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[Music]
so if you're a little bit like me you're
worried about the environment or
actually very I would say even more I'm
actually deeply concerned about what's
happening all around us and I
increasingly frustrated with what what
the lack of action or so from from the
politicians well what's going on
here
um this in this upcoming talk um T
Theodor is uh going to tell us how data
science uh can try to find what points
what pain points need to be addressed
with priority and I'm really looking
forward to hearing this because I think
this is going to affect all of our Lives
over to
Theodore
thank you very much for this kind
introduction seu um yeah good evening I
I heard that I'm the last Talk of the
day here so I'm not going to be extra
quick but I'm not going to be extra long
either before I start though I would
like to know a little bit about you so
I'm going to ask you some questions and
I would like to have um some answers
from you just by a show of hands so who
of you um does self identify maybe as a
hacker who of you does so those are like
some okay thank you very much who of you
works with larger amounts of data or
would call themselves a data scientist
so that's most of the guys here and the
people people in here perfect and who of
you is some kind of natural scientists
and is maybe just here to refresh their
memories of ecology okay so that's and
who of you is in none of these C
categories wow okay that's also quite a
much so so my name is theoria I um I'm
now right now doing a PhD in marook
where I also studied I studied biology
and focused on the genetics of
microorganisms and now I'm doing a PhD
in
bioinformatics and I'm studying Ecology
of Lake
of the lake
microbiome um please to to to let me
start let me tell you a story uh this
Story
begins 4.5 4.4 billion years ago when
earth started to be cold enough so that
water could start to accumulate and
first oceans uh fored shortly thereafter
amazingly shortly thereafter the first
um form of life emerged
uh we know this or we assume this
because 3.5 billion years ago some
billion years ago later we find the
first fossil evidence of simil celled
organisms not like this but this is the
only Creative Commons image I found
which looks nice enough for
microorganisms they are hard to uh to
give an image to so these first forms of
life emerged and with this it started in
New
um a new age or a new way of things
developing because right from the get-go
you had a process of change and
adaptation of mutation of um yeah
diversification which then emerg from
that so through Evolution as we call it
you have a diversification and life
starting from single simple cells or
something like this uh started to
diversify and Conquer All of Earth First
the watery
terrains and then uh got more diverse
and more special than the land and the
air and every Niche that is available
every way of living that is thinkable or
not even thinkable but rather possible
is currently more or less uh there is
something some organism that lives that
way and this went on and on and the
organisms changed and
um some of them look rather scary some
of them looked rather nice we know all
of this from a fossil evidence so we dug
in the ground and found some fossils or
something and looked at it and we said
said oh well it must have looked like
this but from time to time what happened
and what happened five times in L's
history was a catastrophic event called
mass extinction where 75 to 90% of all
species went extinct in a blink of an
eye uh the most uh well known of this is
the last one that happened that killed
the dinosaurs which happened through a a
meteorite as I think most of you know
right so this ended the age of the
dinosaurs
um but then also this enabled something
else to
happen uh which is that every time such
an Extinction event happened is that new
forms of life could have used that space
that was freed through the extinction to
Foster um the extinction
events usually again I told you 75 to
90% killed almost
everything some things were left behind
so when the age of the dinosaurs ended
the age of the mammals started this is a
rather late picture for mammals there
were a lot of different mammals before
that also the age of the birds started
but come on birds so and the the age of
the mammals then led to
well the age of the mammals then
directly led to the age of the humans
the
anthropos and this is a very special uh
age in geological terms because it's the
first time that a single
species um shapes the whole face of the
Earth Earth when it said the age of the
dinosaurs it was dinosaurs and not a
single species of dinosaur but now it's
just
us and what we're doing is we're
building CR czy stuff uh when you came
here you have either used a car or a
train or a plane or maybe a boat I don't
know but you used a lot of
infrastructure and things that were
built and created by us which no other
species really does to this extent and
what we're doing by this is we're
changing we're changing again the the
face of the earth a lot of the land that
is surrounding us we're building cities
large cities that
uh remove all the living most of the
living species from that land at all we
create uh streets that cut through
forests or Plains and separate um biomes
and species and by that we reduce their
gene pool and make them more likely to
go extinct
um we're using Plastics which
are by natural physical forces turn into
microplastics and they those are all
over the planet we of course also
