In this symposium international speakers will review how organisms not only respond to the Earth’s surface, but also directly modify and control it to promote their own persistence. Plants and animals can directly control the fluxes of energy and matter that underlie biogeochemical cycles, gas fluxes, sediment transport and form new habitats. Recent recognition of biotic interactions with Earth surface processes has led to a new Geoscience paradigm: The Earth’s surface is not only the product of tectonic forces (mountain building) and climate (destroying relief by weathering and erosion), but also through biotic processes that are active over micro- to macroscopic scales. Biota moderates tectonic and climate controls on surface processes and is an equally important player in shaping the Earth. This symposium will review the findings that triggered this paradigm shift, for example that the activity of biota extends to great depth (the “deep biosphere”),,soil development is related to plant diversity and burrowing animals,,plants diverge the flow and evaporation of water, higher plants can induce the uptake of mineral nutrients that vastly exceeds the rock weathering of these elements, vegetation moderates soil erosion, large river floodplains are stabilized by plants. The symposium will combine geoscience, soil, ecology, hydrology, and geobiology research to discuss how new developments in each of these fields should be employed to quantify the entire chain of Earth surface processes influenced by biotic activities, and how these developments can be used to form predictions of global change. ... [Information of the supplier]
Welcome to ECSA’s next major symposium, ECSA 56 Coastal systems in transition: From a 'natural' to an 'anthropogenically-modified' state, which will take place from the 4-7 September 2016 in Bremen, Germany.Humans are drivers of and affected by global change. Human-induced global climate and regional environmental change dramatically modify the structures and functions of coastal systems driving them into a new system state. The altered resource potentials and ecosystem services then, in turn, significantly affect the livelihoods of the population.Distinguishing between natural and anthropogenic control factors and quantifying their impacts is a major challenge in the investigation of hydrodynamic, sedimentological, biogeochemical, ecological and socioeconomic processes in the coastal zone.Inter- and transdisciplinary efforts are required to gain a profound understanding of these "novel" systems, which provides the basis for a sustainable management.ECSA 56 brings together a global multi-disciplinary community of researchers and professionals to discuss and address issues of outstanding scientific importance in the science and management of estuaries and coastal seas in this rapidly changing world. ... [Information of the supplier]
