MEETINGS IN BIOGEOSCIENCES

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Radiocarbon in Ecology and Earth System Science

July 16-21, 2012

Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

http://www.imprs-gbgc.de/index.php/RadiocarbonSchool/Overview

This course will expose students and postdocs to the uses of radiocarbon in ecology and earth system science, especially in relation to ecosystem and global carbon cycling. The course design is modeled after the stable isotope class at the University of Utah. There will be morning lectures on the theory of radiocarbon by various instructors, followed by exercises in data interpretationand modeling and laboratory experience with preparing samples for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry analysis in the afternoon.

We seek participants with broad interests in ecology and earth system science who are planning on, or are currently, using radiocarbon techniques as part of their research, and wish to expand their understanding of this important and useful tool.

The application form for the class can be found here: http://www.imprs-gbgc.de/index.php/RadiocarbonSchool/Application.

Applications should be submitted by April 30, 2012 and we will inform participants shortly thereafter.

Students will be responsible for their own transportation costs to and from Jena, Germany, and for their own food and lodging costs (we will attempt to minimize these by arranging for shared housing; costs will range from about 40-70 Euro per night. Housing reservations will be handled by the course organizers. In addition, there is a lab fee of 500 Euro.

You can find additional information about course logistics and an overview on the website.

Course Organizers:

Ted Schuur (tschuur@ufl.edu)

Susan Trumbore (trumbore@bgc-jena.mpg.de)

The invitation to professionals working in watershed technology and related areas, to submit abstracts for talks to be presented at the 21st Century Watershed Technology Conference in Bari, Italy, May 27th –June 1st, 2012, has been extended to January 15, 2012. The Conference provides a forum for water resource professionals to exchange information on science, applications, and developments in the application of science and technology to the broad field of watershed management. A wide array of topics, from new applications of well established and understood technologies, to innovative and entrepreneurial applications of emerging technologies, to issues related to policy and knowledge dissemination, will be covered. Talks may be on any subject that contributes to the improved understanding and/or sustainable management of watersheds (e.g., research and development, the environment, assessment, emerging technologies and tools, education, and awareness and policy). Please see www.watershedtech.org for more information.

Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO
July 8-21, 2012
http://soilinstitute.nrel.colostate.edu/

Interested in Soil Ecology and Biogeochemistry?

Gain an integrated perspective with world-renowned faculty to address critical questions using current analytical techniques, experimental approaches, and instructional models.

What are the physical, chemical and biological components of soil?
What do molecular techniques tell us about soil biodiversity?
How does soil chemistry affect carbon and nutrient cycling?
How are soil processes affected by global change?

The Summer Soil Institute is designed for graduate students,post-docs, professionals, faculty, and K-12 teachers. Located at the confluence of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains.

Hands-on experience with lab, field, and modeling techniques including:
Soil physics and biochemistry:
• pedology
• organic matter fractionation
• stable isotopes
• soil respiration
• trace gas fluxes
• NMR, FT-ICR-MS, and XRD

Soil biology-microbes and fauna:
• DNA extraction
• quantitative PCR
• enzyme activities
• microscopy-based identification
• soil food web modeling

2012 Faculty:
Thomas Borch
Francesca Cotrufo
Gene Kelly
John Moore
Mary Stromberger
Joe von Fischer
Diana Wall
Matthew Wallenstein
Featuring honored guest Dr. Eldor Paul, author of Soil Microbiology, Ecology, and Biochemistry

3rd Annual Argonne Soil Metagenomics Workshop

October 5-7, 2011, Bloomingdale, IL

https://press.mcs.anl.gov/asmw11/

Soil microbes play a critical role in terrestrial biogeochemical cycles that drive global climate. Relatively little is known, however, about microbial community dynamics in space and time owing to the overwhelming structural and functional complexity of such communities in soil. The 3rd Annual Argonne Soil Metagenomics Workshop will bring together a multidisciplinary group of scientists to tackle some of the challenges associated with linking microbial function to soil and ecosystem processes that impact Earth’s changing climate.

Recent advances in DNA sequencing technology have enabled access to staggering volumes of information about soil microbial communities. The challenge now lies in interpreting such data to develop a conceptual model of how microbes shape larger-scale processes. The goals for the 2011 workshop are to move “omics” approaches into ongoing, global change-relevant soil ecology work. Informed by topics that emerged in 2010, specific foci will include integrating ecological concepts, spatial and temporal structure of communities, plant-microbe interactions, and edaphic drivers of microbial function and feedbacks to climate. Further, all presenters will be urged to consider how their work transcends scales. At the same time, we aim to support continued dialogue to develop the practical aspects of these techniques, such as standards for sample preparation, merging “meta-” data with “omics-” data, making sense of large datasets, and soil-specific data interpretation.

he needs of this interdisciplinary community are ongoing, and this workshop will provide a venue for soil scientists, ecologists, computational scientists, and molecular microbiologists to discuss continuing challenges and share progress focused on the needs specific to soil metagenomics research.

