Climate Change Impacts on Ecology and the Environment (08w5054)

This workshop will bring together various experts in order to discuss the relevant issue of climate change The Banff Centre on May 4 - 9, 2008 for the workshop hosted by the Banff International Research Station. Climate change is a serious force on the world today. Potential impacts include greater intensity in rainfall in some regions, leading to greater flood and landslide damage, and in other regions, there is likely to be increased droughts, resulting in smaller crop yields, more forest fires and diminished water resources. Climate shifts will change the lives and livelihoods of people around the globe, with a greater impact on the most vulnerable.


The development of methods to assess and quantify climate change and its impacts is a critical area of research. For rapid advancement in this field there is a need to work in a collaborative environment with a merging of tools in information science and ecosystem expertise because of the strong reliance on quantifying the changes using data analytic methods. This workshop will bring together a variety of environmental scientists, statisticians, and epidemiologists, in order to bring to bear modern methods of space-time modeling to assess and model the impact of climate change on agriculture, forestry and human health conditions.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologí­a (CONACYT).