Dear colleagues, 
 
The 52nd Annual Meeting of the GfÖ, will take place in Leipzig from 12 to 16 of September. We are preparing the session S61 on Soil Biodiversity and Functions for all soil enthusiasts (see details below). We want this session to encompass a diversity of taxa, ecosystems, scales and methods to explore the main opportunities and challenges in the future of soil ecology.
Early-bird registration and abstract submission are now online at https://gfoe-conference.de. 

The deadline for early-bird registrations and abstract submissions is 15 May 2023.

Please spread the news in your networks!

Looking forward reading you,
Best wishes
Pierre Ganault on behalf of Session 61 chairs Julie Koch Sheard, Anton Potapov, and Martin Potthoff

 
Full title: Looking beneath our feet: soil biodiversity and functions across scales
                                                                       
Soils host a quarter of terrestrial biodiversity, and support numerous functions and services vital to our societies. Soil biodiversity encompasses tens of thousands of extremely morphologically diverse species, living in highly spatially heterogeneous habitats. Hence, the study of ‘the black box’ beneath our feet is especially difficult compared to other biomes. This leads to a limited knowledge of soil biodiversity status and trends at different scales, and to its absence in most biodiversity monitoring schemes and conservation policy. To address this situation, this session welcomes a large diversity of talks on field monitoring of soil organisms and/or their functions and ecosystem services, from small to large scale initiatives. The session aims at representing a diversity of practices, from traditional scientific monitoring to citizen science projects, from taxonomic harmonization efforts to image-based computer identification, from single group or species monitoring to community and soil food web analyses. Learning from several projects, we will address 1) what the scientific, methodological, and structural challenges are, 2) how to best organize data harmonization and collection, and 3) what the future promising approaches and technologies are. By bringing together experts on various taxa, techniques and approaches, we will explore how different expertise and disciplines can enrich each other. The session is supported by the GfÖ Soil Ecology working group and will end by a general discussion to draw the main challenges and opportunities for the future of soil biodiversity monitoring.          
                       
Chairs: Pierre Ganault, Julie Koch Sheard, Anton Potapov, Martin Potthoff
Contact: pierre [dot] ganaultidiv [dot] de