12. März 2025

Workshop: Global Change Effects on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in Mountain Regions

WSL-Institut für Schnee- und Lawinenforschung SLF

Datum:

12. März 2025, 11:00 - 12:00

Ort:

Hotel Shima, Davos

Organisiert von:

Biodiversity Center, WSL

Vortrag:

Various speakers

Moderation:

Anne Kempel, Frank Krumm, and Catherine Graham, WSL

Sprache(n):

English

Veranstaltungstyp:

Presentations and colloquia

Zielpublikum:

Anyone interested in the topics

The WSL Biodiversity Center is pleased to announce the upcoming workshop on “Global change effects on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in mountain regions” in Davos on March 12, 2025. The workshop will bring together the WSL community engaged in alpine biodiversity research and monitoring programs to identify new opportunities and directions for research on global change impacts in mountain environments.

Climate and land-use changes increasingly affect biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the Alps, which can have significant socioeconomic consequences beyond this region (e.g., water provision in the lowlands). Many studies in Switzerland focus on these topics, but their efforts are often fragmented. They address different aspects of biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services in different regions and across different time periods. To better understand and manage the effects of environmental change on biodiversity and ecosystem services in Swiss mountain areas, we need a more integrated approach that combines different disciplines, long-term monitoring, and experimental work.

Despite the urgency, Switzerland lacks a comprehensive program comparable to initiatives like LTER in the USA or Biodiversity Exploratories in Germany. However, we have valuable resources at WSL to address this challenge. WSL has a pool of biodiversity experts from natural and social sciences, working in areas ranging from genes to ecosystems, from local to global scales, and from past to future time scales. Moreover, environmental monitoring is one of WSL’s core areas of expertise, and WSL manages several long-term experimental sites and national monitoring schemes (e.g., WBS, NFI, and LWF).

This workshop aims to bring together the WSL community engaged in alpine biodiversity research and monitoring to identify new opportunities and directions for research at WSL. Participants will identify key research gaps and questions related to climate change effects on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. In addition, they will compile a list of available data series and experiments at WSL. Researchers will then discuss how the existing infrastructure can help address the identified research gaps and which questions might require a new research design. The workshop will end by defining an outlook for future activities and topics to deepen in a subsequent workshop. We anticipate this follow-up workshop will include invited participants from outside our institute.

How to join:

Due to the nature of the activity, participation is prioritized for invited WSL members. However, we offer up to 5 additional slots for early-career scientists (PhD students or postdocs at WSL) working on the topic or related ones. Participants should be interested in brainstorming and discussing leading topics in mountain biodiversity research and actively participate in the workshop. All disciplines are welcome, from soil, plant, and interaction ecology to forest, snow, and social sciences. Also, participants with experience with large research consortia (such as LTER or the Exploratories) and interdisciplinary programs are welcome to contribute with their expertise. If you are an early-career scientist interested in participating, please contact Nadia Castro (nadia.castro@wsl.ch) with a brief explanation (2 or 3 lines) of why you'd like to join

Biodiversity Seminars

The Biodiversity Seminar Series are organized by the WSL Biodiversity Center. Every two weeks, we aim to host a seminar speaker who presents research or outreach on topics relevant to the biodiversity community at WSL. The seminars are public and are usually broadcast online.

To find out more about the WSL Biodiversity Center and a complete list of events, please visit our website. 

Please send an email to events-biodiversity(at)wsl.ch if you would like to be updated on the activities of the WSL Biodiversity Center.