Archive

Roberta Hawkins presentes her new book  Higher Expectations: How to Survive Academia, Make It Better for Others, and Transform the University and will open up a space for discussion how to translate ideas from Better Science into practice in everyday academic life.
Organized jointly by the Better Science Initiative of the University of Bern and the Bernese Human Geography Colloquium of the Institute of Geography.
(14:15 – 16:00, room 002, GIUB)

We kindly invite you to the opening of our 6^th Global Science Film Festival in Bern by mLAB and the Global Science Film Academy, which will take place in Basel, Bern, Lugano and Zurich.

Opening with short films by scientists and the documentary film ETERNAL YOU, an exploration of an industry that uses artificial intelligence to bring immortality to deceased loved ones. Followed by a discussion with the filmmakers & researchers from the University of Bern on art historical, palliative care and legal perspectives.

More information see HERE and in the PDF below.

(18:00, cineClub Bern, Laupenstrasse 17, 3011 Bern)

The GIUB excursion on September 11 went to the World Nature Forum in Naters and ended with a visit to the Dorna organic farm after a beautiful hike to Ausserberg.
 

Looking forward to setting out with my new Cloud Dynamics team at GIUB in September on a five-year Starting Grant from the SNSF. Our aim is to quantify how efficient different deep cloud systems are in formatting precipitation in various regions of the world and in a climatological way. Using a combination of multi-platform in-situ and remote sensing observations with high-resolution numerical model simulations, we will address two key open questions about the basic working principles of the atmospheric water cycle: How much water vapor remains in the atmosphere after an intense snowstorm? And, how much rain evaporates below a cloud?
 

At the annual meeting of the Regional Studies Association, Prof. Heike Mayer was appointed as the Association`s new President. In this role, she follows Professor John Agnew, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who steps down as president. The Regional Studies Association (RSA) is a learned society concerned with the analysis of regions and regional issues and it was founded in 1965. Heike will the Association`s first female president and she is looking forward to work with the RSA membership and staff on issues related to equal opportunities, sustainability transformation and science-policy dialogue.
To read more about Heike`s appointment, click here.
 

The Land System and Sustainable Land Management Unit of the Institute of Geography is organising a conference on its SUSTAINFORESTS research project. A group of researchers from the Unit undertook a six-month field research in Tropical forest patches, spread across the rainforest and savannah zones of Togo, Benin, Nigeria, and Cameroon. The emerging research findings will be presented and discussed with a cross-section of government officials, policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and students, among other social actors. The conference will connect issues on ecological conditions, livelihoods, governance, and climate change mitigation, in explaining why some forests persist while others degrade and what future pathways could sustain these forests. Link
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101001200).
 

How much water does vegetation have access to? This information is key for understanding and simulating drought impacts, but largely unknown. A new paper by Benjamin Stocker and colleagues [link] estimates this quantity from remote sensing data with global coverage. See also here.
 

How much wetland cover has been lost globally through conversion to human uses? What are the loss drivers & hotspots? Answers in a new paper: Link
by Fluet-Chouinard, E., Stocker, B.D., Zhang, Z. et al.