produce a lot of
C2 and create a climate change that is
uh man-made and is a lot of problem I'm
not going to talk about climate change
here I really want to stress that
because these are linked problems with
the problem we have with ecology now and
the climate change problem but they are
different
nevertheless also something very
interesting and I don't think I don't
know whether you thought about this is
the amount of light we produce which
really changes a lot of um processes in
nature because usually light was only
there at day now we create a lot of
light in cities at
night so this really
changes uh um everything kind of we what
we in in a certain sense do is we take
ecosystems and out of these we create
techno
systems we remove everything that is
ecological about them actually when you
think about it in your house in your
room this is an ecological ecosystem
free zone you won't you only want those
organisms in your house in your room
that you put there if there's something
else a spider or something you really
think about killing it just to get rid
of it you really don't want ecosystems
around
you this is what we do to big part of
Earth but I might ask you is this a
problem is this a problem so what what
we know we don't know a lot there is a
lot we don't know but one thing that we
know is for example what you might have
all heard in the last year or two years
ago on the radio no actually last year
we not in 2019 yet but soon will be in
2019 then this will be in two years two
years ago so uh over the last 27 years
the insect biomass in Germany was
reduced by
75% this means when you take a um a box
and you go through the air and you
collect all the insects that you can
find there and you put them on the way
this will weigh 75% less uh than 27
years ago if you have done the same same
thing there's of course there only one
Publications but more and more
Publications confirm this finding and
now you might might think if we are
reducing the amount of insects so
radically this might have have an effect
on other organisms and we see something
like this for birds and for for for um
for plants of course flowering plants
but actually we see this
in uh all species all kinds of animals
so in the last 100 200 years Extinction
rates rise rapidly this means that
organisms that were there before species
that were there before are not out there
anymore either extinct completely or
extinct in the
wild this should uh I think really worry
us because um the question now is how
close are we as a source for an extin
to those mass extinctions I told you
about I told you
earlier and this is quite close this is
a nice uh figure that I found somewhere
and I had to re re redo it um just look
at the for example the mamalia those are
mammals reptiles some of the names you
you can understand but the most
important thing here is that the space
from the bars to the red line which
would then qualify as a mass extinction
is not that big
anymore and uh I hope you can see that
this will only
rise
so scientists are now arguing and
they're actually not really arguing but
they're getting uh uh coming together uh
to the idea that human beings human
humankind might be the next next the
sixth mass extinction so we are as bad
as this meteorite that killed all the
dinosaurs how do you feel about that I
don't
know actually I don't think that I'm
telling you much new here and I think I
need to tell you this anyway to one
refresh your
memories because this is our motto right
and then the other thing is that uh we
need to frame it I I on purpose I didn't
put any images of cute looking animals
in here but rather took the uh part of
the
data and what I found most interesting
when I prepared this talk I thought
about the movies I saw in the last years
and so many of these movies actually are
about this problem and it's not only
about like uh amazing Beasts and Where
to Find Them where a guy goes out to
save as many animals as he can uh but
even the bad guys in our movies are
doing this somewhat better than us when
you think about the last Avengers movie
Thanos really tries to save ecology by
killing half of it that's a bad idea but
at least he wants to try it and I don't
know whether we are at that point yet at
the point that Thanos is about and
what's even more problematic I think you
know the Deutsche B most of you and this
do bar has a magazine and the last issue
of the magazine has has this issue on
his cover so if the deutche bar knows
about a problem and really wants to put
something on it we really should do as
well so um let me get some please clap
on so that I have some time to
drink water tastes so much better when
when someone's clapping and um so to get
more into it I would just now want to
talk about what an ecosystem how we can
think of an ecosystem not really what an
ecosystem is so for you computer
scientists and data scientists and so on
you know networks right so you can think
about an ecosystem as a network you have
nodes which might be uh animals or
species or groups of species and you
have interactions between them here I
have a very simplified version of this
because of two reasons on the one hand
it's quite hard to put to fit a very
detailed Network on this slide and I
won't be able to tell you about it
because it's too detailed on the other
hand it's because we don't know it in
for many ecosystems in a very fine
detail so I just put some plants in
there algae insects fish and so on and
so on and I put only two kinds of
interactions positive ones and negative
ones I hope you forgive me for this
simplification so this ecosystem is a
network and it behaves somewhat like a
chaotic
system uh somewhat and in some other
senses it does not so it's not really
the case that uh a a small change in
input so no it oh well I don't know
really but it might be the case that a
small change in an input leads to a
drastic change in the output but what uh
even
clearer is that you have a sense of
robustness in these systems so you can
change uh most of the parameters for
quite some um and it doesn't really
break but then if you make more changes
this system will
break so this is a lake ecosystem most
because most of all because I study Lake
ecosystems and I don't really study the
whole lake ecosystem but only the small
part in the left bottom of this and I
just want to go to this a little bit
more because we don't really
know I don't know I I never know whether
I should say I don't we don't any don't
know anything but we know next to
nothing about this we know that there
are a lot of organisms in there
abbreviated with uh Greek uh uh letters
and we know that there are a lot of
abiotic factors that have something to
do with these bacteria and that interact
and the bacteria certain bacteria can
only live with certain tical factors but
we don't really know many of the um
interactions there but let's go back to
our ecosystem and let me tell you some
to give you some idea of how these
ecosystems are getting uh worse and
worse let me go through three ways of
disrupting an ecos system for example
what you could do is uh you could put
too much uh nitrate on your acre and
this nitrate will get into the rivers
and get into the lakes and the Seas and
this will lead to a lot of nutrient uh
which you could think that it is a good
thing because for your plants on your
acre it is a good thing but on the lake
in in the lake if there are too many
nutrients this will lead to a lot of
growth for algae and plants and these
alian plants will then on the one hand
reduce the amount of light that goes
into your Lake in the in the lower parts
of your Lake and the amount of oxygen
that is available in this Lake for other
organisms this in turn will lead to a
giant wave of uh death for insects and
fish and then of course frogs and birds
will die too because they don't have
anything to eat and now your ecosystem
is dead
a second way of doing the ex exact same
same thing is to bring in an alien
species so now an alien species is of
course not from Mars but maybe from
North America and maybe you bring in
another frog species and this frog
species which is uh this is a real case
brings with it a new disease like a
fungus or something um again this is a
real example and what happens is that
this fungus will uh kill many of the
frogs that are here the new frog species
will be resistant to the fungus no
problem there but our frog species that
live here will not be so they will die
also the new frog species might just eat
too many insects so the insects will die
too let's say this will again turn the
birds and the fish to dead birds and
Dead Fish and the algae will have a good
time and now you have a dead ecosystem
again and the third thing you could do
is you could change the ecosystem on a
geographical uh uh level and here's
where our system our model of an
ecosystem as a uh Network really starts
to not work anymore because if you build
a dam and you enlarge the lake you don't
really uh it's hard to see from this
model what will happen but what will
could happen is that the fish have more
place to live so maybe they need less
and they made less so then you have less
fish or maybe the algae will have more
space and they will spread out more and
this will again lead to the same thing
that happened earlier it's quite hard to
say with a damn what happens and again
this is a remind reminder that there are
other layers of information geographical
and evolutionary or historical data uh
information that is needed to really
model an ecosystem
correctly
so let's talk about what we can do about
that and I think we're not talk about
like what we can do in our everyday life
this is very important topic but maybe
for another talk or for another
discussion I will talk in this talk more
about
um
more systemical things to do and I think
there are two main uh paths that we can
go about and I think these two paths are
not exclusionary but they are needed
both and one thing is just leave Earth
alone but maybe not whole the whole
Earth but just half of it there is
actually a project which is called half
Earth project uh and there is a a great
book that is called half Earth written
by EO will son where he argues and this
organization argues that you should keep
half of the area surface area of the
Earth away from human impact half of it
we humans we live on the other half of
the earth and nature will thrive on the
other half the half will not be like
that straight in the middle but it will
be uh mathematically half of it in
patches and these patches should be as
large as possible and so on and so on
because right
now humans have impacted 77% of land and
87% of uh of ocean
area and of ocean areas that are not
covered by Ice that's a lot and this is
really a problem if we uh if you ever
get the chance of arguing for enlarging
natural reserves or safe spaces for
nature please do that because in these
nature can recover and nature can do its
own thing without us interfering
anymore especially if you think about
the Amazon in Brazil I think this is
something that many of you might have in
