The Ecosystem Services Partnership

Summer School Assessing and Communicating the Loss of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services with Remote Sensing, Web Mapping, Regional Planning Tools and Life Cycle Assessment for Better Decision Support October 11 to 15, 2010, Castle of Thurnau, close to Bayreuth, Germany Here you find the Summer School Brochure. For more information, see the Summer School Website. Global change of land use and land cover has severe impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems and the services they provide. The summer school’s goal is to learn about innovations in information technologies to generate information on changes of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Such information technologies are Remote Sensing, Web Mapping, Regional Planning Tools and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In combination they allow to better assess the ecological impact of land use and land intensive products (e.g., from agriculture, forestry, mining). Even more important they can channel this ecological information from science to decision-makers in industries, NGOs and governmental organizations as well as to consumers. Especially Web Mapping technologies as provided by Google together with decision support tools like LCA have a great potential to inform decision-makers about global ecological problems. The participating students will learn about the assessment of biodiversity loss and ecosystem services with remote sensing and how decision support tools communicate this information to decision-makers. They will discuss with the lecturers the potential and limitations for designing decision support tools to address the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The summer school shall also strengthen the collaboration between researchers in California, Bavaria and other regions to generate knowledge on innovative links between Remote Sensing, Web Mapping and Life Cycle Assessment. Fee The Summer School fee is 300 €, including participation in all course activities, extensive training materials, field trips during the course, full food and accommodation. We will not be able to cover your travel expenses. A small number of grants are available for students from developing countries and countries with economies in transition. Please send your application with a short CV to the organization. Deadline for application: 15.8.2010. For more information and registration see Summer School Brochure. Contact Person UBT: Prof. Dr. Thomas Koellner University of Bayreuth (UBT) Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Geosciences Email Thomas Koellner Professorship of Ecological Services (PES) website Contact Person UCSB: Prof. Dr. Roland Geyer University of California Bren School of Environmental Science & Management Email Roland Geyer Bren School website