Pollen-based reconstructions of past land-cover change in Latin America



workshop sponsored by PAGES, organized in connection to the XIV International Palynological Congress

29-30-31 October 2016 Salvador de Bahia, Brazil



Registration deadline: until free places are filled


If you are interested in participating, send an email to Sonia Fontana [sonia.fontana@biologie.uni-goettingen.de] indicating your research topic and providing your affiliation.

The workshop is open to ca. 40 participants. Priority will be given to postgraduate students and young scientists, who are placed or working in connection with Latin American universities or research institutes on palynological-related topics. Financial support has been obtained from PAGES to cover the accommodation cost for the attendees.

Key speakers

Marie-José Gaillard, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden
Thomas Giesecke, University of Göttingen, Germany
Petr Kunes, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Sonia Fontana, University of Göttingen, Germany

Local organizers

Francisco Hilder Magalhães e Silva, Universidade do Estado da Bahia, Brazil
Paulino Pereira Oliveira, Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, Brazil
Vivian Jeske-Pieruschka, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
Kelly Regina Batista Leite - Universidade Federal da Bahia
Lázaro Benedito da Silva - Universidade Federal da Bahia

Overview

This workshop is organised within the activities of PAGES LandCover6k working group: Anthropogenic Land Cover Change during the Holocene, an international research network coordinated by Marie-José Gaillard, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden. LandCover6k has the objective to provide descriptions of past land cover that are appropriate for climate modelling, particularly for studies of land cover-climate interactions in the past with land-use as one human-induced climate forcing. The time perspective is the Holocene from the beginning of human influence on vegetation cover at a spatial scale relevant to climate change.

The workshop consist of lectures and practical classes during which we will introduce the techniques necessary for quantitative land cover reconstruction. Approaches for land cover reconstruction have been developed over the last decades in Europe and North America. The interaction with members of the local community is fundamental for searching together for solutions to overcome obstacles in applying these approaches to South American ecosystems. We hope this workshop can provide the stimulus to start new investigations in Latin America attempting quantitative land-cover reconstructions. Additionally, we aim at launching new synoptic studies in connection with the Latin American Pollen Database. This important data repository and research tool is currently mainly populated with data from researchers based in North America and Europe and here we aim at initiating collaborative research that is using the database and leads to the upload of new datasets.