mind that this I think this will not get
better just by itself and we really
should uh as as Humanity we should work
that much most of the Amazon is still in
untouched um shape
this is very important again uh leaving
as much of the Earth for for nature as
possible but then you can only do this
so much and we also need to think about
the other half of the Earth because we
need food we need places to live and uh
this will still be a lot of impact on
these areas so the other uh suggestion
that I would uh make to maybe you uh in
this room uh and on the internet of
course uh to to do something about um a
six mass extinction is to hack it
because we're now of course in a hacking
conference this is of course what we
should do just hack it and this will get
better um earlier today I was in the
talk uh of Frank rer uh with hacker
ethics and I thought oh well I should
have uh looked this up before I prepared
the talk because there are many many
parallels that I would have taken if I
have had known this but I didn't so I
didn't um but I think uh when you go to
the general mindset as far as I
understand it of an hacker it is you
have a system there it is kind of a
black box you cannot really see it how
it works from the outside you find a way
in you open it up and you um you use the
information that you have gained about
this system to either destroy it maybe
or leverage it or make it better maybe
and is is something similar that I uh
that should be our second solution but
instead of hacking a computer if you're
this guy sitting in absolute darkness in
front of your computer instead you
should hack
us um and of course you shouldn't know
something about the the blackbox system
to destroy it or to leverage it but to
keep it alive as best as you
can so to do this we need more
information how to put this into Data
because data is what we're uh working
with right so let's go back to our late
ecosystem and on this slide again we
have this network um model in front of
us you can put uh many of these things
into numbers you can of course count the
number of organisms that are in there
and a you can measure the interactions
between them you can then use these
numbers to um to do some modeling and
this is a very very um uh a very very
simple model of just a predator prey
relationship uh which how and how it
changes over time and what's really
interesting is that it has such a shape
when you have on the xaxis the amount of
prey and on the y axis the amount of
predators
uh this will be uh over time this will
circulate around a certain number of
course these models can get as
complicated as you want and I will not
go much more into this detail but of
course we
could um so the best thing that you
could have in terms of data uh when it
comes to ecosystems would be interaction
data because ecosystems as a as a
network are defined by the interactions
between the um members of this
network uh these interactions uh should
be then very detailed and in very um
between uh single organisms and so on uh
the problem is that it is very hard to
get this data because you need to get
outside and you will need to sit in in
the forest or in your ecosystem of
choice and you would have to wait and
look and see um who interacts with whom
and uh while this might be feasible for
larger organisms let's say elephants
wolves or something like that this is
very infeasible for for example say
insects how do you want to um measure
the interactions between them of course
there are ways to do them uh to do that
but still it's quite
hard but another way to uh to get
something like interaction data would be
to track
movements uh so this is an image of
organisms uh that are living in the sea
different organisms and from the
movement data you can as you know as
hackers because you say well we don't
want any movement data from humans we do
want movement data for animals
um you can say who's connected to whom
who's living with whom
what kind of work does he or she do the
same thing you can do with
animals uh but it's quite hard again to
to collect movement data for Animals uh
what you can do is to put a GPS sender
into the bodies of the animals this has
become easier and easier right now just
a few uh weeks or months ago a new
module was added to the ISS called
icaros where it which makes it easier to
track movements of organisms with a GPS
sender but still you would have to bring
the GPS sender to the animal and the
animal cannot be too small because it
needs to carry this GPS sender without
being um harmed or anything by it
so um another way to to get some data is
to Simply more or less count the amount
of organisms of every species that you
have in your
ecosystem um I told you that I work with
bacteria and microorganisms so I want to
present to you how we do this for for
microorganisms we take a sample for
example from leges but you can also do
this for soil or any other uh uh
ecosystem for example your skin is an
ecosystem just as a lake or something so
you could take a sample of that U let's
say you have enough bacteria in this
sample you can extract the DNA from
these microorganisms
quite easily actually in the lab and
then the next step would be to sequence
it so you take the physical object this
DNA and you turn this uh with a quite
expensive machine into Data into text
Data actually and what's more more
interesting is this text only contains
of four different letters those is so
this is quite easy to work with for for
you as a
informatician this uh DNA you can then
use to uh find out what organisms lived
