Marine Coasts and Estuaries

National Water Week (NWW) was first held in 1993. The initiative is designed to assist the community to understand and take action to protect and conserve our precious water resources and habitats. NWW creates a large scale local awareness of community initiatives that generate long-term behaviour change for the protection, rehabilitation and improvement of streams, wetlands, waterways, beaches, and estuaries. In addition, water conservation campaigns are launched, highlighted or reinforced during the week to promote water saving in the community. During NWW Australians are encouraged to "Protect, Conserve and Get Involved" in water-related activities and celebrations around the country. The third week in October is designated as 'National Water Week' each year.

INTECOL's theme is: Ecology in a Changing Climate. Two Hemispheres - One Globe. The Congress will be hosted by the Ecological Society of Australia in partnership with the New Zealand Ecological Society. This is the first time that an International Congress of Ecology will have been held in the southern Hemisphere. Ecologists from around the world will explore how global climate change has impacted, and will further impact, ecosystems and their vital services to human communities. They will explore unique features of ecosystems in the southern and northern hemispheres but look for common elements in a search for solutions to this looming problem. Symposia will represent all scales of ecology from individual organisms to landscapes, and report on a diversity of ecosystems from marine to freshwater aquatic systems and terrestrial ecosystems from arid to rainforest and from polar to tropical. The meeting will bring expert ecological commentary on a range of vital processes including land and water use, sea level change, restoration of ecosystems, biotic invasions, changing water patterns, urban ecology and fire ecology. It will include discussions on long term monitoring of ecosystems, on incorporating ecological knowledge into policy, on integrating indigenous knowledge into conventional science, and on communicating ecological information to a broader community.

This forum, convened by Antarctic Tasmania, will include papers and discussion of topics of special relevance to the region in the fields of oceanography, geophysics, climate, biodiversity, ecology, human use, conservation and management.