Announcement of an INTERFACE/CLIMMANI joint workshop: Nutrient constraints on the net carbon balanceJune 15-17, 2011

Keflavík, Iceland – Hotel Keflavík

The workshop will focus on six themes:
• Carbon availability as a control on carbon sequestration
• Nitrogen limitation and nitrogen fixation
• Phosphorus limitations to plant growth and microbial processes
• Acidity and base cation availability as a controlling factor on soil carbon sequestration
• Ecological adaptation and its impacts, interactions and controls on resource availability
• Nitrogen limitation as a controlling factor for soil carbon dynamics

The INTERFACE and CLIMMANI networks bring together researchers working on climate change effects in terrestrial ecosystems in order to facilitate interaction, syntheses of results and collaboration. In particular, bringing experimentalists and ecosystem and Earth system modelers together has a special priority.

This workshop will explore 6 topics (above, and see website) that we believe are keys to understanding how the net carbon balance is controlled by nutrient interactions. Each session will synthesize and discuss the state of knowledge within one of these areas and indentify gaps in knowledge and abilities to model it at a local and global scale. Each session is planned to last 2½ hours. The overarching goal of the workshop is to catalyze discussions and future activities that improve the realism of Earth system models.

Speakers for the topics will be announced soon. An optional field trip will take place on June 14th. Sessions will begin on the morning of June 15th and end at lunchtime on June 17th.

USA-BASED STUDENTS/POSTDOCS: INTERFACE invites applications to attend from US-based graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Funding is available for approximately 5 participants; please indicate if you can get support from your mentor or institution to cover the costs of the meeting or your travel (support, however, is not necessary to apply). We expect meeting costs to be around 465 Euros (~$655). This includes housing and meals, but not airfare. To apply please submit a one-page CV that includes the name of three references (including your current dissertation or postdoctoral advisor), a short paragraph on why attending the meeting would enhance your career, and a poster abstract to Prof. Aimée Classen (aclassen@utk.edu) with "INTERFACE application_your last name" in the subject line. All of these materials should be sent as a single PDF with your last name in the title "LAST NAME". Application deadline is April 15, 2011. All students and postdocs will be required to present a poster at the meeting.

OTHER USA-BASED researchers: If you would like to participate in the workshop, please email Ms. Marsha Stultz (stultzm@purdue.edu) with the subject "INTERFACE Iceland_your last name." Include a brief statement of why you are interested in attending and whether you have funds to cover your own travel and meeting costs. Please contact her by April 15, 2011. We will invite as many researchers as possible (likely only a few) based on available space, funds, and the relevance of applicants’ work to the topics being discussed. There is no registration fee for the workshop, but costs for rooms and meals are likely to total approximately 465 Euros (~$655). Airfare is currently ~$1000-2000, and is cheapest when trips include a Saturday night.

EUROPEAN STUDENTS & POSTDOCS, and other researchers: If you are interested in attending the workshop, please visit the CLIMMANI web page.

Additional information about the meeting will be posted at the meeting website as it becomes available: http://www.bio.purdue.edu/INTERFACE/workshop2.html

July 11-16, 2011
University of California, Irvine http://biology.ufl.edu/radiocarbon/

This course will expose students and postdocs to the uses of radiocarbon in ecology and earth system science, especially in relation to ecosystem and global carbon cycling. The course design is modeled after the stable isotope class at the University of Utah. There will be morning lectures on the theory of radiocarbon by various instructors, followed by laboratory experience with processing and analyzing samples using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry technology in the afternoon.

We seek participants with broad interests in ecology and earth system science who are planning on, or are currently, using radiocarbon techniques as part of their research, and wish to expand their understanding of this important and useful tool.

The application form for the class can be downloaded from http://biology.ufl.edu/radiocarbon/. Please email the completed application to Ted Schuur (tschuur@ufl.edu).

Students will be responsible for their own transportation costs to and from UCI, and for their own food and lodging costs in on-campus shared apartments. Housing reservations will be handled by the course organizers. In addition, there is a lab fee of $500.

You can find additional information about course logistics and an overview on the website.

