11th INTECOL Congress, Ecology: Into the next 100 years
From Sunday 18th to Thursday 22nd August the NBN Trust was one of the stand holders at the INTECOL Congress at ExCel, London.
The International Association for Ecology (INTECOL) Congress takes place every four years and this, the “11th INTECOL Congress, Ecology: Into the next 100 years” was held in London as part of the centenary celebrations of the British Ecological Society. The theme of the Congress was “advancing ecology and making it count”, which sought to present world class ecological science. It was billed as the largest ecological academic conference in the world and anticipated up to 2,000 delegates including academics, policy-makers and senior level executives within the ecological arena.
Certainly it was clear right from the opening, that this was going to be a truly global event, as we had visitors to the stand from Japan, China, Brazil, Chile, India, Sri Lanka, USA, New Zealand, to name but a few, as well as the rest of Europe.
What was apparent was that the UK, through the NBN, leads the way in terms of gathering and sharing data through the NBN Gateway. So often, we heard that other countries were trying to set up something similar, or were thinking about doing something similar. Everyone wanted data to be easily accessible and the fact that data through the NBN is not only easy to access, but also freely available was a notable positive in everyone’s eyes.
Pleasingly all of the UK visitors had heard of the NBN and the NBN Gateway and they had all either used it in the past or were regular users of it currently. Everyone was very keen to hear about the new developments with the soon to be released Gateway version 5, with coincidence mapping being a popular new feature.
The NBN Trust stand had been designed to include a 32” touchscreen on which we were able to demonstrate the NBN Gateway (current and new version), iRecord and an implementation of Site Record, a new concept which allows the interaction of online recording and NBN web services on specific sites. So, people could have a go and try it out for themselves.
Another theme that was mentioned by a number of visitors to the stand was the advent of online recording and citizen science. People were especially pleased to hear about the NBN standards for verification and validation of the data and of the NBN Record Cleaner. All were impressed with iRecord and the ease of using the system, which they could see through the demonstration screen.
The CEO, Jim Munford helped man the stand on Tuesday and noted in particular the number of contacts we made or renewed whilst at the conference. It also presented us with good opportunities for developing new relationships in the future too. Of particular note, the stand next to us, BioVeL a team led by Matthias Obst, seems particularly relevant to what we are doing in respect of modelling NBN data.
Of course we were pleased to be alongside our partners and NBN Trust members, the British Ecological Society in the trade exhibition and to be part of their centenary celebrations.
Thanks also to Geoff Johnson and Graham French who helped with manning the stand over the course of the week.
In addition to having the stand, the NBN Trust Chairman, Professor Michael Hassell, attended a number of plenary sessions and presentations.
“It was really encouraging to see the Biodiversity theme permeating the whole Congress. Within a wide-ranging programme, there were 6 oral sessions on Conservation and 5 on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function, not to mention the symposia on Critiquing Biodiversity Studies, Altitudinal Patterns of Biodiversity, Ecology and Citizen Science, Soil Biodiversity, and so on. Indeed, much of the character of the whole Congress could be captured within the broad framework of ‘Biodiversity Studies’. The Congress was also a wonderful occasion to meet old friends and to join in the spectacular 100th birthday party of the British Ecological Party held on the Old Billingsgate Market.”
Those of you who are active on Twitter would have been kept up to date by the many tweets of Helen Roy of the Biological Records Centre and the UK Ladybird Survey. We thought it would be great for her to share her overall impression of the conference, which she has willingly done for us here. If you would like up to the minute news and comments on an ongoing basis we would definitely recommend following Helen on Twitter at @UKLadybirds !
“INTECOL provided a fantastic opportunity to celebrate 100 years of the British Ecological Society (BES). The diversity of research highlighted through the talks and posters was incredible, but one theme that was common to many of the presentations I attended was the increasing importance of engaging with people through effective communication and, in some cases, citizen science. In one of the many inspiring plenary talks Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Professor of Marine Studies and Director of the Global Change Institute, described the threat of climate change to marine life. He concluded his amazing overview with a description of a unique approach to ensuring marine science appeals to “the human heart” – The Catlin Seaview Survey. It was notable that volunteer biological recording was important to many of the research ecologists and that the British datasets of wildlife observations collated over centuries are the envy of the world. This was particularly evident in the macroecology sessions, perhaps not surprisingly, but it was inspiring to see the many different ways in which the distribution of species is explored.
The research findings of Nick Isaac (NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) describing quantitative methods for making the most of biological records was particularly well-received and is available to view. One senior academic commented that the British biological recording culture and associated datasets were the main reason he had never emigrated!
From invasion biology to food web ecology there is no doubt that observations from volunteers are critical to advancing ecological research. The role of new technologies in increasing participation in biological recording was highlighted through a dynamic and interactive workshop convened by Michael Pocock (NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology). The buzz around citizen science was demonstrated in a number of talks and so it seemed a very appropriate place and time for the BES to announce the formation of a special interest group in citizen science (for more information contact citizenscience@ceh.ac.uk).
I have been attending BES annual meetings over the last two decades and was delighted by the increased recognition of the importance of volunteers in gathering and interpreting ecological data. It is such an exciting time to be a part of the biological recording community and as we head towards the 50th anniversary of the Biological Records Centre and 90 million records on the NBN Gateway there is lots to celebrate”.