News

In April 2022, the IAVS Council approved a series of actions to support our colleagues in Ukraine. One of these actions was to create a special IAVS fund to support research by IAVS members remaining in Ukraine, with special emphasis on research on ecosystems affected by the war. This fund is now open for applications at UkrainianMembersResearchFund

Due to the war in Ukraine, most scientists suffer from cancellation of projects, cut salaries or the impossibility of field work in most parts of the country, or they could flee the country but could not get one of the positions in the support programs. Thus, we open the EDGG Fund for supporting Ukrainian Scientists: we call for donations, small or large, to our parent organisation IAVS, who will spend the money only upon receipt of a request from the EDGG Executive Committee. More information: EDGG Fund for Ukrainian Scientists

Thank you for your support of Ukrainian scientists in need! 

The deadline for early bird registration and abstract submission of the 17th Eurasian Grassland Conference in Tolosa has been extended to 10th May!

Registration is open! More information: https://edgg.org/egc2022

The EDGG Executive Committee condemns the invasion of the Russian Federation in Ukraine and the Belarussian support to the Russian attack, as well as the Russian state universities and the Russian Academy of Sciences who applauded the attack and justified it on the basis of false information and propaganda.

As an organisation dedicated to humanitarianism and truth, which are essential bases for any scientific work, the EDGG EC have decided to implement a Resolution on the Russian invasion in Ukraine which will apply to any EDGG-organised event, EDGG-owned journal or EDGG-edited Special Feature.

EDGG stands with Ukraine and with our Ukrainian members. Therefore, we have established a special mailing list concerning the situation in Ukraine and how to organise help for our members there. Currently, all our Ukrainian members and many others have joined. If you wish to stay informed and help to organise support and help, please subscribe to the mailing list EDGG Supports Ukraine. If you don't know how to join a Google groups mailing list, follow the instructions or send an e-mail to: idoia.biurrun@ehu.eus

As a result of the treacherous attack of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, the shelling and bombing of Ukrainian cities, towns, and villages have not stopped for the sixth day in a row. Civilians are dying, children are dying, some Ukrainian cities are already completely destroyed. But the nature of Ukraine also suffers from this war, in particular the unique protected areas that are in the occupied territories, including the world-famous Askania Nova Biosphere Reserve. If you are able to financially support the preservation of the invaluable natural heritage of Ukraine, you can do so by transferring the charitable contribution to the account of  Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group - https://uncg.org.ua/nashi-rakhunky-dlia-blahodijnykh-vneskiv-u-inozemnij-valiuti-our-accounts-for-charitable-contributions-in-euro-usd/

The abstract submission deadline of the Asian Grassland Conference was extended to 6^th March (for just one week!).  Young scientists are very welcome to join us and take part in Young Investigator Competition. We hope to meet many researchers working on grassland research and conservation in Asia! Further information: https://edgg.org/AGC/

The deadline for abstract submission was extended for just one week! New deadline is 6th March.

Please do not forget to register and submit your abstracts to the Asian Grassland Conference.

Join us!

We invite all vegetation ecologists based in or working in Asia, whether IAVS members or not, to join the Initial Workshop on the foundation of IAVS Regional Section(s) in Asia. It will take place on IAVS’ Zoom platform on Friday 22 April 2022 from 7:00-8:30 UTC (see https://bit.ly/3Gi3dmx for the time at your time zone). If interested, please register free of charge at https://forms.gle/zJF8sFtR8gcysvW96. This workshop is also a part of the activities within the first Asian Grassland Conference, 19–21 April 2022, organized by the IAVS Working Group EDGG. if you attend this conference, use its online platform for registration.

The registration of the Asian Grassland Conference (AGC) is now open! The conference will be full of engaging talks and special events, and it is free of charge! Please visit the conference website at https://edgg.org/AGC to find detailed information and to register. The deadline for abstract submission is 27 February 2022. Please note that the conference dates have been changed to 19-21 April 2022 to enable a higher level of participation.

The second season of Talk Grasslands is about to commence. Feel free to join us 23rd November via Zoom to follow the first talk by Martin Diekmann. He will present "driving factors of long-term vegetation changes in grasslands". Find more info at Talks page.

We planned two more talks for this winter:

• Linking plants and pollinators: a story of local disturbance events and anthropized landscapes by Paolo Biella on 14 December 2021 at 14:00 (CET)

• Grasslands: the hidden part by Jitka Klimešová on 11 January 2022 14:00 (CET)

New issue of Palaearctic Grasslands, PG 49, is available. Please click to download and enjoy reading!

Both Eurasian Grassland Conference (EGC) in Tolosa, Spain and the EDGG Field Workshop in Ukraine was postponed to 2022 due to the severity of the pandemic. Hopefully, in 2022, the situation will be quite different and we can welcome you to Spain. Consequently, the conference planned to be organized by Peter Török and his colleagues next year in Hungary, has been postponed until 2023.

We also hope that the ones who planned to join the Field Workshop will be able to join us in 2022. We will aim to announce the details in Palaearctic Grasslands 51. The Field Workshops in South Tyrol, Picos de Europa and Slovenia have been postponed to summer 2023, 2024 and 2025, respectively.

While there is unfortunately no large official EDGG Field Workshop in 2021, two long-standing members of EDGG intend to organise two small ad hoc Field Workshops using the same sampling methodology, whose data then also will be fed into the pool of EDGG Field Workshop data in the GrassPlot database: one to sandy and desert steppes of southern Ukraine (24 May – 2 June 2021) and one to alpine habitats of different regions in Switzerland (ca. 13–26 September 2021). For these ad hoc Field Workshops there is no funding from EDGG or IAVS, as they are not open to all EDGG members, but usually only to those with good knowledge of the local flora and the Field Workshop methodology. The number of participants is limited and the local organisers are free to decide whom they would like to include in the team. These events will be organised more flexibly and less formally. Participation in the ad hoc Field Workshop in Ukraine was offered only to persons registered in the previous year, and registration is now closed. If you are interested in the Field Workshop in the Swiss Alps please contact Jürgen Dengler (dr.juergen.dengler@gmail.com).

A nice summary of the Field Workshop 2019 in Armenia is available online in Vegetation Science Blog. Please click to open it.

IAVS will support its members to publish in its gold open access journal Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS): IAVS members do not have to pay article processing charges (APCs) if they submit their manuscript in 2020 or 2021. We hope this will stimulate many grassland researchers to submit a paper in 2020 or 2021. Please find detailed information on this link.

Palaearctic Grasslands has just joined https://vegsciblog.org/, the blog of the five IAVS journals.

Deadline extension for abstract submission to Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS) Special Collection "Classification of grasslands and other open vegetation types in the Palaearctic" until 31 July 2020 

The European Commission and the EU Expert Group on the Birds and Habitats Directives (NADEG) approved the EU habitat action plan on semi-natural dry grasslands (6210) in November 2019. The action plan is available here

Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS), the new gold open access journal of IAVS is now fully functional. Check out and consider submitting your papers at: https://vcs.pensoft.net/