On 27 June to 1 July 2011, the 7th Symposium for European Freshwater Sciences will take place in Girona, Spain. It's being organised by the Iberian Limnological Association in collaboration with ICRA (Catalan Institute for Water Research) and UdG* (University of Girona). More information available at the website (link below).

During the meeting, there will be a special session focusing on 'Assessing the impacts of global change and anthropogenic pressures on freshwater ecosystems: a role for long term-ecological research.' The overview of the session is as follows:

SS13- Assessing the impacts of global change and anthropogenic pressures on freshwater ecosystems, a role for long term-ecological research

• Bernard Montuelle (INRA, France)
• A. Clemens (Head of Rhone Basin LTER)
• Alba Argerich (OSU, USA)
• Sherri L. Johnson (USFS PNW Research Station, USA)
• Ana Filipa Filipe (UB, Spain)
• Núria Bonada (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)
• Klement Tockner (IGB, Germany)

Large ecological datasets can be used to build spatially-explicit and predictive models to quantify how environmental drivers, such as climate change or anthropogenic pressures, affect freshwater ecosystems at global or local scales. The sensitivity and integrative nature of these ecosystems make them excellent sentinels for evidencing current trends of global change. The use of different biological indicators (fishes, invertebrates, plants,.), at the population or community level, associated with physico-chemical dataset or land-uses informations, is a necessity to manage or improve a good ecological status of aquatic ecosystems. Particularly, long-term data offer invaluable information to understand the effects of global changes on water resources.

This session will promote the development of multidisciplinary approaches, by focusing on issues such as:

• Freshwater databases: difficulties and achievements on gathering data
•  Assessing and forecasting freshwater ecological changes
•  Using bioindication and sentinels ecosystems as witness of global change
•  Building bridges between scientists, managers and citizens regarding freshwater ecosystems multifunctionality.