in your sample before you killed
them um by just looking up in some
database what DNA sequences are present
in what organisms again this goes for
microorganisms but of course as well for
larger organisms and then you can do
some not so fancy analyses for example
simple correlation between
many samples and you can say of course
uh if these if two different organisms
correlate over many samples they might
be Associated and that they might
interact in nature so that's what I do
right
now I have two kinds of news now when it
comes to
data data science data ecology and how
this might help us to save uh us all
from a six mass extinction and the good
news is there is a lot of data out there
before I looked in this uh before I
looked for for the creative commment of
my images I had this Toy Story meme in
there with data data everywhere because
there's a lot of data out there in
public databases where it's really easy
to download just right click it it's
public and so on and so on so there is a
lot of data out there people create a
lot of of data um most of this data is
from smaller um surveys where they took
two or three sites where they collected
some data and put them on the Internet
and the other thing is that this data is
in a lot of shapes and a lot of uh
different datas out there which brings
me then to the the bad uh bad news is
for example batch effects I don't know
whether you know this term but it simply
means means that if you have a different
method of uh extracting the DNA from the
samples or extracting the sequence from
the DNA and so on this will change your
your result so most of the um data that
is out there currently is not easily
comparable because it was generated uh
with mild
differences so this is a problem and
this is uh like the bad news of data
ecology with that bad news actually I
want to sum this up and I want to tell
you that I what I told you I told you
that we are facing right now a six mass
extinction and what I didn't tell you
but what I should tell you is we should
not uh make the the um we should not
think that we as humans will survive
this six month Extinction we're just too
large of an animal we just use too much
uh other organisms around us that will
most likely go extinct so we will go
extinct as
well we are facing a six ma mass
extinctions there are I think two
different ways of avoiding this mass
extinctions the two ways need to go
together to really do the job the one uh
thing is that we should uh leave our
hands away from as much of nature as
possible and and then those places where
we cannot keep our hands away from it we
need to understand more and a good way
to understand it is to use more data
more data and analyze this data more
thoroughly but there is a problem which
is batch
effects but before I really want to to
to finish I want to give you a small
invitation because when I prepared this
talk I noticed that I will end on a bad
note it it's never good to end on a bad
mode isn't it especially when you're the
last Talk of the day you will all go to
bed with a bad mood and I don't want to
do this so I want to invite you um to to
organize and to form a new uh kind of
community which is right now called open
Digital ecology community and I'm really
not happy about that name um but the
idea is to and this is not I have
thought a little bit about it I think
and know what would be necessary but I
have not thought about this more there
is no infrastructure ready yet so I
invite you to form this uh with me uh to
to come together with uh you as
generally people that are somewhat
interested in data that maybe have a
hacker mindset that maybe have some um
background in ecology but maybe not
maybe you're just working with numbers
because you like it and just to come
together regardless of background as
open also do this as an open source
project just as you would do an open
software project do this but as data
science and also do this openly so that
everyone can use and reuse the data in
every step of the way digital of course
as in data centered use all the data
that is around and try to figure out how
to use use it and bring it together and
lastly a community as in citizen science
I think this would be a very interesting
approach to bring in people usually
citizen science projects are everyone
should go out and take a water sample
and send this water sample in to some
experts and these experts will analyze
them this is wonderful this is very much
needed but I think also we can do
citizen science on the other levels of
the analysis so we can do citizen
science at the analysis step and we can
bring experts and nonexperts together
there and work together and distribute
work over more
shoulders um please think about this and
I'm really not happy with the name we
need to change that name and I don't
know how thought about this two weeks so
with that being said no I want to give
you one example because I come from Lake
ecology this is what I'm always thinking
about and I told you
that I think that the most pressing
problem right now are batch effects so I
think what this open Digital ecology
Community what a very good name isn't it
uh could do uh as a as a pet as a first
uh project is to bring together all this
different sequencing data from different
sources try to figure out how to remove
the batch effects or how to analyze data
with the batch effects in mind there are
some First Steps in literature that
could go there but we need to figure out
more about this then prepr process them
and process them and analyze them and
