Dear colleagues,
We are excited to announce that in 2015, the ETH Zurich will host the Annual Conference of the Society for Tropical Ecology (Gesellschaft für Tropenökologie, gtö), focusing on “Resilience of Tropical Ecosystems: Future challenges and opportunities.” The conference (www.gtoe-conference.de) will run from Tuesday 7th to Friday 10th April, 2015 in Zurich, Switzerland. The conference provides an exciting and friendly atmosphere for tropical ecologists at all levels of their career. A priority is to maximize interactions among delegates, practitioners and policy makers. Ultimately, this meeting will provide a platform for tropical ecologists to work together to ensure resilient tropical ecosystems. We welcome contributions from all fields of Tropical Ecology. Please download and print the conference poster here to display in your department.
Tropical ecosystems are global biodiversity hotspots increasingly under pressure from a growing population. The complexity and unpredictability of these systems present considerable challenges for ecologists, conservation biologists and natural resource managers. The global demand for food, energy and recreation, large scale industrial land use change and anthropogenic climate change present scientific and social challenges. Ensuring resilient tropical ecosystems and provisioning a broad array of ecosystem services necessitates maintaining biodiversity at all its levels.
Past mismanagement and habitat degradation require counter measures, including habitat restoration and developing novel management approaches for resilient tropical landscape mosaics which both meet the immediate livelihood needs of rural communities and the ecosystem services for broader society. This presents great challenges but also opportunities.
The annual conference of the Society for Tropical Ecology (gtö) will provide an interdisciplinary platform for discussing these major challenges and future opportunities in tropical Ecology including:
- Understanding tropical biodiversity
- Defining Resilient tropical ecosystems
- Novel approaches to understand and manage tropical ecosystems
| Call for sessions
The organizing committee encourages all members of gtö and scientists interested in tropical ecology research to organize and chair sessions for presentations or workshops. Proposals for sessions will be accepted until September 30, 2014. We welcome proposals addressing the above-mentioned topics as well as all other topics relevant to tropical ecology. Proposals should include the following information: 1. A session title plus a short title (max. 5 words or 50 characters) If you would like to propose and chair a session, please submit your proposal to |
Procedure
For all sessions, researchers and students interested in tropical ecology will be welcome to submit oral and/or poster presentations. Over the following weeks, session themes and chairs will be selected by the scientific committee. The call for presentations will then follow. Speakers will be selected by the session chairs, in collaboration with the scientific committee. Attendees not giving an oral presentation will have the opportunity to present their research in the form of a poster presentation. Efforts should be made to be specific and to avoid presenting overviews, summaries, or material that is already widely known. The goal of the conference is to stimulate new ideas by presenting new information.
More information to follow at a later date
This brief note intends to provide you with the conference date and venue for your planning purposes. More detailed information (including materials concerning the submission of talks and posters, and registration information, etc.) will follow in the coming weeks.
We are looking forward to arranging a stimulating conference and hope that you will be able to participate. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our conference office at: info@gtoe-conference.de. Please refer to the conference website for further information: www.gtoe-conference.de.
We look forward to welcoming you to Zurich!
Please forward this email to interested colleagues, students etc.
With kind regards,
The local organising Committee and
Professor Dr Manfred Niekisch
President of the Society for Tropical Ecology (gtö)
Local organizers
Dr. Chris Kettle
Prof. Jaboury Ghazoul
Dr. Barbara Becker
Dr. Claude Garcia
Michelle Grant
Prof. Kentaro Shimizu
Contact conference office: info@gtoe-conference.de
Annual Conference of the Society for Tropical Ecology
(Gesellschaft für Tropenökologie, gtö)
“Resilience of Tropical Ecosystems: Future challenges and opportunities”
April 07 – 10th, 2015, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Email: info@gtoe-conference.de