The workshops proposed during the conference Island Biology 2019 are included in the registration fees and are open to the conference attendees.
1. The TASCMAR EU-H2020 Project. Marine Invertebrates and Associated Microorganisms, a Global Science for a Global Valorization
Anne BIALECKI {University of La Réunion} and Jamal OUAZZANI {CNRS, FRANCE}
Number of participants: 30
120 min
The main objectives of this workshop is to present the TASMAR project (http://www.tascmar.eu) to scientists and to a large public and promote networking around future EU-funded collaborative projects. Université de la Réunion is a Partner in TASCMAR, which involves also some activities in Mauritius and Rodrigues Islands. The project is dedicated to a sustainable and responsible exploitation of the sea's bio-resources and to the discovery of new habitats and species.
The session includes 4 presentations by the project representatives and open discussion with the participants. Meeting with students and a large public is expected to rise awareness on the treasure of the seas and the best way to use it.
REGISTRATION HERE
2. Inserting more “Geo” into Island Biology/Island Biogeography: introduction to the GeoMapApp online software system
Jason ALI {University fo Hong Kong}
Number of participants: 20
90 min
Introduce IB2019 participants to the powerful GeoMapApp software, which is a freeware system that can be used to plot a wide variety of geographical, geophysical and geophysical information at various scales from sub-regional to global. At the end of the session, participants will be able to generate several sorts of graphical output (publication quality) that should be invaluable to their studies. Moreover, they should be sufficiently comfortable with the system to later explore its other higher-level plotting options.
Arguably, many island biologists/biogeographers are failing to fully integrate “geo” into their researches. For instance, it is common to see publications fail to include detailed topographical maps and/or bathymetric charts for the investigation areas, yet geography may have played a critical role in shaping the faunas and foras. Similarly, the geology of the landmass(es) and their geo-physical configuration(s) may also have been neglected. This session aims to partially address this shortcoming by introducing and explaining an easy-to-use, powerful, open-access, geo-focused data-plotting program
The 90-minute workshop will introduce key features of the GeoMapApp software system. The platform allows online access to a vast data-base that can be used to create high resolution geo images. These include ocean foor and land-surface maps and associated vertical profiles, tectonic-plate boundaries, volcanoes, historical earthquake locations, crustal thicknesses, ocean-foor age dates etc. In the interactive session participants will use the software to generate various sorts of plots for key regions, for instance Seychelles, Galápagos, Mozambique Channel, Christmas Island. Later in the session, the audience will be able to call for plots to be generated for their favoured research regions.
Exposure to the platform will enable island biologists/island biogeographers to generate publication-quality base figures that may underpin their investigations/interpretations. To gain maximum beneJt from the session, participants need to pre-download the GeoMapApp interface system to a laptop/notebook via the following website: http://www.geomapapp.org/MSInstall.html
They also need to download Java – the GeoMapApp interface also provides a link to this.
REGISTRATION HERE
3. 10th European Development Funds (EDF) project for the Western Indian Ocean region: Sustainable management of the Eparses islands and Mayotte marine living ressources
Sophie MARINESQUE {French Southern and Antarctic Lands}
Number of participants: 30
120 min
The 10th EDF project meeting will gather all the project parties: scientists, environment managers, government institutions and official partners. Results of the project will be exposed and discussed in terms of outcomes for management. Prospects for the project will also be discussed.
The proposed workshop aims to synthesize the results of about 10 scientific campaigns on marine ecosystem biodiversity, ecological state assessment and genetic connectivity between isolated islands in the Indian Ocean. The results will be exposed in terms of outcomes for territories management.
(1) Global presentation of the 10th EDF project (open to broad audience)
(2) Main results and conclusions of the different scientific and environmental management actions (open to broad audience)
(3) Discussion on the outcomes of the scientific results in terms of environmental management ; discussion on proposal to be submitted to decisional instances (limited audience only)
(4) Conclusion and perspectives (limited audience only)
REGISTRATION HERE
4. Nexa-IUCN International project development workshop on natural ecosystems understanding, conservation and restoration
Fanny MAZELLA {NEXA} and Carole MARTINEZ {IUCN}
The Nexa-IUCN workshop aims at
(i) enhancing IB2019 participants' knowledge on European funding opportunities dedicated to natural ecosystems understanding, conservation and restoration and (ii) elaborating pre-proposals to specific calls in order to build international cooperation.
Fundings are fundamental to ensure sustainability of long-term research activities on island biodiversity conservation and restoration. This workshop is also an opportunity to identify new research issues/challenges/missions that gather different islands of the world.
The workshop will start with a brief and general introduction about European and Regional policies regarding biodiversity, ecosystems conservation and restoration and European funding opportunities for research, conservation and restoration actions.
A focus will be made on the following European funds and initiatives:
• the LIFE instruments, the EU’s funding instrument for the environment and climate action created in 1992
• the BEST initiative, a EU volontary scheme for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Territories of European overseas with the upcoming calls dedicated to Outermost Regions (LIFE4BEST OR) and Overseas Countries and Territories stakeholders (BEST 2.0)
• the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Management Programme (BIOPAMA) that assits the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, to address priorities for improved management and governance of biodiversity and natural resources
• the Horizon 2020 program, the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020)
. Testimonies by previous project coordinators will illustrate these presentations.
Program:
Thursday July 11th 2019, 1pm-1.45pm
Amphi Bioclim, Lunch conference, no limited seats
Introduction to Funding Opportunities for Biodiversity and conservation projects, Horizon 2020, Biodiversa, Best & LIFE programmes
General presentations from Carole Martinez, IUCN _ Best programme, Evelyne Tarnus & Fanny Mazella, Cellule Europe Nexa _ Horizon 2020, Cathleen Cybèle, Nexa _ LIFE Programme, Josiane IRISSIN-MANGATA, Région Réunion _ Biodiversa and 3 presentations of laureates.
