Launch of the ESF-EUROCORES Programme EuroDEEP
The official launch of the EUROCORES Programme EuroDEEP "Ecosystem functioning and biodiversity in the deep sea" has taken place last week in Brussels (BE) with a first kick-off meeting with the Project leaders, on behalf of ten science funding and performing agencies from eight European countries. The goal of the EuroDEEP Programme (www.esf.org/eurodeep) is to further explore the deep-sea environment, to further describe the biological species and communities that inhabit it, and to better understand the physical and geochemical processes that shape the environment in which these communities live, in order to describe, explain and predict variations of biodiversity within and between deep-sea habitats, their consequences for deep-sea ecosystem functioning and the interactions of the deep sea with the global biosphere. EuroDEEP is coordinated by Dr. Inge Jonckheere at the ESF (contact: eurodeep@esf.org) and has mobilized about 4 million Euros from national funding agencies that allow more than 20 research teams throughout 4 trans-national collaborative research projects to study the deep sea ecosystem functioning ranging from the study of microbial diversity in hypersaline lakes to colonisation processes in chemosynthetic ecosystems during the next 3 years. Extra funding for coordination networking is allocated by the European Commission and will greatly integrate the research teams including postdocs and PhD students shortly enrolled through this unique research initiative. Strong links will be further established with other major initiatives and programmes (CoML, COMARGE, HERMES, ESSP, FP7 Deep-Sea Floor Frontier initiative…).
Countries
Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom