The effect of climate change on plant and animal communities - important working group about to start

Dr Frank van Veen will lead a group of international scientists through a series of workshops, the first of which starts 27th November 2006. The group will ask important questions about how climate will affect biological

Dr Frank van Veen will lead a group of international scientists through a series of workshops, the first of which starts 27th November 2006. The group will ask important questions about how climate will affect biological systems. The group will bring together climatologists and ecologists with wide ranging expertise, including statistics and mathematical modelling. 'There is plenty of large scale research happening on potential range shifts in response to climate change but we are more interested in predicting what will happen to biological communities where they are right now' said Dr van Veen, ‘the challenge is to make these predictions on a time-scale that is relevant for policy makers, so we are talking about decades rather then 100s or even 1000s of years. We have invited an interesting mixture of people who work in different disciplines, so there should be some interesting discussions among people who wouldn’t normally get together’.

You can find more out about the workshop aims by visiting the workshop pages.