The Department of Ecology (Chair of Bioclimatology and Air Pollution Research) of the TU München has organised the International Conference Progress in Phenology - Monitoring, Data Analysis and Global Change Impacts, held at Freising, Germany, October 4-6 2000. This conference was organised in conjunction with the first workshop of the 5th framework EU project POSITIVE and represented at the same time the yearly meeting of phenologists working at several central European national weather services, the last meeting being at Prague in 1999. It follows sessions of the Phenology Study Group of the ISB at the 14th International Congress of Biometeorology at Ljubljana (1996), a phenology session at the meeting of the Assocaition Association of American Geographers at Boston (1998) and a phenology session at the 13th International Botanical Congress at St. Louis (1999) as well as at the 15th International Congress of Biometeorology at Sydney (1999).

The scientific programme of the conference reflected the excitement, great diversity and applications of phenology. It addressed all aspects of plant and animal phenology with a focus on monitoring and modelling phenology, and the assessment of future impacts as well as applications of phenology in the context of global climate change. More than 70 participants of various disciplines and from countries all over the world discussed  their recent findings. 3 keynote lectures introduced the main topics, 43 presentations expanded these topics and more than 30 posters represented a wide range of themes and scientific studies.

The abstract booklet of the conference can be downloaded here as *.pdf file. We hope that students and scientists working in the field of phenology will benefit from this booklet. Manuscripts of several presentations will be published, under the normal review process, in the International Journal of Biometeorology, too.

We thank the persons and institutions whose contributions and efforts have made this conference possible, especially we wish to acknowledge the financial support of the organizations listed on the front page of the abstract booklet.
More information can be found at the conference homepage.
 
Dr. Annette Menzel, Lehrstuhl für Bioklimatologie und Immissionsforschung, TU München

for the programme committee
Elisabeth Beaubien, University of Alberta, Canada
Dr. Elisabeth Koch, Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik, Austria
Dr. Annette Menzel, Technical University of Munich, Germany
Prof. Mark D. Schwartz, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA
Tim Sparks, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UK
Arnold van Vliet, Wageningen University/Maastricht University, The Netherlands