Friday July 12th, 8.30am-10.30am
Room D10 Workshop, 120 min,
Number of participants: 20 p
Projects development workshop on natural ecosystems understanding, conservation and restoration
In this second phase of the workshop, participants will be invited to take part to a "project development" hackaton. Divided in small groups of interest, participants will (i) identify challenge/topic/call, (ii) elaborate a concept/idea of project, and (iii) write down a roadmap to build a complete proposal in the near future, with the help of European project managers.
REGISTRATION contact : cellule.europe@innovonslareunion.com
5. Restoration of severely fragmented habitats - creating a template for best practice to develop attainable restoration goals
Lourens Malan {St Helena Government} and Helen Roy {Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK} and Danielle Frohlich {SWCA Environmental Consultants}
Number of participants: 30
120 min
The workshop will provide opportunities for conservation practitioners working within oceanic islands to share approaches to the challenges of restoring ecosystems in which most of the habitats have been altered completely and invasive non-native species threaten the remaining native (including endemic species), existing in isolated and fragmented populations.
The convenors will provide an overview of habitat restoration on St Helena as a case study and will invite participants to share experiences, both of successes and failures. Ultimately the workshop will provide a networking opportunity to encourage continued information sharing and enable contributors to pool collective knowledge to inform future restoration. It will culminate in the production of guidance based on the expertise and experiences of the workshop group collated through an on-line questionnaire and at the workshop.
The subtitle of IB2019 is “Connecting small and large island hotspots for biodiversity research and conservation” and our workshop aligns with this through consideration and discussion on connecting fragmented habits within island hotspots. We will be addressing a number of the conference topics including threat of global change on terrestrial biodiversity and the potential opportunities of adopting novel ecosystem approaches to ensure species interactions and networks. Additionally we will consider the role of long-term biodiversity monitoring which such restoration projects.
The recent IPBES Global Assessment calls for transformative change. The restoration of degraded habitats on oceanic islands provides an opportunity to rise to this challenge. The traditional approach to habitat restoration has been to recreate pre-existing, historical ecosystems through complete removal of non-native species and the return or rehabilitation of native species in the area. However, many oceanic islands contain highly-invaded ecosystems where the historical state of the environment is unknown, and/or complete restoration is difficult to achieve because of a fundamental change in abiotic and biotic processes within the ecosystem, a loss of keystone species across all trophic levels, and where recovery processes left to natural succession are ineffective.
We propose that, in these systems, the focus should be on removing those species shown to have primarily deleterious effects, maintaining or restoring genetic and species diversity, and using pre-existing non-native species to fill missing ecological niches while restoration or rehabilitation is underway. Rather than supplanting the traditional model of restoration, the acceptance of the realities of novel/hybrid ecosystems will supplement existing efforts and will allow for an adaptive approach to restoration that uses effort effectively and efficiently.
By bringing together practitioners from across a variety of oceanic islands that face similar challenges in invasive non-native species management and restoration, we can combine expertise and create a template for best practices to assist in creating clear statements of restoration goals and strategies for attaining them. This workshop will:
• Discuss best practices for manipulating successional processes to beneJt native vegetation, converting vegetation dominance from invasive to native.
• Examine the potential ecological functions of non-native species that can be utilized during the restoration process.
• Encourage information sharing
• Deliver a best practice guidance document around the management of restoration
REGISTRATION HERE
If you are interested to take part to this workshop, please fill in this questionnaire before July 1st 2019: https://ceh-online-surveys.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/creating-a-conservation-template
6. Data: availability, importance and evolution for island biodiversity and conservation research
Nathalie BECKER {Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, UMR ISYEB} and PELLENS Roseli {UMR ISYEB} and MONNET Anne-Christine {UMR ISYEB}
Number of participants: 30
90 min
Increase awareness of the importance of data availability for research and conservation.
Highlight methods, standards, natural history collections and people in order to facilitate data sharing.
Engage people and institutions to share biodiversity data. First, a presentation of data, at an international (GBIF) and regional scale (SINP 974), will provide a snapshot of what is currently available. Last but not least, the data already hosted in natural history collections represent an important leverage to understand patterns of biodiversity distribution, diversification, and conservation.
Taken together, data from both collections and samplings/observations are essential for: i) the understanding of topics going far beyond the strict scope of biodiversity sciences, as for example food security and/or public health; ii) the characterization of places and groups of organisms that need better sampling, and thus the design of new Jeld surveys which are still lacking.
This topic concerns most of studies presented in IB2019. For many groups of organisms (e.g., monocots, eudicots, mammals, birds, reptiles, arthropods ....), the lack of data leads to the concentration of research on a very small fraction of the world’s islands, hampering the understanding of the generality of certain phenomena, and the detection of imminent threats that could face organisms from little studied islands. After three global presentations, a general discussion will help to identify: i) which kind of data we need to mobilize; ii) which places/islands to focus on. Three presentations of 15 minutes each, followed by 45 minutes of general discussion: Roseli Pellens (UMR ISYEB): Global Biodiversity Information Facility -backbone taxonomy and occurrence records for biodiversity studies at all scales. Valentin Le Tellier (DEAL): regional platform of SINP 974, Reunion Island (Système d'Information sur la Nature et les Paysages). Anne-Christine Monnet (UMR ISYEB): Methodological challenges for the valorisation of natural history collection data.
REGISTRATION HERE
7. Rewilding
REGISTRATION HERE
