Geoanthropology Biosphere: Integrated, long-term, global approaches to human-biosphere interactions

The Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology meets the defining challenges of the 21st century in integrating the findings of different disciplines to study climate change, the biodiversity crisis, overexploitation of natural resources, and the sustainable persistence of human communities. Through lab-, field-, model-, and interpretive approaches, the institute examines the fundamental human-Earth system dynamics that have brought about the multiple crises of the "Anthropocene". In its ongoing search for a new Director for the Biomedical Sciences Section of the Max Planck Society, this symposium focuses in on human relationships with the biosphere and new approaches to studying, understanding, and modelling our species interaction with this critical Earth system component over the long-term.

This symposium brings together experts working in different ways to study the relationship between the socio-technosphere and the biosphere on local, regional, and global scales and on a variety of different timescales. Presentations will focus on new visions for this novel form of geoanthropological research in the context of the biosphere, its relationship to the Institute’s core research themes, and potential for cross-departmental and cross-unit collaboration. Coming from a variety of backgrounds the speakers will address different parts of the human-biosphere system, on topics ranging from planetary health, disease dynamics, biodiversity, and global biosphere modelling.