ATBC 2008 - Parolin

Symposium

Tropical Wetlands: Diversity, Ecophysiological Processes and Conservation

Organizers : Pia Parolin (piaparolin -at- gmx.de) and Florian Whitmann (f-wittmann -at- web.de)

Tropical wetlands cover huge areas and belong to the most diverse ecosystems worldwide. They are the habitat for many partially endemic plant and animal species and they are indispensable for hydrological cycles, water resources management, etc. Whether fringed by grasslands or forests, wetlands are the source of many valuable timber and non-timber products and represent the main food source for many fish and mammal species, which in turn are the main protein base for large part of the rural population.

In spite of their ecological importance, wetlands belong to the most threatened ecosystems worldwide as they underlie a severe use conflict by human demands on water supply, timber, agriculture and pasture area, fish and wildlife, wastewater disposal and leisure activities. Biodiversity is especially affected in wetlands, among other reasons because of the recently drastic reduced area of undisturbed sites.

Wetlands are characterized by a high organismic and functional diversity. The occurring gradients (e.g. flood duration and amplitude, sedimentation and erosion, etc.) cause the need for a series of morphological, physiological and anatomical adaptations of the biota inhabiting them. Inundation dynamics create a mosaic of environmental conditions, which are closely linked to the diversity and distribution patterns of wetland species at different spatial and temporal scales. In past and recent scientific research, efforts dealt with the basic understanding of functioning and processes in wetland ecosystems.

The present symposium aims at highlighting the status quo of organistic and functional diversity research, understanding traits of species composition and diversity, ecophysiological processes and adaptation strategies of plant and animal species, and the possibilities of implementation of scientific results into sustainable management and conservation schemes in wetlands.

Some potential topics of the proposed symposium are:

Organistic, functional and structural diversity: Which databases can be used or created?
How do wetlands create favourable or adverse conditions for biodiversity?
Which species traits make organisms successful in wetlands?
Plant life in oxygen-deficient environments: ecological, physiological and molecular perspectives
Does biodiversity influence organic matter exchange between aquatic and terrestrial systems?
Modelling of wetland dynamics
Interactions between plants and geochemical processes
Interaction between nitrogen enrichment and global change in wetland ecosystems
Palaeoecology and long-term wetland function dynamics
Wetlands for Wastewater Treatment and Pollution Control
Which are the most important threats to biodiversity and wetland ecosystem services?
Which conception approaches aid prediction of diversity changes?
Science-based conservation and social needs: How to combine them in practice?

Legend : local of the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve (central Amazonia) in a traditional boat lance-fishing a pirarucu (Arapaima gigas), which is the biggest fish in Amazonian white-water (várzea) floodplains. Behind the fishermen you can see floating meadows (mainly composed of the semi-terrestrial Poaceae Paspalum repens and Echinochloa polystachya), and, on the top, inundated várzea forests bordering the secondary river channels of the Solimoes/Amazon River.