GfÖ in Münster - The 49th Conference of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland

This year the GfÖ conference was organised by Norbert Hölzel, Christoph Scherber & Julia Tiede in Münster. This was a really interesting and lively event, with 40 thematic sessions and more than 500 oral and poster presentations. The main topic of the conference was the link between the science of ecology and the practice of nature conservation, the motto of the conference was 'Science meets practice'. They organized a practitioners day with a lot of interesting applied topics, and there where also several interesting sessions where we could listen to presentations about new concepts and theories in ecology.

We presented our talks in the thematic session on Conservation and Restoration, the title of our talks were:

Deák, B., Valkó, O., Nagy D. D., Török, P., Torma, A., Lőrinczi, G., Kelemen, A., Nagy, A., Bede, Á., Mizser, Sz., Csathó, A.I., Tóthmérész, B.: Kurgans as refuges for grassland species: large-scale multi-taxon study on Eurasian burial mounds.

Valkó, O., Tóthmérész, B., Miglécz, T., Lukács, K., Kiss, R., Kelemen, A., Godó, L., Deák, B.: Environmental heterogeneity is a major driver of community assembly – Lessons from the restoration of landscape scars.

The Harbour in Münster is a very nice place.

The city of Münster has a large area of urban green spaces. The largest one is the park next to the Aasee lake.

In the park next to the Aasee there are several biodiverse tallgrass meadows. Information tables explain the value of tallgrass meadows in maintaining biodiversity. This is a great initiation to have some nature in the city!

Biodiverse tallgrass meadow and a shortgrass lawn in the park next to the Aasee.