10
January
2017
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08:56
Europe/London
Manchester ecologist elected next president of the British Ecological Society
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One of the UK’s leading ecologists, Professor Richard Bardgett, has been elected as the next President of the British Ecological Society (BES), the oldest ecological society in the world.
Richard Bardgett, who is Professor of Ecology at The University of Manchester, will become President of BES at their Annual Meeting in Ghent, December 2017, taking over from current President Professor Sue Hartley.
Established in 1913, the Society, which is based at Charles Darwin House in London, is the oldest ecological society in the world, with almost 5000 members from 92 countries. The Society’s mission is to generate, communicate, and promote ecological knowledge and solutions.
He said: “It is a great honour to be asked to take on the role of BES President, and I very much look forward to working with the Society towards meeting its goals.
"The world faces many environmental challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and diminishing natural resources.
"The science of ecology couldn’t be more relevant to meeting these challenges. Not only can ecology help to better understand how the world is changing, and mitigate these changes, but also we can work with practitioners and policy makers to help to build a more sustainable and resilient society.”
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It is a great honour to be asked to take on the role of BES President, and I very much look forward to working with the society to meet its goals
Professor Richard Bardgett
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Richard’s own research is concerned with understanding how soil, and the multitude of organisms that live in it, control biogeochemical cycles on with the functioning and future health of the Earth’s ecosystems depend.
He has published more than 250 scientific papers on this topic and several books, including Earth Matters: How Soil Underlines Civilization (2016), and is ranked among the world’s most cited scientists in the field of Ecology and Environmental Sciences.
Richard contributed soil expertise to UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017, the House of Commons Soil Health Report 2016, and the FAO’s Status of the Worlds Soils Report 2015. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Royal Society of Biology, and a member of Academia Europaea, the Academy of Europe.