Project description

We investigate heterogeneity patterns of different P fractions and P species in calcareous soils in the Bavarian Limestone Alps and the Swabian Alb at various spatial (sub-micron to profile) scales and relate them to heterogeneity patterns of other soil properties. Furthermore, we study interrelations/interactions between the P status of soils on silicate and calcareous bedrock and biotic systems (forest plants + associated microorganism communities) in laboratory and field experiments with tree seedlings grown on model soils. We use standard methods of soil and plant analysis, but focus on ground-breaking innovative technologies like synchrotron-based X-ray spectro(micro)scopy (XRF, XANES, µ-XRF, µ-XANES) and high-resolution Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (NanoSIMS).

Candidate profile

We are looking for a highly motivated candidate, who should hold an MSc degree (or equivalent) in geo-ecology, biology, forestry, environmental chemistry, geology, agriculture or related natural sciences and have sound knowledge of soil science. Applicants should be able to work self-organized and in a team, have excellent management and communication skills, and should be committed to pursuing interdisciplinary research. Good computer and language skills (English) are necessary. Candidates with experience in synchrotron-based X-ray spectroscopy or X-ray microscopy or high-resolution Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (NanoSIMS) are highly welcome. The candidate is expected to present her/his results in highly-ranked international journals and at conferences.

The Soil Science Group at TUM (http://www.soil-science.com) offers a vibrant academic environment with well-equipped facilities located nearby Munich in southern Germany. The framework of the Priority Programme 1685 provides the opportunity to interact and co-operate with excellent scientists in different fields of life and environmental sciences.

The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for three years and provides a salary of 65 % of German TVL E13 (approx. EUR 1400 per month/net) scheme together with health and social security benefits. The envisaged starting date is March 1, 2017.

Interested candidates are asked to send a single pdf-file including letter of motivation, research experience, CV, and any publications by email to Prof. Dr. Jörg Prietzel ([email protected]). Application deadline is January 15, 2017.

Additional support for the conference from:

A 17-strong team of colleagues from 12 ALTER-Net partner organisations has written a paper on nature-based solutions. The paper, which is published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, considers the implications for science, policy and practice of the recently introduced concept of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), with a focus on the European context.

The team analysed NBS in relation to similar concepts, and, in the paper, they reflect on its relationship to sustainability as an overarching framework. From this, they derive a set of questions to be addressed and propose a general framework for how these might be addressed in NBS projects by funders, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners.

Among the team's conclusions, they assert that the strength of the NBS concept is its integrative, systemic approach which prevents it from becoming just another “green communication tool” that provides justification for a classical model of natural resource exploitation and management measures. They also argue that, to realise their full potential, NBS must be developed by including the experience of all relevant stakeholders such that ‘solutions’ contribute to achieving all dimensions of sustainability. Furthermore, as NBS are developed, we must also moderate the expectations placed on them, since the precedent provided by other initiatives whose aim was to manage nature sustainably demonstrates that we should not expect NBS to be cheap and easy, at least not in the short-term.

Further information

• Full reference: Carsten Nesshöver, Timo Assmuth, Katherine N. Irvine, Graciela M. Rusch, Kerry A. Waylen, Ben Delbaere, Dagmar Haase, Lawrence Jones-Walters, Hans Keune, Eszter Kovacs, Kinga Krauze, Mart Külvik, Freddy Rey, Jiska van Dijk, Odd Inge Vistad, Mark E. Wilkinson, Heidi Wittmer, The science, policy and practice of nature-based solutions: An interdisciplinary perspective, Science of The Total Environment, Available online 2 December 2016, ISSN 0048-9697
  DoI: j.scitotenv.2016.11.106
  Web: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716325578
• The incentive for this paper was ALTER-Net's 2015 conference on nature-based solutions.

Closing date: 20 January 2017

For this conference, researchers, decision-makers and practitioners from all disciplines and fields are invited to submit abstracts for presentations and posters related to synergies, conflicts, and trade-offs at the nature-society interface. The conference will include the following sessions:

• Sustainable and fair multi-functional landscapes
• Sustainable management of wildlife conflict species
• Bio-cultural diversity as a response to increased societal heterogeneity
• Environment and health in urban environments
• Interdisciplinary socio-ecological research for institutional and governmental challenges
• Multiple dimensions of sustainability (ecological, economic, social)
• Valuing and accounting of natural capital: assessing its role in the nature-society interface
• Citizen science approaches for synergies in nature-society interactions
• Understanding preferences, perception and valuation among stakeholders for synergies and trade-offs
• Ecosystem services bundles – operationalizing synergies and trade-offs
• Policy-making and governance for nature-society interactions
• Nature-society interactions in cities: a specific challenge in the ‘Urban age’

The conference is also accepting proposals for two additional sessions related to conference themes.

