BESTMAP will be attending the Early Career Biogeographers Conference between 22 and 24 October 2021. The event has been originally planned to be held in Amsterdam, the same as previous years, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, this year it will be fully online. The conference will be participated by a great number of international scientists, amongst whom will be BESTMAP’s member Miss Stephanie Roilo from the Technical University Dresden and Prof. Anna Cord, co-coordinator of  BESTMAP. The two of them, along with other researchers will be presenting on Mulde bird models on 24 October at 10:45 am CEST.

The session titled "Measuring the effectiveness of Agri-Environmental Schemes and Ecological Focus Areas for farmland bird conservation across scales" shows the results from a research which the scientists conducted. They investigated the relative importance and the differential scale of effect of 5 Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES)/Ecological Focus Areas (EFA) groups on the occurrences of 15 farmland bird species in the Mulde River Basin, Germany. 

The results confirm the potential of AES/EFA to contribute to farmland bird conservation, but highlight that much higher adoption rates are necessary to aid farmland bird populations in central Europe.

The schedule of the event indicates that talks and networking will be primarily between the hours of 9 am and 7 pm Amsterdam time. The International Biogeography Society, the organiser of the conference, have arranged the program to start with an online social event which intends to break the ice between participants. The first day will end with a Q&A session. Following that, it is planned for the next 3 days to include plenaries, oral presentations, networking opportunities (during the day) and mentor sessions/workshops (during the evening). Furthermore there will be a journal editor meeting and the event will finish with an Award Session.

NB: There will be an option to have a pre-recorded talk shown if there are internet connection challenges, or time zone difficulties. All recordings will be available for registrants for 90 days.

You can read more about the conference and register here.