PhD Student Dorothea Kohlmeier Attends the 50th Meeting of the Estuarine and Coastal Sciences Association (ECSA) in Venice, Italy

Setting of the 50th meeting of ECSA, June 2012 in Venice, Italy.

Prof. Janet Bornman and Dorothea Kohlmeier.

From the 3rd to 7th of June 2012, the 50th meeting of the Estuarine and Coastal Sciences Association (ECSA) took place in Venice, Italy. The conference was organized in partnership with Elsevier and its Journal “Estuarine and Coastal Shelf Science” and was entitled “Today’s Science for Tomorrow’s Management”. Around 560 delegates from 54 countries participated in the conference and presented recent research via talks in six parallel sessions and poster presentations. Invited keynote speakers also presented important topics to the plenary on the first and last day of the conference.

Among the keynote speakers who opened the conference was Boris Worm from Dalhousie University, Canada who gave an update on the recent numbers of biodiversity loss and the subsequent loss of ecosystem services in coastal ecosystems. On the last day, Eric Wolanski from James Cook University, Australia, made the point that recent research highlights the importance of biological components in driving physical processes of fine sediment environments and that this link is necessary for understanding how estuarine ecosystems function.

Topics of the oral-presentation sessions were, among others, “Ecosystem Services and Societal Benefits”, “Anthropogenic Change”, and “Nutrient Related Processes”. Within the session “System Analysis”, I presented results from one of the studies I conducted during my research stay in New Zealand with the title: "Site specific differences in morphometry and photophysiology in the seagrass Zostera muelleri from a New Zealand intertidal system”.

For me, participation in ECSA 50 was highly beneficial. It was great to hear such a broad variety of talks, both plenary and within the specific sessions, which provided a very good overview of estuarine and coastal research that is currently being conducted worldwide. Also, it was nice to meet so many people personally, both senior researchers and other PhD students. Exchanges regarding the various ways to address important research questions on seagrass biology with other “seagrass people” was very encouraging for me.

After the conference, I met up with my supervisor Prof. Janet Bornman who was an invited speaker at another conference in Verona, Italy, at the same time. She is now based at the International Institute of Agri-Food Security at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. It was a lucky coincidence to be in the same region in Italy at the same time and thus a good opportunity to meet.