Proposals should be emailed by January 20^th 2017 to Tessa Van Santen (INBO, Belgium). Please send a Word document or other suitable text file with the following information:

Proposals for talks

We invite contributions from individual speakers. Accepted contributions will be organised appropriately by the conference organisers. To offer a talk, please provide the following information:

1. Date of proposal
2. Working title of talk
3. Speaker’s name, affiliation, contact email and telephone number (include international dialing code)
4. First and second choice for session most suited for your talk
5. An abstract of 250 words, outlining your proposed talk. Please consider the following:

• the theme of your talk
• essential background information
• brief details of what you will present (ideas, results, case studies, on-going work, personal viewpoints,  questions, new innovations, etc.)
• to whom is your talk relevant and how? (e.g. how could it benefit policy development, understanding of conflicts and trade-offs, etc.?)

Notes:

• Although all offered talks will be reviewed, we cannot guarantee to include them all.
• Depending on space and time, some proposed talks may be invited to be presented as posters.
• The duration of talks has yet to be decided, but we will confirm this in due course.

Session proposals

Please provide the following information to enable the conference planning committee to properly evaluate your proposal:

1. Date of proposal
2. Working title of the session
3. Proposer(s) with affiliation(s), and contact data (e-mail and phone number, including international dialing code) for the person serving as the contact point
4. Names, affiliations and contact details of the presenters
5. An abstract of 250 words (see below)
6. Any special requirements (e.g. equipment, room type)
7. Requirements in terms of chairing, session moderation, panel discussion and other forms of participant engagement
8. Proposed introductory talks

The abstract should include:

• essential background information
• the scientific and applied questions to be addressed
• objectives of the session
• proposed format for the session

• to whom is the session relevant and how? (e.g. how could it benefit policy development, understanding of conflicts and trade-offs, etc.?)

• planned outcomes; it is also advisable to indicate the links with the overall themes of the conference.

Notes:

• All proposals will be reviewed, but we cannot guarantee to include all proposed sessions
• Since we are also inviting contributions from individual speakers, we may include other relevant speakers in your session.

Posters

There will be opportunities to present posters at the conference. Although we are still working on the details, it is likely that we will create opportunities for people displaying posters to talk about them briefly, in an informal session. To offer a poster, please provide the following information:

1. Date of proposal
2. Working title of poster
3. Names of contributors, with affiliation(s), and contact data (e-mail and phone number, including international dialing code) for the person serving as the contact point
4. An abstract of 250 words, outlining your proposed poster. Please consider the following:

• the theme of your poster
• essential background information
• brief details of what your poster will present (ideas, results, case studies, on-going work, personal viewpoints, questions, new innovations, etc.)
• to whom is your poster relevant and how? (e.g. how could it benefit policy development, understanding of conflicts and trade-offs, etc.?)

Notes:

• Although all offers of posters will be considered, we cannot guarantee to accept them all.
• We will provide information about poster sizes, orientation and method(s) of fixing to the poster boards in due course.

Note: there is a call for session proposals at this conference - see below

This is the first time the BES, NecoV and GfÖ have held a conference together and they are delighted to be working together to deliver a meeting of 1,200 leading ecologists from around the world in Belgium. The joint meeting aims to build closer ties between the vibrant academic ecological communities in Europe, and meets the strategic objectives of all three of the ecological Societies. The meeting will bring together ecologists to discuss the latest advances in ecological research across the whole discipline and will focus on the major environmental challenges at the European level. The meeting will be held in association with the European Ecological Federation (EEF).

Call for proposals - thematic topic sessions

Proposals are welcome for thematic topic sessions at this event. The Thematic Topic Sessions provide a high profile forum for the discussion of timely, innovative and/or important questions, provide local ‘flavour’ within the programme, and showcase integration among disciplines. The organisers support submissions from across the full spectrum of ecology. However, for this meeting, they are particularly interested in considering proposals centred around:

• Integration of observational and experimental approaches in ecology
• New directions in conservation (including rewildling)
• Eco-evolutionary dynamics
• Polar and montane ecology
• New generation biomonitoring methods (e.g. eDNA, metagenomics)
• Global ecological networks (e.g. GEOBON, LTER, NEON)
• Human-nature interactions – moving beyond ecosystem services and nature-based solutions

Furthermore, the organisers would like to promote proposals that involve representatives from across BES, NecoV and GfÖ. Please note that they receive in excess of 40 proposals each year for ~10 slots. All submissions are evaluated by an academic panel, primarily on the basis of scientific quality.

