In this post, Mirco Bundschuh talks about a session to be held at the SETAC Europe 30th Annual Meeting, which is going to be virtual – as SETAC SciCon.

This year’s annual meeting of SETAC Europe is moving from Dublin to your home office, living room, balcony or wherever you are. The conference, now called SETAC SciCon (#SETACSciCon), will host various sessions related to ecotoxicology, environmental chemistry, risk and life cycle assessment.

Among those sessions we have been able to secure a spot for presentations (platform or poster) targeting the transfer and effect of chemicals within and across ecosystem borders. This topic links perfectly with a research focus of the iES Landau, Institute for Environmental Sciences at our university. In collaboration with Ana Marta Gonçalves from the MARE, Department of Life Sciences at the University of Coimbra and Department of Biology and CESAM at the University of Aveiro, it was possible to attract eight platform presentations linked to this topic, among those two from researchers at Landau. All presentations can be viewed on demand by all meeting participants (if you are not yet registered you can do this here) starting on Sunday May 3 until well after the conference. So take the chance to learn from world leading experts on this topic!

The session is kicked off by a session specific keynote lecture providing a synthesis of the topic and providing a larger picture – we are very happy that Johanna Kraus from the USGS agreed to take this extra step. In the subsequent platform and poster presentations we target diverse topics with fluxes of contaminants across ecosystem borders through emerging insect and amphibians, but also birds as predators within riparian food webs. Additionally, we cover presentations on the transfer of chemicals among trophic levels within aquatic food webs. The use of stable isotopes can be central for the assessment of effects within food webs. We acknowledge this fact with a platform specifically looking into the value of stable isotopes for long-term monitoring.

Participants can ask questions to each presenter – irrespective whether platform or poster – individually using chat boxes during the meeting (May 3-7). During the afternoon of Monday May 4, we have a live discussion on the session topics, during which we encourage an open exchange with the presenters on more general aspects related to the session.

We are excited about this new experience which comes with an online only meeting and hope to “see” many of you there!