ELOISE - European Land Ocean Interaction Studies - Conference, 24-27 march, 2003

The European Commission's project cluster for coastal zone research in which the focus is on how the land-ocean interaction operates, and how this is influenced by human activities, will hold its annual Conference entitled "European Conference on Coastal Zone Research: an ELOISE approach" from 24-27 March in Gdansk, Poland.

This will be the fifth in a series of successful conferences. In an extension of previous events, this conference will be an integral part of the collation and synthesis of the achievements of ELOISE since inception, a task being undertaken during the coming year by the ELOISE secretariat. Furthermore, whereas in the past the conferences focused on results of ELOISE projects the scope is extended, and contributions are invited from national and international coastal research projects. It is intended that the Gdansk meeting will be a broad forum for European Coastal Research. This is especially so being shortly prior to the anticipated call for coastal research projects in the summer second call of the 6th Framework.
The major topics of the conference are:
1. Catchment and coastal zone interactions - surface water, ground water, and atmospheric mechanisms. ,2. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. ,3. Coastal morphology and global change impacts on the coast. ,4. Valuing coastal zone systems. ,5. Tools for coastal zone assessment - ground truth data, interpretation, limits/ values/ management criteria, decision support systems.
Several speakers have accepted invitations to give presentations, including:
Dr. Juha-Markku Leppanen, HELCOM Secretariat. ,Dr. Hartwig Kremer, LOICZ ,Prof. Don F. Boesch, USA ,Prof. Dunxin Hu, China ,Prof. Yngvar Olsen, Norway ,Prof. Maria Snoussi, Morocco ,Prof. Marcel Stive, NL ,Prof. James Syvitski, USA ,Prof. Tomasz Zylicz, Poland
An introductrory plenary session will focus attention on the needs of coastal research from the various perspectives of the needs of European coastal policy and political management, science, environmental protection and pressure groups, etc. Parallel sessions, each chaired by a leading speaker, will then assemble presented work for representation back to the concluding plenary. It is intended that results from the Conference will be directly input to a series of subsequent Workshops focusing on specific elements of the coastal zone.
Abstracts of proposed presentations are requested by 5th February. Conference details and registration forms can be obtained from http://www.nilu.no/projects/eloise
,The Conference is being hosted by the Gdansk University of Technology, and is funded by the European Commission.
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