maybe at the end find something new
about uh ecology in this case maybe Lake
ecology also might be ocean ecology
there is a lot of data out there for
this might be soil ecology there are
some difficulties with that but we'll
discuss them maybe later and so on so
this is my invitation uh to you uh to do
this together with that that being said
now I want to thank you I I really want
to thank the organizers and everyone
that's behind the scenes that they
accepted this talk I was very happy to
hear about this I'm very happy that you
all have stayed here so long this is the
last talk amazing isn't it this is my uh
mail address pre please write me via
mail or maybe via Twitter if you have
any more questions or meet me around and
now of course I want to take uh
questions in the room and I'm very happy
to start a discussion with you thank
you so that was a call to arms if I've
ever heard one before uh excellent we
can take uh questions we got plenty of
time for that we have microphones
throughout the room um there's one here
one on the other side two in the middle
uh there's also internet um questions as
well that will go through the signals
Angel um please a question is one or two
sentences followed by a question mark
and not your life
story so with that let's go to
microphone two please yes thank you for
your interesting talk uh at the last bit
you were talking about uh removing or
dealing with the batch effects for data
that has already been collected are
there also
initiatives uh to maybe standardize
upcoming data collection and can you
tell a little bit about that yeah there
are a lot of uh there are some there for
some Fields there are a lot of them for
some Fields there are some of them um
this would be very helpful if there were
standardized um uh methods and again
they're starting to be more in place but
what I told you about all this DNA
sequencing stuff is a very very new
field not two years but 10 years
and things have not come together yet um
this is the one thing that would be
great but the other thing is the other
data is already out there and it's free
it's out there and if we just throw it
away now that would be as
shame and let's go back to microphone 2
again um so after analyzing the data
what's your idea um of hacking
ecosystems so improve them or rebuilding
them or something
else yeah this has been
um I've been on purpose a little bit uh
didn't talk much about this because this
is still something I think about a lot
because I
think we I mean the first thing is to
keep this ecosystem
alive while still having some of the
pressure they are are facing right now
so the one thing is to reduce the
pressure on the ecosystems but in case
we cannot do this fully in a short time
we need to figure out a way of
maintaining the
ecosystems while still having some of
the pressure or having all of the
pressure is that a good good
answer okay um how about just let me to
to one or two uh sentences more so we
there are all these variables variables
right every node in the um in the
network I showed you could be regarded
as a um as a variable what we are doing
right now with um so in German you would
say Yer in English it's more
Forester these guys are in the best
cases doing maybe what I'm I'm thinking
about of going into the EOS E Systems
while having some of the pressure
relieved or having more pressure and um
manually trying to rectify the
ecosystems in the best cases in the
worst cases they're killing for fun
which is bad but in the best cases there
are sculptors of ecosystems that stay
alive although they
are they're not in perfect
shape so with that um let's go to the
back of the room microphone three well
first thank you for this talk and this
call for Action my background is
database programming and I find it just
very assuring to uh hear this idea from
you as a data
scientist is there do you know if any
website or so to connect database
analyis Specialists with data
scientists or do we need to build
this for for for what exactly for
connecting hackers with data scientists
who have data to
analyze um in the I don't think that
this I don't think this exists for
people outside of Academia inside
Academia in your field you know because
you've been in that field for for some
months maybe um you know where to go to
get the data you know where to go to get
the databases and so on so you have
enough tech
support I for now maybe yes but let's
not let's not start now by excluding the
the database guys or people sorry the
database people thank you um microphone
to in the front thank you very inspiring
talk uh let me ask you you mentioned
toward the end of your talk uh citizen
science if you had the choice to name
one or two uh of your favorite methods
or activities or tools to enable and
encourage this kind of community
activities in science what would that
be oh that's a good question isn't
it and I I have to boil it down to one
or two I think the the main problem here
is that the whole workflow is very um uh
will have a lot of steps and these steps
will be from different fields of
Academia so there will be some standard
bioinformatics steps that include a lot
of
algorithmics um then there will be uh um
uh steps that use a lot of Statistics in
my work I'm doing some machine learning
to to maybe get something more out of
the data um so it's not that easy to
just say Okay
use this one program and all your fears
will be relieved all your EGS will be
gone this is why I think a community is
needed a group of people that talk and
