Opening conference of the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Land Use

We invite everyone interested to the opening conference of the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Land Use, which will take place in Tallinn Creative Hub (Kursi 3) on Thursday, 2 May 2024.

The Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Land Use (FutureScapes) is a 7-year project (2024–2030) that aims to identify the relationships between biodiversity and carbon fluxes and integrate this new knowledge with satellite data into machine learning models. The collected data can be used to implement informed land-use planning and decision-making for policymakers as well as landowners and land users.

At the opening conference, the project working groups will present their research in more detail.

The event is free for everyone, but registration is required by 26 April. It is also possible to travel from Tartu to Tallinn and back by a free bus organised for the conference participants.

The conference will be held in Estonian, except for one presentation in English.

Agenda

11:30       Gathering; coffee, snacks
12:00       Opening
12:05       General introduction of the centre of excellence
                Principal Investigator Evelyn Uuemaa
12:20       Ecosystem carbon stocks and flows in the landscape – the main challenges of measurements
                Ivika Ostonen-Märtin, Professor in Root Ecology, University of Tartu 
12:40       The role of biodiversity and interspecies interactions in the carbon cycle
                Aveliina Helm, Professor of Restoration Ecology, University of Tartu 
13:00      Answered and unanswered questions in the biodiversity of Estonian forests:
               Kadri Runnel, Research Fellow in Conservation Biology, University of Tartu 
13:20      Lunch
14:00      Measuring carbon fluxes at different ecosystem levels
               Kuno Kasak, Associate Professor in Ecotechnology, University of Tartu 
14:20      Biodiversity in agricultural ecosystems: challenges and opportunities
               Eve Veromann, Professor, Estonian University of Life Sciences
14:40      Challenges for ecosystem diversity mapping by remote sensing (in English)
               Jan Pisek, Associate Professor in Remote Sensing of Landscapes, Tartu Observatory, University of Tartu 
15:00      How to use machine learning to model biodiversity and the carbon cycle at a national scale?
               Evelyn Uuemaa, Professor in Geoinformatics, University of Tartu 
15:20      Land use change – economic and social causes and consequences
               Ants-Hannes Viira, Head of Department of Agricultural Research, Centre of Estonian Rural Research and Knowledge 
15:40      Summary and closing

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