Biodiversity Informatics and Climate Change Impacts on Life

Global climate change is becoming the great challenge of our time. A key issue is how the looming climate changes will impact Earth's rich biodiversity. This issue is closely tied up to the basic research question "What determines species diversity", which the Science magazine in 2005 selected as one of 25 key topics that science should focus on. The role of past and present climate as determinants of biodiversity and the potential impacts of future climate on biodiversity are the topics that this conference will focus on. These issues are the kind of complex large-scale problems that are very difficult to study by the traditional experimental approach to science. Instead an informatics approach is necessary, and this conference will provide the best possible insight into results, possibilities, and challenges to biodiversity informatics studies of climate change impacts of life. The conference will run over two days and will present a series of leading scientists in biodiversity informatics studies of climate change impacts and related fields.