Events

CUE2 & NLSEB co-organise the very first symposium on urban ecology and evolution in the Netherlands, entitled ‘Evolving Urban communities’ , in Amsterdam on Wednesday January 24th 2024. The symposium marks the official kick-off of our CUE2 network and is jointly organised with the Netherlands society for evolutionary biology (NLSEB). With the symposium we like to highlight the scientific opportunities and challenges associated with urban environments and explore future directions for both applied and fundamental research.

Should the Anthropocene be recognised as an official subdivision of geological time? The proposition of this term has raised much discussion during the past decade. Is our species’ imprint visible geologically? What was the tipping point towards anthropogenic impact to such a degree that it defines a geological epoch?

With over half of the world’s population now living in cities, cities have assumed a critical role in shaping local, regional, and global ecologies. Urban areas have an inherent ecological nature with cities and the built environment as ecosystems. This course focuses on ecological theories examining urban sites as interaction hot spots between species, humans, the biophysical environment and the surrounding natural ecosystems.