Closing date for proposals: 31 January 2017

The first AHIA project was led by ALTER-Net partner ESSRG and was called Public participation in science and policy: development of a science-society interface in relation to biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Citizen science is a relatively new way of knowledge co-creation, where professional scientists and enthusiastic citizens collaboratively search for answers. While it certainly presents challenges, it also provides a great opportunity for both parties to engage science and nature together, and ultimately, can result in transformative societal changes.

The number of collaborative initiatives between scientists and volunteers (i.e., citizen science) is increasing across many research fields. The promise of societal transformation together with scientific breakthroughs contributes to the current popularity of citizen science (CS) in the policy domain. The researchers examined the transformative capacity of citizen science, in particular learning through environmental CS as conservation tool.

"the assertion of transformative effects of Citizen Science learning is often based on assumptions rather than empirical observation" - Bela, G. et al. Cons. Biol.

During their study, the team reviewed the CS and social-learning literature and examined 14 conservation projects across Europe that involved collaborative CS. They also developed a template that can be used to explore learning arrangements (i.e., learning events and materials) in CS projects and to explain how the desired outcomes can be achieved through CS learning.

The ALTER-Net team found that recent studies aiming to define CS for analytical purposes often fail to improve the conceptual clarity of CS; CS programs may have transformative potential, especially for the development of individual skills, but such transformation is not necessarily occurring at the organizational and institutional levels; empirical evidence on simple learning outcomes, but the assertion of transformative effects of CS learning is often based on assumptions rather than empirical observation; and it is unanimous that learning in CS is considered important, but in practice it often goes unreported or unevaluated.

In conclusion, the researchers point to the need for reliable and transparent measurement of transformative effects for democratization of knowledge production.

The research is reported in the journal Conservation Biology (Bela, G., Peltola, T., Young, J. C., Balázs, B., Arpin, I., Pataki, G., Hauck, J., Kelemen, E., Kopperoinen, L., Van Herzele, A., Keune, H., Hecker, S., Suškevičs, M., Roy, H. E., Itkonen, P., Külvik, M., László, M., Basnou, C., Pino, J. and Bonn, A. (2016), Learning and the transformative potential of citizen science. Conservation Biology, 30: 990–999. doi:10.1111/cobi.12762).

The team also produced a video about the role of Citizen Science in biodiversity research.

Further information

• About the AHIA initiative

The BEES Xmas market brings together people from academia, public administration and civil society, from Belgium and abroad, with one common interest: ecosystem services. The BEES market is the perfect spot to exchange ideas, learn from other experiences and discover how ecosystem services are transformed into real products or daily life applications.

The concept? A cozy afternoon in a friendly Xmas market-like atmosphere: the perfect event to wrap up 2016 in a useful and fun way! You can choose to have a stand, give a training session or just to enjoy the market.

Register here before 20th of November.

Be quick! The Belgian community of practice on Ecosystem Services is organising the third edition of the BEES Market. This year’s host, the Natural Capital Platform of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering at Ghent University, welcomes you on Tuesday 13th of December 2016 at Congrescentrum ‘Het Pand’ in Ghent, from 14 till 19 hours. The list of participants and stands is growing quickly, including updated projects from last years, as well as many new people and stands!

ALTER-Net partner, INBO (the Research Institute for Nature & Forests), is one of the event's organisers.

Back-to-back with the BEES the market, ECOPLAN 'planning for ecosystem services' project is organising its final event and lunch at the same location, making this a full day of free ecosystem service fun! For the morning event of ECOPLAN register here separately.

"A full day of free ecosystem service fun!"

The BEES Xmas market brings together people from academia, public administration and civil society, from Belgium and abroad, with one common interest: ecosystem services.
The BEES market is the perfect spot to exchange ideas, learn from other experiences and discover how ecosystem services are transformed into real products or daily life applications.

The concept? A cozy afternoon in a friendly Xmas market-like atmosphere, some special guests: the perfect event to wrap up 2016 in a useful and fun way! You can choose to have a stand, give a training session or just to enjoy the market (for practical info on stands or sessions, contact us).

Hurry! Register here before 20th of November.

Synergies, conflicts and trade-offs in the relationship between nature and society are key processes in socio-ecological systems.  While conflicts are regarded as challenging and difficult trade-offs between ecosystem services are often necessary, the search for synergies and win-win solutions are essential steps in finding lasting solutions to major socio-environmental issues.

Through critical views from a range of disciplines, the conference aims to develop a deeper understanding of conflicts in human-nature relationships, and to explore the possibility that such conflicts may – through their resolution – actually lead to more sustainable solutions.

