CA23150 - pan-EUROpean BIoGeodynamics network (EUROBIG)

Growing evidence indicates that the Earth’s interior and surface evolution is intrinsically interrelated with the evolution of its atmosphere, oceans, landscape and life. This lays down principal foundations of Biogeodynamics – an emerging scientific field that explores the interface of geodynamics, geomorphology, climate, ocean and atmosphere sciences, geobiology and ecology with special focus on how the evolution of the planetary interiors, surface, atmosphere, ocean, climate, and life is intrinsically interrelated. Despite its strong scientific and educational potential, Biogeodynamics has not been yet fully established as a new discipline and the progress in this direction in term of both science and education is relatively slow. An intrinsically cross-disciplinary character of Biogeodynamics creates organisational, educational and scientific challenges due to the necessity of truly collaborative research and education to efficiently combine scientific knowledge, research tools and training approaches from the very different research fields (such as Earth Sciences, Biology, Ecology, Climate Sciences, Planetology), which traditionally evolved independently from each other. To address the identified challenges, EUROBiG will establish the first pan-European Biogeodynamics network. This will accelerate the development of Biogeodynamics as a discipline in Europe and worldwide by supporting and linking the relevant communities, facilitating interactions to address the important scientific, methodological, educational and networking challenges of this new field. Conducting this COST Action on a pan-European level will allow to establish and maintain European leadership in this new crucial scientific field with great future cross-disciplinary research, educational and societal potential.