiology of autotrophic constituents of polar ecosystems such as algae and cyanobacteria, lichens, mosses, higher plants. Terrestrial invertebrates and vertebrates, their biodiversity, distribution, production, stress physiology, population biology, etology are considered as workshop topics as well. Last but not least, ECOSYS 2014 wants to address human impact in polar regions, allien species, conservation issuess and measures aimed to sustain undisturbed and functioning polar ecosystems for future generations. Apart of traditional scheme of oral presentations, moderated discussions are planned for individual panels: (i) Changes in abiotic environment, (ii) Vegetation responses to environmental factors, and (iii) Polar animals in changing environment.

M. Barták
Chairman of Organizing Committee