4.6.2024 | Jarno Suni

4th International Conference for Sustainable Resource Society – ICS24

October 31st – November 1st, 2024, Joensuu, Finland

Call for abstracts is open until August 31st

Deadline for abstracts (oral presentations and posters, max 300 words): 31 August, 2024
Deadline for registration: 18 Oct, 2024

No conference fees for participation or for the evening event

Submit your abstract here: https://registration.contio.fi/uef/Registration/Login?id=7480-T_7480-8693

and register for the conference here: https://registration.contio.fi/uef/Registration/Login?id=7480-T_7480-8692

The International Conference for Sustainable Resource Society is a multi-disciplinary conference focused on challenges of sustainability transitions in society, environmental change, and sustainable use of natural resources. ICS24 is organized around five working groups: bio society, climate, water, energy & minerals, and circular economy and sustainable society. ICS24 is jointly organized by a consortium of University of Eastern Finland Research Communities: RESOURCE, FOBI, WATER, CLEHE, and PHOTONICS.

ICS24 offers a platform for researchers from all fields of science to share research insights and discuss the complex global and local challenges on sustainability transitions, the use of natural resources, environmental and climate change, and circular economy themes from a broad perspective. The ICS24 special theme is: Environmental Monitoring and Impact Assessment

On this webpage, you will find the more detailed descriptions for the sessions, organized by the UEF Water research community.

UEF Water research community calls for abstracts for the following sessions:

1) Data and policy value chains interface in water management (Chair: Prof. Antti Belinskij)
2) Beyond the pretty picture: Remote sensing for biodiversity and ecosystem condition monitoring (Chairs: Dr. Miguel Villoslada & Dr. Franziska Wolff)
3) Monitoring and Managing Ecosystem Services and the Impacts of Outdoor Recreation, Nature-Based Tourism, and Adventure Pursuits (Chairs: Dr. Kelsey Johansen, Prof. Henna Konu, & Dr. Jarno Suni)
4) Irrigation Water Efficiency Or Increased Extraction Of Groundwater – Which Strategy Should We Be Promoting Towards Adapting To Climate-Induced Increased Drought (Dr. Ahsan Uddin Ahmed & Shahidul Mallick)

Session – Data and policy value chains interface in water management

The EU aims to prevent deterioration and to protect and improve the status of freshwater and marine ecosystems through the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. However, Member States, including Finland, have had little or no success in improving water status. This is often attributed to poor implementation of the directives. The effects of climate change on water resources make the task of improving and maintaining water status even more challenging.

This session will ask why environmental monitoring and impact assessment are not being translated into effective water and marine policies. The idea of the water management in the directives and related planning systems is that environmental data should lead to effective measures to protect and improve waters. However, there appears to be a gap between the data and policy value chains that is preventing developments in this regard.

Presentations in the session could focus on questions such as:

  • What is the role of monitoring and impact assessment in water-related planning, permitting and control processes?
  • What is the relationship between environmental knowledge production and policy formulation and decision-making?
  • How can water and marine policies deal with uncertainties in environmental knowledge?
  • What is the role of modelling and new assessment methods such as remote sensing in water and marine policies?
  • How does the development of environmental protection solutions, such as new technologies, affect the regulation of different activities?

Session – Beyond the pretty picture: Remote sensing for biodiversity and ecosystem condition monitoring

Biodiversity is currently facing unprecedented threats and challenges worldwide. Simultaneously, several national and trans-national initiatives, such as the Biodiversity Strategy 2030, have set ambitious goals to halt the loss of biodiversity and improve the state of ecosystems inside and outside protected areas. However, the effective implementation of these targets calls for coherent monitoring strategies.

Simultaneously, the field of remote sensing currently provides a plethora of tools and methods able to encompass the multiple temporal, spatial, and spectral scales that characterize the dynamics of ecosystem change and biodiversity loss. However, despite the large body of literature on sensors, methods, and algorithms, the systematic operational use of these tools is still limited.

In this session, we want to elaborate on whether and how remote sensing tools and techniques can help monitor ecosystem condition and halt biodiversity loss, and what may be the limiting factors in the uptake of these approaches. We welcome practical case-studies on the use of remote sensing for ecosystem condition monitoring. We are also interested in examples presenting the innovative use of satellite, airborne and drone-based tools for biodiversity conservation.

Session – Monitoring and Managing Ecosystem Services and the Impacts of Outdoor Recreation, Nature-Based Tourism, and Adventure Pursuits

Ecosystem services, also know as natural capital, refers to the direct and indirect contributions ecosystems provide for human wellbeing and quality of life. Opportunities to enhance subjective wellbeing, and quality of life, strongly influence engagement in outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and adventure pursuits.

Safeguarding the natural environment, including ecosystem health and biodiversity richness is necessary, not only to ensure that ecosystems continue to provide these services and to guarantee the economic value derived from ecosystem services, through among other avenues, the operation of outdoor recreation and adventure outfitters and guiding businesses, and nature-based tourism SMEs, but also to ensure the preservation of natural environments.

This special session therefore interrogates the relationship between accessing and using natural environments in pursuit of enhancements to human wellbeing and quality of life, and monitoring and managing visitor impacts generated through individual and commercial outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and adventure pursuits.

This session therefore welcomes submissions on topics including, but not limited to:

  • The economic, experience, and amenity value of nature;
  • The wellbeing and human health impacts of access to nature;
  • Safeguarding the amenity value of recreation and tourism destinations;
  • Ecosystem services and recreation and tourism engagement;
  • Theoretical and practical approaches to calculating, assessing, monitoring and managing ecosystem services, and the experiential, economic and amenity values of nature;
  • Evidence-based methods and practices for calculating the economic value of ecosystem services in recreation and tourism;
  • Best practices for monitoring the impacts of outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism on the ecosystem services provided by, and the economic, experience, and amenity values of, nature;
  • Evidence-based approaches to monitoring and managing human dimensions of natural resources in mixed use natural settings;
  • The recreation and tourism sector’s role and responsibility in maintaining its operational environment;
  • Metrics and measurement approaches to evidence-based decision-making for human dimensions of natural resource management in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism; and,
  • Best policy, communication, and engagement strategies for cultivating pro-environmental behaviours, stewardship intentions, and green business and access practices at the recreation and tourism business and consumer level.

Session – Irrigation Water Efficiency Or Increased Extraction Of Groundwater – Which Strategy Should We Be Promoting Towards Adapting To Climate-Induced Increased Drought

Increased surface temperature and greater variability in rainfall have been posing an intensification of agricultural drought under climate-induced higher levels of evaporative losses, especially in drought susceptible regions. The drought scene in Sub-Saharan Africa has worsened to cause repeated severe droughts, while that in South Asia has given rise to unsustainable extraction of groundwater resources – all affecting poor people’s food security. The situation is aggravating in many other drought susceptible parts of the world with greater climate forcing.

Many suggest that investing in irrigation by tapping groundwater resources is the solution, which is being pursued by mobilizing global adaptation financing. However, there are location-specific risks of gradual depletion of groundwater resources, which raise question regarding sustainability of the adaptive response. In contrast, the other school of thought has been promoting more costlier techno-focused solutions involving irrigation water efficiency to address greater drought hazard in the wake of climate change. There are growing bodies of evidence that support the concept of “more crops per drop” as a sustainable approach to address climate-induced drought.

The proposed session calls for case studies gathered from across diverse regions to bring in a healthy scientific debate, based on scientific evidence and on-the-ground updated research.

Link to UEF event page: https://www.uef.fi/en/event/4th-international-conference-for-sustainable-resource-society-ics24