that can organize in different steps and
that can maybe then still specialize but
as
non-experts thanks um microphone three
in the back yes thank you for your
interest talk um I was wondering if you
would have all the data about ecosystems
and have all this data
interconnected uh how can this uh
contribute to stop the mass distinction
of all the species and should we not
also think about the link to decision-
making and the world it that has in this
the political field and the yeah yes of
course
yeah um there are two two things I I I I
have thought about this and there are
two thoughts I have uh the one thing and
both are not positive so the one thing
is um we know so much about climate
change there is a single thing that we
need to do to
stop uh climate change and this is
reducing CO2 emissions it's very easy
actually uh and it's has has been known
for 20 maybe 30 years and decision
making is lacking but a lot so I'm
really um I don't know what what else to
do what else scientists should do to
change this because I think scientists
usually they're very laidback and they
say well we don't know really it's hard
to say if you ask me well maybe maybe
not and right that so and scientists
have escalated their their um their
language over time over time and now
scientists are saying okay if you don't
solve this in 3 years we're all going to
die this is very not not something that
scientists really want to do but there
is not much more that scientists can
escalate in their language to tell um
policy makers so that's a one step where
I think very I'm I'm not really happy
about things are going and on the other
hand while climate change is very easy
there is only one variable that is the
if you pull this lever everything will
be uh okay this is not the case for
Ecology there are many level uh there
are many variables there are many things
that need would need to come together so
I think
um discussion with policy makers is very
important I have here uh focused on the
the science or the knowledge because I
think this uh because I myself I'm very
um depressed about policym
this is my hope that maybe here if we
now find the the solution then maybe
policy makers will listen although they
didn't for climate
change uh microphone two in the front hi
I wondered you showed several examples
of catastrophic failure in an ecosystem
by say one parameter change or one new
species introduced and I wondered now we
have this system and we analyze it and
maybe know very little of it and then we
think oh we only have to change one
thing and the whole forest size is there
a way to say
like uh reduce the risk or say build
like a petri dish for a whole lake or
something where we can try or is there
just a well we must try on the lake and
see what happens there are in very very
good question uh there are many I I I
think and I hope that there are some
steps from a very there are many people
working right now on very uh small pet
ecosystems where they just have two or
three or four or five uh organisms that
or species that interact with each other
which totally has not the complexity
that real ecosystems have there is a
huge gap in
this and I don't know whether it's
really possible to replicate ecosystems
in a lab at all because there are
geographical uh parts of it so you would
have to rebuild the lake in its entirety
and also there are historical features
so it does matter whether this species
arrived there earlier than the other
species um this
will this will maybe not be possible it
will be necessary to do as much data
crunching as you can to say okay I think
we
are 50% sure maybe we can do we have
another chance uh Choice okay let's
let's do
it sorry sorry to tell
you they getting us all thepress here um
is there a microphone um one or so is is
that a
question um thank you very much for this
interesting talk and the um amount of
answer they give to our questions uh
according to your knowledge your current
knowled do you think we have any chance
as species to uh stop this inection or
only delay
it there I would really like to say some
positive
things I would really like to say oh yes
we can do it this is so doable it's not
easy but do it I don't know I I think I
think maybe not but I think this is not
really an
option you know there are so many places
where you can say okay we can't do it
but still we have to try so we cannot as
a scientist I know that I cannot attain
knowledge itself but still I have to try
so this is maybe something like that
maybe maybe we cannot do it maybe we
know right now that we cannot do it
maybe the the way to do it is uh is very
bad but we still have to do
it so um the microphone at the back
number
three um I'd like to go one step back uh
I seem to understand that uh
understanding the ecosystem is a big uh
thing so what can be done to understand
the ecosystem better and to be able to
predict what consequences decisions
have as a data scientist of course I
tell you collect more data analyze this
data and we will find perfect insights
uh some other ecologists will tell you
okay we need to go out and we need to
categorize uh uh every single species
with all the behavior in in very fine
detail to really understand the the
niceties of an ecosystem um so there
might be very different um answers I
think the data Centric point of view for
an ecosystem is the one that scales the
best to use that word if you if you Does
this answer your question
perfect microphone
to yes thank you also for um the idea
with the citizen data I forgot the name
already uh Community good name I heard
