EGU 2020 online - European Geosciences Union General Assembly, addressing hot topics

The European Geosciences Union General Assembly is a large international conference which is held in Vienna every spring. This year the event will be held online between 4th and 8th May. The EGU conferences are large international and interdisciplinary conferences with more than ten thousand participants and hundreds of parallel sessions. This is the major event for European geoscientists, but there are several topics in the program that can be interesting and relevant for biologists and ecologists as well. It is worth to check the detailed program at the conference webpage, especially because all those who are interested can attend the sessions free of charge.

Besides the regular sessions, there are five featured topics that are discussed during the Union Symposia. These discuss overarching and interdisciplinary topics of EGU-wide interest, such as scientific integrity, UN Sustainable Development goals, fire in the Earth system, climate change and earth and planetary observation from space. I will give a talk in the 'fire session', entitled The role and impact of fire in the Earth system across spatial and temporal scales. I am very happy to take part in this interesting session and thankful for Elisabeth Dietze, the Session Convener, and the Co-Conveners Alysha Inez Coppola, Gitta Lasslop, Cathelijne Stoof and Sander Veraverbeke for the invitation.

The program of the Union Symposium on 6th May is the following:

10:45–10:50 Introduction
10:50–11:05 David Bowman: Adaptive thinking and the global fire crisis 
11:05–11:20 Fay Johnston: Landscape fires and public health 
11:20–11:35 Guido van der Werf: Fire - climate interactions in a warming world 
11:35–11:50 Cristina Santin: After the fire: biogeochemical effects of charcoal & ash on fire-affected landscapes
11:50–12:05 Orsolya Valkó: The contradictory role of fire from the nature conservation perspective
12:05–12:30 Discussion 

You can register for this program here.

Abstract of the Symposium

Recent record-breaking wildfires in the Arctic, boreal forests, the Mediterranean and, at the same time, human-driven decreases in burned area in savanna ecosystems show the need of an increased understanding of the drivers and impacts of fire regime changes under ongoing and future land management and climate changes. Fire is part of the Earth system since the evolution of terrestrial biomass 420 million years ago. Despite being a risk to many human societies today, fire has played an important role in human evolution and as a tool and target in land management for millennia. However, its role in biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem dynamics across various spatiotemporal scales is still poorly constrained, partly due to its complex feedbacks with climate and vegetation. The influence of fire on the atmosphere, vegetation, soil properties, hydrological and biogeochemical cycles and the impact on society require inter- to transdisciplinary research approaches. This symposium aims to provide state-of-the-art perspectives on the feedbacks and impacts of fires from the different fields. Leading experts in fire observations and modelling as well as post-fire impacts on local to global and across temporal scales will provide insights on key processes, drivers and important links of fire in the natural and human-shaped environments.