After the election of the IMCG Executive Committee (see IMCG Newsletter 2004/5), the IMCG Main Board has co-opted three more members. Tapio Lindholm was co-opted because of the Fennoscandian representation and because “he” has to organize the 2006 IMCG events. With Line Rochefort we have a worthy successor of Barry Warner as a representive of North America, particularly the major peat-country Canada. Asbjørn Moen will specifically dedicate his energy to finalizing the European Mires Book project.
They present themselves below.
Tapio Lindholm (Finland)
Born January 5th 1953. Since 1989, I am working in Finnish Environment Institute (FEI). It is Finland’s national centre for environmental research and development, and is also responsible for certain administrative tasks. FEI produces data on the state of the environment in Finland, including significant environmental trends and the factors behind them, also assessing alternative future trends, and developing solutions to promote sustainable development. FEI compiles, processes, and publishes a wide range of environmental data, meeting Finland’s reporting obligations related to EU environmental legislation and other international agreements. FEI also looks after various aspects of the management and use of water resources in Finland.
My role in FEI is to work with different questions of mire and forest conservation and restoration, and to work with different mire protection and mire ecological studies. In general I am as well a mire ecologist as a forest ecologist. The combination of these skills is needed in Finland where boreal forests are covering most of country's area, and where the drainage of mires for forestry has covered 20 % of the country during the last decades. My education is botanist and I have finished my PhD in Helsinki University. I have also gained a docent (adjunct professor) degree of Botany in Helsinki University. That means that I am a link between our institute and the university world in botany.
Finland is a country now belonging to the European Union, but it has deep roots with joint history of Sweden and Russia. So, I am also interested to have close links to the west and to the east. The Nordic dimension is mainly based on the activities of The Nordic Council of ministries. Also direct contacts to Sweden and Norway belong to my activities, including academic institutes as well environment authorities. The same has been possible also to Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, during the last decade, although I started my contacts already during the soviet era. That was beginning with a mire ecology and conservation discussion which continues today with Baltic mire specialists
Also the contacts to the east I started already during the preglasnost time in the Soviet Union. The iron curtain was rather solid at that time, but luckily there were some small windows for scientific and technical contacts. I started mire ecological contacts to Leningrad and Karelia in 1983, and they are continuing in a better world today. Those contacts have gradually deepened and widened so that at this moment I have contacts to several subjects to north-western Russia: Karelian republic, Murmansk region, Archangelsk region, Vologda region, Komi republic, Leningrad region, and St. Petersburg city. That is based mainly on my role as a co-chair of the Finnish-Russian nature conservation group. I am also an ecological adviser in the Northwest Russia biodiversity project, which is going on in FEI. Nature conservation is an important part in those activities.
I feel that it is important to be in contact on mire ecology and mire conservation issues to all three directions. i.e. east, south and west. In that connection I consider IMCG as an important tool. And in that connection my main activity is to plan and organize with my colleagues the next big IMCG activity, the IMCG venue 2006, in Finland. I hope that in that connection we can increase the understanding on the ecology of boreal mires and the problems of the preserving their biodiversity.
Asbjørn Moen (Norway)
Dr. Philos., professor in vegetation ecology and nature conservation at the university of Trondheim, Norway. Born 1944-02-21; grew up in the countryside of Central Norway, lived in Trondheim since 1960; married, three children, one grandchild.
Research. More than 200 scientific papers (including a number of reports). The research activity can be separated in three main topics; the first one has been the most important the last five years:
Long term studies of changes, dynamics and threats in the cultural landscape of Central Norway, main emphasis on upper boreal hay fens and grasslands and coastal heathlands. The last five years supervisor of three Dr.scient. students and six Cand.scient students.
Regional studies and conservation of mires. Responsible for the scientific part of the Norwegian national plan for mire nature reserves; worked out 1969-1985. (At present 278 mire nature reserves, covering 554 km2, are established). The main organizer of the 6th IMCG field symposium in Norway 1994, editor of the proceedings (Gunneria 70; published 1995). In 1996-1998 an “expert” on a World Bank project in Estonia. Participated in mire excursions and fieldwork in Austria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Latvia, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and USA.
