Scaling climate change experiments across space and time: Challenges of informing large-scale models with small-scale experiments  4-7 June 2013, Mikulov, Czech Republic (this meeting is jointly sponsored by the INTERFACE and CLIMMANI networks)  

Programme available here.

Climate change experiments in terrestrial ecosystems build our fundamental understanding of plant and ecosystem responses to climatic perturbations, and this information informs model design and parameterization. Experiments typically focus on drivers and responses at relatively small scales (spatial and temporal).  Scaling the information from these plot-level experiments to landscape- or global-scale models operating over decades or centuries provides a significant challenge. In recent years, climate change research has increasingly acknowledged the importance of extreme events as a significant component of climate change. This provides an additional and significant challenge in both experimentation and modelling.

This workshop, co-hosted by ClimMani and INTERFACE, will bring together experimentalists and modellers to discuss challenges associated with scaling, present the current state of the art, and identify future directions for overcoming the disparities in scales between climate change experiments and plot and global scale models.

The workshop will focus on four themes:

• What have we learned from work on elevational and environmental gradients?
• Scaling from small plots to landscapes and regions: what works, and what doesn't?
• Drivers of biome shifts: Making small-scale measurements of disturbance, tipping points, thresholds, and mortality relevant for large-scale models
• Trait responses to environmental change - Maximizing the benefits of trait information and moving from static to dynamic traits

US-BASED STUDENTS/POSTDOCS: INTERFACE invites applications to attend from US-based graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Funding is available for approximately 5 slots; please indicate if you can get support from your mentor or institution to cover the costs of the meeting or your travel (support, however, is not necessary to apply). To apply please submit a one-page CV that includes the name of three references (including your current dissertation or postdoctoral advisor), a short paragraph on why attending the meeting would enhance your career, and a poster abstract that is targeted to one of the four meeting themes (please identify the theme in your short paragraph about the meeting) to Prof. Aimée Classen (aclassen@utk.edu) with "INTERFACE application_your last name" in the subject line. All of these materials should be sent as a single PDF with your last name in the title "LAST NAME".  Application deadline is May 1, 2013.  All students and postdocs will be required to present a poster at the meeting.

OTHER RESEARCHERS: We encourage applications from interested researchers for a number of unfunded spaces at the meeting; if you would like to participate in the workshop, please email Claus Beier (if applying from Europe, Asia, Australia; clbe@kt.dtu.dk) or Jeff Dukes (N and S America, Africa; jsdukes@purdue.edu) with the subject "INTERFACE application_your last name." Include the title and abstract of the poster you would bring (please identify the workshop theme that matches your abstract). Application deadline is May 1st, 2013. There is no registration fee for the workshop.

Student Collaborative Exchange Program

To further facilitate collaboration in the research community, INTERFACE plans to sponsor a limited number of “collaborative exchanges” for US-based graduate students, in which students who primarily work with models spend a brief period (up to one month) working in an experimental setting, or students who primarily work on global change experiments spend a brief period (up to one month) working in an ecosystem or Earth system modeling setting.  These exchanges should ideally allow the student to continue working on a similar topic, but from a different perspective.  Interested graduate students should identify a laboratory in which they would like to work, and should secure approvals from their advisor and the exchange lab’s PI.  To apply, students should submit as a single PDF file: (1) a two-page proposal explicitly stating the questions being addressed and why the collaboration will facilitate answering them, (2) an NSF-style CV,  (3) a one-page budget justification, and (4) letters of support from the advisor and the PI of the lab the student will visit. Applications should be sent to Aimée Classen <aclassen@utk.edu>.  Applications will be reviewed at two times each year, starting on the fourth Monday of April and the fourth Monday of October, through the end of 2014.  Allowable expenses include airfare, meals while traveling to and from the exchange location, and housing. These funds cannot be used to cover classes at the host institution or student/ PI salary.  Exchanges may be partially or fully sponsored by INTERFACE.  

See Activities page for a full list of upcoming and past activities related to INTERFACE