Through a mix of plenary sessions and interactive ‘living lab’ type workshops, representatives from a wide range of disciplines (including those who may not be considered the ‘usual players’ in environmental debates) will collaborate towards developing a practical guide to nature-related synergies, conflicts and trade-offs, focusing on positive outcomes for nature and society.

We plan to open a call for contributions in due course and will announce the framework of the programme soon. The conference will be a meeting place for scientists from the humanities, social sciences (including psychology and health), natural sciences (including behaviour and evolution), local, regional and EU level policy makers and NGOs.

The event will be organized by the conference committee with additional support from our communication team (Andy Sier from CEH and Ben Delbaere from ECNC) and the ALTER-Net secretary Tessa van Santen (INBO). Jiska van Dijk of NINA will lead the organisation.

Further details will be available here.

Call for proposals - talks, sessions and posters - closing date: 20 January 2017

Synergies, conflicts and trade-offs in the relationship between nature and society are key processes in socio-ecological systems.  While conflicts are regarded as challenging and difficult trade-offs between ecosystem services are often necessary, the search for synergies and win-win solutions are essential steps in finding lasting solutions to major socio-environmental issues.

Through critical views from a range of disciplines, the conference aims to develop a deeper understanding of conflicts in human-nature relationships, and to explore the possibility that such conflicts may – through their resolution – actually lead to more sustainable solutions.

Through a mix of plenary sessions and interactive ‘living lab’ type workshop sessions, representatives from a wide range of disciplines (including those who may not be considered the ‘usual players’ in environmental debates) will collaborate towards developing a practical guide to nature-related synergies, conflicts and trade-offs, focusing on positive outcomes for nature and society.

We plan to open a call for contributions in due course and will announce the framework of the programme soon. The conference will be a meeting place for scientists from the humanities, social sciences (including psychology and health), natural sciences (including behaviour and evolution), local, regional and EU level policy makers and NGOs.

The event will be organized by the conference committee with additional support from our communication team and the ALTER-Net secretary Tessa van Santen (INBO). Jiska van Dijk of NINA will lead the organisation.

Who should attend?
EU, national, regional and local policy makers, Natura 2000 and other site managers, business representatives and scientists working at the interface of nature conservation and sustainable regional socio-economic development.

Why should you attend?
This three day landmark Conference creates a European level platform to network with colleagues from around our beautiful continent. As well as offering you the opportunity to discover and meet the actors of a truly innovative and successful integrated approach to regional sustainable development in one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, the programme also includes inspiring relevant initiatives from across Europe. Together, participants will have the opportunity to discuss values and integrated governance approaches, not only important for nature, but also for human health, economic development, job creation, climate, water management, tourism, and many more human dimensions. Working with people's "Passion for Naure" enables us to position biodiversity, nature and ecosystem services as essential pillars for greening economies, as well as for innovation.

The Programme showcases initiatives from a wide range of actors from civil society, the business community, forestry, local and regional administrations and conservationists. It includes presentations from leading actors and stakeholders active in the Bosland Partnership,  case study presentations from other international landmark projects and initiatives, interactive discussion sessions and field visits to see ‘on the ground’ how results are being achieved and to learn from each other.

Whilst celebrating the 10th anniversary of this ground breaking initiative, this event is also a unique opportunity for you to learn and share experience required for inclusive and sustainable forest management and governance. Above all, participation will enable you to look forward and forge new relationships with a view to developing your own existing or planned cooperation projects and initiatives.

This is event is co-organised by ALTER-Net partner ECNC.

Further information

• Conference programme
  
• Registration form
  
• Bosland LTSER site

"It’s a field of dreams – if you build it, they will come, and they will talk"
- Allan Watt, ALTER-Net Summer School organiser

The ALTER-Net Summer School, now in it's 11th year, is one of two examples chosen by Kovacevic to illustrate the value of taking sustainability science out of the classroom and into the environment, be it the Amazon rainforest or the French countryside. As Kovacevic says, "This can lead to a more profound and prolonged learning experience; summer school participants talk about the changes these programmes catalyse in their own lives and the lives of others once they return home." We have certainly seen this amongst our students.

In her article, Kovacevic quotes our current Summer School organisers, Marie Wanderwalle and Allan Watt. “Most participants have not experienced working in a project so they don’t know the struggle of discussing an idea with someone from a different background. The project is really all about teaching communication and team work,” says Vandewalle, a previous summer school student and now coordinator of the programme.

"The mountain vistas and isolation are crucial to the programme’s success", says convenor Allan Watt. “It’s a field of dreams – if you build it, they will come, and they will talk.”

You can read Kovacevic's full blog post here.