First annual ELOISE conference

The first annual scientific ELOISE (European Land Ocean Interaction Studies) conference will take place in Arcachon, France, on 21-23 May 1997.

The ELOISE project is jointly implemented by the Community's MAST (Marine Science and Technology) and "Environment and Climate" programmes. It represents a coordinated European input to the international core project LOICZ (Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone). The conference will provide the first year status report of the ELOISE projects.

The objectives of ELOISE are:

- To determine the role of coastal seas in land-ocean interactions (including shelf - deep sea interactions along the shelf break) in the perspective of global change;
- To determine the regional and global consequences of human impact through pollution, eutrophication and physical disturbance on land-ocean interactions in the coastal zone;
- To formulate a strategic approach to the management of sustainable coastal zone resource use and development, and to investigate information, policy and market failures that hamper sustainable coastal resources management;
- To promote the development of a European scientific infrastructure for coastal zone research and data management that can optimize both national and regional research and the benefits accruing from it.

Plenary sessions will consist of keynote talks and oral presentations of scientific results from current ELOISE projects. The four main themes to be addressed will be:

- Global change and biogeochemical cycles and fluxes;
- Ecosystem structure and functioning and human impacts;
- Coastal zone management;
- Integration of natural and socio-economic sciences in coastal zone research.

In addition, parallel sessions will focus on specific subjects where major scientific questions need to be tackled. These correspond to the three thematic working groups of the ELOISE implementation report:

- Global change and biogeochemical cycles and fluxes:
. The biodegradability of organic matter;

- Ecosystem structure and functioning and human impacts:
. Critical evaluation of unifying concepts in ecology;
. Dramatic shifts in community structure and their causes and effects in ecosystems;

- Modelling and data management:
. The coupling of circulation and biogeochemical models, with special emphasis on the problems of upscaling and downscaling.
For further information, please contact:

European Commission
DG XII - Science, research and development
Dr. Hartmut Barth
Unit XII/D-1 - Environment and Climate
200 rue de la Loi (SDME 7/57)
B-1049 Brussels
Tel. +32-2-2956452; Fax +32-2-2952097
E-mail: research@ec.europa.eu

or

European Commission
DG XII - Science, research and development
Dr. Klaus Guenther Barthel
Unit XII/D-3 - MAST Programme
200 rue de la Loi (SDME 7/83)
B-1049 Brussels
Tel. +32-2-2951242; Fax +32-2-2963024
E-mail: research@ec.europa.eu