Contact

Jiska Van Dijk

Visit the ALTER-net website for biodiversity related news and events, job vacancies and funding opportunities!

Related sites:

• http://newsandviews.ceh.ac.uk
• www.lter-europe.net
• www.lifewatch.eu

ALTER-net

The European Science-Policy Interface on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service

Alternet brings together leading institutes from 18 European countries. They share the goal of integrating their research capability to: assess changes in biodiversity, analyse the effect of those changes on ecosystem services and inform the public and policy makers about this at a European scale.

Biodiversity - our life insurance

Biodiversity underpins healthy, sustainable ecosystems that in turn provide us with ecosystem services such as water filtration, food, recreation, medicine, climate regulation and fuel. But biodiversity is under severe threat due to human induced changes.Our ability to respond to the threats facing biodiversity is hampered because the science base is dispersed and disconnected. ALTER-Net aims to alleviate this by creating a more integrated European biodiversity science base.

ALTER-Net is...

• developing approaches to assess and forecast changes in biodiversity and its effects on ecosystems and their services
• analyzing socio-ecological interlinkages and identifying bottlenecks for nurturing biodiversity and ecosystem services
• assessing the socio-economic implications and public attitudes to biodiversity loss
• finding more effective ways to communicate biodiversity issues to a wider range of audiences including politicians as well as EU and intergovernmental decision making bodies

To do this, ALTER-Net...

• organizes science-policy interface meetings about biodiversity, ecosystem services and society issues
• organizes an annual Summer School on biodiversity and ecosystem services to train the next generation of biodiversity scientists
• operates the Nature and Biodiversity News and Views public outreach website (http://newsandviews.ceh.ac.uk)
• established and continues to support the LTEREurope network of long-term ecosystem research sites and promotes research using this infrastructure (www.lter-europe.net)
• supports the European Lifewatch initiative to increase access to biodiversity data, models and analytical tools (www.lifewatch.eu)