Course Organizers:Ted Schuur
(tschuur@ufl.edu)
Susan Trumbore
(setrumbo@uci.edu)
Ellen Druffel

Place: Captiva Island, Florida
Date: February 28-March 3, 2010

We invite you to apply to participate in the first workshop organized by INTERFACE, a new NSF-funded Research Coordination Network. The goal of INTERFACE is to improve the quality of climate projections and the utility of global change experiments by bringing together experimentalists and modelers who study responses of terrestrial ecosystems to environmental change. You can read more about the network at http://www.bio.purdue.edu/INTERFACE/index.php. (If you haven't already, please join the network and register the projects and models you work with while you're there!)

The workshop will focus on three themes:
Nutrient interactions and limitation in global change
Water availability and ecosystem dynamics, and
Acclimation of carbon uptake and release to climate and atmospheric change

During the workshop, we hope to catalyze interactions and new discussions among modelers and empiricists on each of these topics, and we hope to develop the foundation for papers discussing recent developments and needs in the field and pathways to improvement for Earth system models. In addition to talks, there will be a poster session and lots of time for discussion, including breakout sessions in which there will be opportunities to develop manuscripts. Speakers will each give a 20-minute talk. For each of the three topics, there will be five talks; an overview talk and a talk from each of four research communities (i.e., researchers working with Earth system models, ecosystem-level models, observations, and manipulative experiments). Confirmed speakers are listed at the meeting website (see below).

The workshop will begin with a welcome reception and dinner on the evening of February 28th, and conclude after lunch on March 3rd.

STUDENTS/POSTDOCS: We invite applications to attend from graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Funding is available; to apply please submit a one-page CV that includes the name of three references (including your current dissertation or postdoctoral advisor), a short paragraph on why attending the meeting would enhance your career, and a poster abstract to Prof. Aimée Classen (aclassen@utk.edu) with "INTERFACE application_your last name" in the subject line. Application deadline is January 10, 2011. All students and postdocs will be REQUIRED to present a poster at the meeting.

OTHER RESEARCHERS: We encourage applications from interested researchers for a limited number of unfunded spaces; if you would like to participate in the workshop, please email Ms. Cindy Fate (cynthia@purdue.edu) with the subject "INTERFACE application_your last name." Include the title and abstract of the poster you would bring. Application deadline is January 10, 2011. There is no registration fee for the workshop.

More information about the workshop is available at http://www.bio.purdue.edu/INTERFACE/workshop1.html

Stoichiometric flexibility in terrestrial ecosystems under global change

The goal of this symposium is to apply the rich theoretical framework on stoichiometric flexibility of biological systems to our traditional analyses of ecosystem response to atmospheric and climatic change. Focusing on terrestrial ecosystems, we will consider how the principles of stoichiometry can be applied to global change analyses, discuss examples from experimental research in different biomes and from models at different scales, and consider stoichiometric limitations to different plant and ecosystem processes and whether those limitations will adjust to atmospheric and climatic changes.

Ecological stoichiometry describes the balance of energy and materials in ecological systems. The stoichiometry of cellular metabolites (e.g., C:N:P ratios in proteins) confers constraints on cellular metabolism, and at larger scales, on organisms and ecosystems. Analysis of complex metabolic networks (e.g., E. coli cultures) has been advanced through reliance on stoichiometric principles in which metabolic flexibility, or the range of stoichiometric balance over which function can be maintained, is the manifestation of two principal properties: redundancy and robustness. Applying these principles to ecological systems and evolutionary analyses in the context of atmospheric and climatic change, two overarching questions arise: is there sufficient stoichiometric flexibility in ecosystems to permit a new steady-state metabolism when resources availability changes? And, is the stoichiometric approach valid during the non-steady state (transient) conditions that prevail in climate change experiments?

For more information, please visit: http://www.newphytologist.org/stoichiometric/default.htm

Bad Nauheim Germany
Conference Hotel
17 – 21 July, 2011

The conference focuses on ecological and industrial applications and basic research on extracellular enzymes. Participants represent a wide range of disciplines including terrestrial and aquatic microbial ecologists and biochemists.

The program is informally structured to provide unique, fruitful interactions among scientists who otherwise might not meet. This is a follow-up to the highly successful conferences held in Granada Spain in 1999, Prague in 2003 and Viterbo, Italy in 2007. Bad Nauheim is within taxi distance from the Frankfort airport and is in an area rich in culture, history, and art nouveau architecture, and known for its thermal salt spring spas.

For more information, please visit http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/ee2011/t02_pageview3/Home.htm