September 7-20, 2015, Landau’s Institute for Environmental Sciences organizes for the third time the “International Summer Academy on Spatial Ecotoxicology and Ecotoxicological Risk Assessment, Using an Open Community Approach”.

Group work (photo by R. Bundschuh)

Developing countries often suffer from high levels of contamination, but have at the same time inadequate control mechanisms and insufficient resources for a reliable risk assessment and management. In this context, as a result of the growing Open Community Approach, spatial analysis offers more and more applications related to ecological risk assessment that are freely available.

Presenting own results (photo by R. Bundschuh)

Therefore, during the Summer Academy local researchers in collaboration with national and international experts combine basic concepts of ecotoxicology with methods of geographic information system analysis. Following an overview of the principles of ecotoxicological risk assessment, the Summer Academy will strongly focus on the use of freely available methods and resources of remote sensing and spatial analysis using GIS – an approach that allows for an application in both industrial and developing countries. Thanks to funding by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with financial support of the Federal Foreign Office participants from developing countries can be supported with scholarships.

Last year’s participants (photo by N. Mwangi)

For more info see www.summeracademy-landau.de

The EcotoxBlog will keep you up-to-date about this unique event!