IALE Grants
In the last year we have set up a transparent way of supporting the regions by having two official calls/yr in the Bulletin. Your proposals for conference or chapter support will then be reviewed in the board and successful proposals will be supported.
Recent calls see Bulletins:
Vol. 30 no. 4, December 2012
Vol. 30 no. 1, January 2012
Successful proposals since fall 2011:
- US IALE: Early career travel awards (3x) for US IALE meeting 2013 (3250 Euros)
- IALE Brazil: Early career scientist support for Brazilian conference 2012 (2000 Euro); loan for conference 2012 (2000 Euro)
- IALE Iran: support to establish a region (1500 Euro) and loan for a conference (1500 Euro)
- IUFRO Landscape Ecology Conference Chile 2012: Early career support for several scientists (2000 Euro)
- IALE Europe: Conference of all European Chapters 2013: Early career scientist support (2500 Euro for travel awards Europe + 2500 Euro for foreign travel awards overseas); loan for conference (5000 Euro)
- PhD course in Portugal organized by IALE-Europe and APEP & ICAAM: Fee waiver and early career scientist support (2500 Euro)
- IALE UK: Early career scientist support for IALE UK conference 2012 (1500 Euro)
Reports from early career scientists recently supported by IALE grants:
19th ialeUK Conference
"Graduated as an urban planner and a young career as a policy maker and consultant in the field of climate adaptation I have explored the importance of visualisations in the landscape planning process. Specially visualizing complex information on how climate change impacts can improve the planning process. Since 2010 I am working as part time PhD student at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands to investigate how we can improve visualisations in order to make given spatial information on climate change impacts more relevant for policy makers in the design phase of the adaptation planning process. To address my research question I am working on a theoretical framework which links spatial impact information indicators and visualisation uncertainties techniques to specific framed perceptions of adaptation planning.
Attending the 19th ialeUK conference gave me the opportunity to share my experiences with people working on landscape planning in various countries from across science, policy or practice. Both the oral and poster presentations gave me a lot of inspiration to further elaborate my research and consulting activities. Claire Vos for example also ascertained that the implementation of adaptation measures is still hampering because they are not suitable at the local scale. She introduced a theoretical framework, which applies the social-ecological system and points out the importance of local knowledge in the adaptation planning process. Susan Guy shared her experiences with mapping processes to force action and implementation. The presentation of Lorena Segura gave me a lot of inspiration by the way she selected her indicators and visualised them in a very attractive way. Chloe Bellamy and Andrew Mead both presented the possibilities of GIS to explore, analyze and combine mapping data.
The conference gave me also the opportunity to present my own findings and to sound my Information Visualisation Framework. The Framework is aiming at systematically clarifying, identifying and visualising user needs for adaptation planning. The close out by Richard Smithers emphasized the importance of identifying users needs in order to provide salient information. For me the conference was very successful. It gave me a lot of inspiration, which will surely benefit my research and consulting activities."
by Monique de Groot
"The conference offers a formidable opportunity to present my recent post-doctoral work in landscape modelling and to discuss with landscape modellers about the generality of my approach and the possibility to apply it to their case studies. Furthermore, as I began a new position in landscape modelling of ecosystem services, the conference was a unique occasion to enlarge my view on the way to analyse and model ecosystem services. The discussions between scientists from other disciplines will help me to find new ideas on how to model the link between environment and society, this link being insufficiently considered in my previous work. It gives a good opportunity for me to submit new ideas about the optimization of landscape arrangement to consider trade-offs between ecosystem services.
Finally, I am convinced that, more than gathering scientists that work on the same object, landscape congresses are excellent places for transdisciplinary researches. There is an urgent need to consider landscape as the matrix where ecological, socio-economical and physical processes occur, and the variety of disciplines invited to this congress in Edinburgh demonstrated that it is possible to work together if each discipline makes the effort to standardize its own vision of the landscape for being understood by the other disciplines. The congress convinces me that we are on good way to share an integrated vision of landscape with all its complexities."
by Fabrice Vinatier
"This summer, I attended the 19th ialeUK Conference, which was held from 4 to 6 September 2012 at The University of Edinburgh. This international conference explored how landscape ecology can help guide sustainable use of land and the services it provides to society. With about 90 participants representing various disciplines and working in a wide range of fields, the conference proved to be a valuable platform to share knowledge and discuss issues of landscape ecology.
I was delighted to give a flash presentation about my work on the development of scenarios for the spatial distribution of landscape services in a rural landscape. I appreciated the flash talks a lot, since there is only time to really focus on the most important parts that you want to convey to the audience. Even though 5 minutes is very short, all the presenters were able to give a clear presentation within the given time. Unfortunately, some were at the end of the day, in the future it would be nice to have them before the poster presentation, to facilitate the discussion and debates during the poster sessions.
The interactive session with the Ketso toolkit was a very valuable exercise of the conference. The goal was to discuss how landscape science, policy and practice can better work together to ensure sustainable use of land and the services it provides to society. Even though there was little time, it was good to share our knowledge in an interactive way, which provided different types of discussion and provided an opportunity to debate landscape ecology at a different level. I think it might be worthwhile to organise an interactive session with a similar group of delegates, focussing on a specific issue in order to identify potential implications and opportunities more explicitly. By any means, I appreciated the interactive session a lot and hope this will be done more often at conferences.
The conference has brought me a new collaboration within my research and even gave me a job opportunity for after my PhD. I am truly grateful for receiving the IALE early career support, giving me the opportunity to exchange my research and expand my professional network! I also want to thank the ialeUK committee for their support and trust. I really enjoyed my role as post-graduate coordinator and learned a lot from the committee members. Finally, I want to thank Jess Neumann for taking over this role and wish her good luck and a good time in the committee!"
by Monique Gulickx
II Brazilian Landscape Ecology Congress
"I would like to thank Dr. Danilo Boscolo, from IALE Brazil, for his kind invitation to give a talk in one of the open plenaries at the II Brazilian Landscape Ecology Congress. Also, I’m thankful for the “Young career scientist grant” provided by IALE International.
It was a great pleasure to present my work on changing landscape, biodiversity loss and ecosystem services in Chile. My participation over the event allowed the exchange of experiences between Brazil and Chile and the development of future collaborations with students and Brazilian researchers. In particular, I took the opportunity to discuss with IALE-Brazil representatives about future actions to strengthen landscape ecology in Latin America and in Chile. Another important output of my visit was Dr. Jean Paul Meztger’s invitation to participate in a special issue on restoration and landscape for the Brazilian journal of Nature Conservation.
During the event, I also took the opportunity to promote the 2012 IUFRO Landscape Ecology Working Party Conference that was recently held in Chile. The grant enabled collaborative links between Brazil and Chile to be strengthen."
by Cristian Echeverria, University of Concepción, Chile
"A scholarship from IALE made possible the participation of Manolo García from Guatemala to the IUFRO Landscape ecology working group conference in Concepción, Chile in November 2012. One of the main goals to attend to this conference was to present the initiative for the creation of a Mesoamerica & Caribbean Chapter in the IALE meeting held during the conference. After the discussion regarding the creation of regional and national chapters it was suggested that the creation of working groups, at this moment, can be a better strategy to strengthen the current work in Mexico, Central America & Caribbean, and Colombia. Chile will work in association with Argentina to build up their efforts in South America."
by Manolo García, Guatemala
