BIOGEOMON

A series of International Symposia on Ecosystem Behaviour
started by the Czech Geological Survey in 1987

The series of (BIO)GEOMON symposia was brought to life by the Czech Geological Survey, Prague, at a time when the Czech Republic was still behind the Iron Curtain. As early as in the 1970s, Bedøich Moldan and Tom Paèes of the Survey's Geochemistry Department started hydrogeochemical monitoring of small catchments in the Central European region later known as "The Black Triangle." At that time, spruce die-back in the Krušné hory Mountains was well under way. Nearly half of the world's soft coal production occurred in the area, with most of the coal being burnt in Soviet-style power plants lacking desulphurization. The coal contained about 3 wt. % sulfur by weight. Between 1975 and 1990, over 1000 km² of spruce stands died back in the area, mainly above the elevation of 700 meters. For most of the time, the Communist governments of the Czech Republic (then part of Czechoslovakia), East Germany, and Poland were denying any problem, and pictures of the fish-bone silhouettes of dead spruce trees were hardly ever leaked to the West. It was extremely difficult for local researchers to publish air-borne concentrations of pollutants. In 1985, Tom Paèes managed to publish a paper on sources of acidification in Central Europe in Nature. It was in this unfriendly environment when Bedøich Moldan and Tom Paèes decided to invite leading environmental geochemists to Prague to discuss elemental mass balances in spruce-decline affected catchments. The meeting was named GEOMON. Over 150 participants, mainly Westerners, gathered in the sumptuous Art-Nouveau Municipal House in the Old Town of Prague in 1987. (The organizers displayed over 20 national flags, borrowed from the Foreign Ministry, on the balcony of the Municipal House. Within the first night, the U.S. and British flags were stolen, such was the fascination of Prague's underworld with these symbols.) The authorities were caught unprepared, and a surprise field trip took symposium participants for an inspection of the critically-ill ecosystems of the Krušné hory Mountains, and the word about the severity of damage spread across Western Europe and North America. Right after the Velvet Revolution, which ousted the Communists (1989), Bedøich Moldan, the founder of GEOMON, became a Cabinet Minister in the new democratic government.

GEOMON was renamed BIOGEOMON in 1992 when the second meeting was held also in Prague. The meeting attracted 200 scientists from 27 countries of Europe, North and South America, Asia, and Australia. The focus shifted from long-term catchment monitoring to understanding the mechanisms behind changes in the source/sink behavior of catchments. As signaled by the change in name, the second meeting recognized that assessment of anthropogenic effects on ecosystem processes requires a combination of traditional monitoring with other approaches, such as catchment-level manipulations, biogeochemical studies, empirical and process modeling, and use of isotopic tracers. The scientific program was put together by Martin Novák and full-length refereed papers resulting from the symposium were published as a Special Issue of Water, Air, and Soil Pollution. The team of guest editors was lead by Jiøí Èerný.

In 1997, the series continued when Kel Wieder of Villanova University, Pennsylvania, a biologist, agreed to chair the Organizing Committee. The third BIOGEOMON, held at Villanova in the U.S., was the largest meeting in the series so far, with 240 participants from 28 countries on five continents, and broadest in scope. This first overseas BIOGEOMON concentrated on approaches toward minimizing future insults to the local, regional, and global environment. By then, the black box approach had been more or less substituted by studying field kinetics of biogeochemical and hydrological processes. Attention was paid to predictions of potential ecosystem responses to natural and anthropogenic change in forcing functions. Local organizers were mainly graduate students, and their enthusiasm was contagious. An ecosystem science meeting has never witnessed as many fresh flowers in the lecture halls. Importantly, the Villanova meeting was a swan song for Tom Paèes's artistic ambitions. The symposium poster featured a blown up reproduction of one of Tom Paèes's watercolors. Since then, the Czech Geological Survey has taken pride in reproducing time-tested artwork from the National Gallery in Prague on BIOGEOMON posters.

BIOGEOMON 2002, the 4th International Symposium on Ecosystem Behaviour was held at the University of Reading in the U.K. A young postdoctoral fellow, Hannah Prior, took charge. She had been the recipient of the Best Young Scientist Award at the BIOGEOMON meeting at Villanova. As was the case with the previous meeting, the scientific program was prepared by Martin Novák and Kel Wieder. Paul Whitehead and Heather Browning helped to make the symposium a success. The scope of the meeting was once again broadened to include archives of global change and scaling of biogeochemical processes. Other sessions included nutrient and metal cycling in natural and restored ecosystems, stable and radiogenic isotopes in the environments, and catchment manipulations and models. For a third time, Water, Air and Soil Pollution published a Special Issue, dedicated to full-length papers resulting from BIOGEOMON. Melanie Vile of Princeton University joined the team of guest editors for this 700-page volume. Similar to the previous symposium volumes, Kluwer Academic Publishers successfully marketed a hard-bound spin-off book containing BIOGEOMON papers.

It was Tom Bullen of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, a keynote speaker at the 2002 iteration of BIOGEOMON in Reading, who set the wheels in motion for holding BIOGEOMON 2006 at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC). He suggested the site, set up initial arrangements with the Conference Services staff at UCSC, and invited several noted geochemists, biogeochemists, and ecosystem scientists to participate. The 5th BIOGEOMON was held at UCSC, in a beautiful setting overlooking the Monterrey Bay, between June 25 and 30, 2006. Kimberli Scott oversaw the logistics, Susan Crow served as the senior abstract editor. Merritt Turetsky and Melanie Vile worked very hard to make all aspects of the meeting a success. The emphasis of BIOGEOMON 2006 was on biogeochemistry as an evolving and integrated discipline, including research at the watershed, landscape, ecosystem and global scale. The meeting continued the honored tradition of creating an excellent forum to discuss issues and new ideas. Opening remarks were given by Martin Novák of the Czech Geological Survey, and the keynote lecture was delivered by Dr. Lindsey Rustad of USDA Forest Service who had pioneered research into the effects of global climate change on nutrient and carbon cycling in forest ecosystems. The 5th BIOGEOMON was similar in size to the previous symposia, attracting over 200 scientists from over 30 countries. The traditional Best Student Presentation competition enjoyed a high-profile, the prices were kindly donated by the Czech Geological Survey. A number of young Czech scientists took part in the contest. Several field trips were organized to explore the environs of the campus, highlighting redwood ecosystems and geology of the San Francisco area. Peer-reviewed full-length papers resulting from BIOGEOMON 2006 are published in a Special Issue of Elsevier’s Science of the Total Environment, a high-ranking international journal with an ISI impact factor of 2.2. The volume is edited by Martin Novák, Merritt Turetsky and Melanie Vile. The next BIOGEOMON is planned for 2009. Several Scandindavian teams have offered their bids.

Compiled by Martin Novák