Society for Ecology
The Society for Ecology (GfÖ) eV is a non-profit association for the promotion of ecological issues .
The society, which was founded in 1970 and is based in Berlin, is the third largest scientific society in the field of ecology with around 1,400 members worldwide. Ecologists from all disciplines, mainly from German-speaking countries, belong to this society.
Society's goals
- Promotion of basic and applied ecological research
- Support for the cooperation of all ecological disciplines
- Improvement of the scientific exchange of ecologists in the German-speaking area and beyond
- Support for ecological education at universities and other institutions of higher education
- Promotion of the application and implementation of knowledge and methods of ecology in practice
- Representation of ecological concerns in public
Workspace
The GfÖ organizes international annual meetings, workshops , summer schools and courses. Both members and non-members can take part in these events.
These and other activities of the GfÖ are supported and organized by twelve working groups, among others. These working groups reflect the wide range of ecological topics within the GfÖ:
- Agroecology
- Desert ecology
- Theory in ecology
- Ecosystem research
- Environmental education
- Experimental ecology
- Genetic engineering and ecology
- Landscape ecology
- Plant population biology
- Renaturation Ecology
- Soil ecology
- Urban ecology
- Macroecology
Annual meeting
The annual meeting of the GfÖ is one of the most important and extensive specialist conferences for ecology in German-speaking countries. The GfÖ has been organizing these five-day conferences in various universities in Germany since 1960. The conferences have a conference motto that reflects current discourses in scientific and ecological research. The focus is on terrestrial ecology including limnology . In 2015 the conference will take place at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen under the motto "Ecology for a Sustainable Future".
Networking
The society is a member of the German National Biology Committee . Within the GfÖ, there are various specialist working groups that meet at the annual meeting and sometimes also for specialist conferences.
Publications
The Society for Ecology currently issues three different publications with information for members, for conference attendees and the "scientific community".
The scientific publication organ of the GfÖ is the journal Basic and Applied Ecology ( Elsevier ). Information for members is distributed in the GfÖ's news, which appears twice a year . The publication Negotiations of the GfÖ offer summaries of the lectures and posters of the last annual conference.