Mapping of vegetation (scales 1: 5000 to 1: 50 000 using aerial photographs and satellite data), classification and mapping of vegetation zones and sections, mainly in Norway; author of “National Atlas of Norway: Vegetation” (English version 1999).
Scientific committees and societies. Appointed a member of The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, 1993. Member of British Ecological Society, International Association for Vegetation Science, International Peat Society, and IMCG (from the start).
Line Rochefort (Canada)
I was invited last summer by the executive board to join the board of IMCG as a representative of North America within the organisation. It is with pleasure and drive to do more towards the protection of mires that I am now gladly accepting to participate more actively in this international organisation. Before letting you know some of my goals during my mandate, let me tell you where I come from and who I am.
I did my undergraduate studies at Université Laval in Biology. During the three years of my bachelor degree, I work part time as a research assistant at the herbarium and full time in the summer in the tundra for different research projects in plant ecology conducted at the Centre d’Études Nordiques (Northern Research Center of Laval University). Seeing more easily the diversity of mosses and lichens up there I was hooked to study them. Hence I decided to do a M.Sc. project on peatland ecology under the supervision of Dr. Dale Vitt at the University of Alberta. The research project focussed on the impact of acid rain on peatlands, working on a rich fen in Alberta and on a bog in northern Ontario in co-direction with Dr. Suzanne Bayley. Wanting to get a general formation in environment, I moved from regional problems (acid rain) to global problems by studying the impact of increasing carbon dioxide on plants at Cambridge University in England (with Dr. Ian Woodward) and Harvard University in USA (with Dr. Fakhri Bazzaz). Upon completion, I was successful in getting a tenure-track position at Université Laval in applied plant ecology.
Now I am the senior chair of the Industrial Research Chair in Peatland Management and I am a full professor in the Department of plant sciences (Département de phytologie) of the Agricultural and Food Sciences Faculty of the University Laval. I am also the head of the Peatland Ecology Research Group (web site: www.gret-perg.ulaval.ca), which is made up of a team of multidisciplinary researchers, since its creation in 1993. Currently, I supervise a team of three research professionals, a post-doctoral student, eleven graduate students and offer courses and research opportunities to undergraduate students. In addition to this peatland research, I am a board member of the Centres d’Études Nordiques and an associate editor of the publication Wetlands.
Apart from my graduate studies, my expertise in peatland ecology has been gained through several projects (1992-1999) with Johnson & Johnson on developing Sphagnum biomass with good absorbing properties to produce sanitary napkins. The company has ceased to fabricate this product since 1999. In 1993, the Ministry of Environment from the province of Québec financed a major project on the restoration of cut-over peatlands. With the promising results, the Canadian peat industry has supported the restoration research since 1996 and is now continuing with the funding of the Research Chair. The Peatland Ecology Research Group (PERG) has so far published 125 publications in peatland restoration and conservation (listing in www.gret-perg.ulaval.ca) and one end-user publication with the production of a peatland restoration guide (120 pages). Perhaps the most significant contribution has been the education made within the peat industry about the goods and services provide by the mires and changing minds about the importance of sound resource management for environmental benefits. As a result, most Canadian peat moss industrials are voluntarily restoring milled peatlands and several companies are also involved in conservation projects.
For the past 15 years, I have also been involved in a long-term research study in the High Arctic (Bylot Island) investigating the impact of grazing by the increasing Snow goose population in North America on the polygon fens which is their preferential feeding habitat. In the past four years, I am collaborating within an international project (Finnish-Irish-Canadian) to study the impact of global warming on peatlands with pools.
My goal within IMCG for this first mandate is to increase memberships and awareness about the necessity of mire conservation within North America. In Canada, our peatland resource and coverage statistics date from the 1970’s (post first petrol crisis) but much is known within each province although no compilation exists. It is my intent to get each province involved with IMCG and improve our knowledge of Canadian peatland coverage through publications. Even though we know little about the extent of peatland coverage in northern Canada (NWT, Labrador, northern Ontario and Québec), we know much less about the rate of loss of peatlands in southern Canada. I hope to stimulate exchange of information between the different provinces (one has to know that the land in Canada is managed by the province and not at the national level) and make sure that in Canada a diversity of peatlands obtains a preservation status. This last part sounds almost like a prayer but it is my wish.