yeah um I think um just for this idea to
get Drive um I asked myself it's maybe
not better for Workshop so that maybe
people were interested just GA in the
front of the stage after the talk and
question and answer yeah that would be
that would be great please do that let's
gather in front of this stage later
until unless we get kicked out of here I
don't know about that when do we get
kicked out of this this room not not at
all so let's stay here after that no
please really do this let's let's form
small circle and let's talk about the
basics of this and maybe we'll meet
again in the next few days so microphone
one hi um I'm interest I'm interested in
soil you mentioned there's a problem
with
soil um and I'm 100% sure there's over
9,000 people who will send you soil
samples like maybe a million people who
are just like like Farmers or gardeners
or just Eco enthusiasts who if they know
on what to
test they share it it's like I'm 100%
sure but what's the problem with soil in
your uh what you teased like what's the
problem okay uh what what please let me
ask you a question back what what in
soil are you interested in just
generally or do you work on um a bilding
bilding humus Maybe sequestering carbon
as a solution I don't know if it works I
really don't know and I don't know if if
the science is like if there's a
consensus in science that it's [ __ ]
or it's not no no no no I don't want to
go that that that far um there's a big
I'm coming again from from from a
microbiological point of view and in
microb BIO um microbial ecology there is
the question whether the everything is
everywhere but the environment selects
so you could say that if you take
similar ecosystems all the bacteria that
are in the one ecosystem would also be
in the other ecosystems with some uh
changes because of there is more salt or
less salt and so on and so on for for
Lakes this is in still under discussion
and it seems to not be the case for soil
it is absolutely not in discussion
because every soil is is a little bit
different and they're very hard to
compare so what I said when I said uh
soils are problematic is that they are
harder to compare soil samples uh than
Lake samples water samples from
freshwater would be in theory we might
figure out if we form this beautiful new
group that uh Lake ecosystems are also
very hard to compare or we might figure
a way out to compare soil ecosystems so
this is the hopeful answer of the day
all the other answers were very bad but
this is one we might really see that
soil is easy and not hard okay um we're
starting to run out of time but let's
take those last two questions if we can
make them quick and then after that if
you want to come and meet the speaker
that would be great so number two good
morning um you
have you said we have to do two things
first leave half of the Earth Earth uh
human free and the second half make sure
that our impact at ecosystem is very
low so we cannot use this first half um
maybe for producing F food is that
correct so my question is do you think
this is possible with nearly at a moment
8 billion
people I think it uh I don't know I
really don't know I'm not uh that big I
don't know that much about um
agriculture to really uh say that I hear
different things but most people tell me
that it should be possible to to buy the
right mixture of different styles of
farming and to
buy some people having more intensive
farming and some most of the other
people have less intensive farming and
so on and so on I don't know this in
detail um again I think it must it needs
to be possible it cannot be the case
that we um I mean what happens in in
parts of the world as you know is we
just take a part of the of a rainforest
which is the highest biod diversity of
of the whole Earth make
it kill everything that's on it and put
in one single plant and kill all the
other plants again and again and kill
some of the insects or most of the
insects and this is
um I don't have I don't have words for
this this cannot be go on further and
further we need to we need to find a way
to uh reduce the amount of land we need
for
farming thank you also I think that uh
population control cannot
be ethically it's very hard to argue for
population control direct population
control ethically I don't think that
this is can be directly part of the the
answer so the very last question for
number two hi uh when we look at a Chaos
Theory where a system swings around
different attractors and we add a remove
V new attractor of this uh system will
be out of control we can't predict it
with the old data will we be able to
predict uh something with these data we
um collect right now when the whole
system already changed yeah let's say we
have different samples and we have
samples uh from uh ecosystems where all
the parts are in place and let's say we
have examples from ecosystems where all
of the pars are in place except for one
we took out one organism and let's say
we have ecosystems where all the PS are
in place but two and let's hope that
we'll find something like this and we
can say okay it seems like these are all
the parts that are in play and we took
out one and we took out two and if we
put them back maybe we can go back to
the uh to the other samples
um
Quality perfect so with that um we need
to wrap up the questions sorry about
that let's thank the speaker again um uh
give him a really warm Applause for this
great talk thank
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you
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oh