The Global Vegetation Project (http://gveg.wyobiodiversity.org) is a new initiative to host an online database of open-access, georeferenced vegetation photos. The mission of the Global Vegetation Project is ‘to inspire and empower people of all ages to learn about the diversity of vegetation on our planet and to provide educators with a resource for teaching ecology online’. The beta release includes two R-Shiny web applications that allow users to 1) submit photos of plant communities through a user-friendly online portal and 2) explore submissions made by others through an interactive global map. The spatial coordinates of each photo are used to extract information about the location including long-term and recent climate data to create Walter and Leith climate diagrams for each photo. User submitted photos can be filtered by biome, temperature, precipitation, and elevation on the map. The Global Vegetation Project will evolve to match the needs of vegetation scientists and ecology educators. We intend to enhance the educational value of the mapping application by incorporating additional search features, global data layers, and the publication of curricula geared towards primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. We encourage the global community of vegetation scientists to use this resource in their classrooms and to contribute photos of vegetation to grow this valuable resource for the world.

Eddy van der Maarel during the field trip associated with the Working Group for Theoretical Vegetation Science symposium at Uppsala in 1985 by Martin Diekmann & Susan Wiser © S. Wiser WWW.IAVS.ORG IAVS BULLETIN 2021/2 PAGE 3 OF 25 rd IAVS Symposium Registration and abstract submission are now open! Please visit https:// na.eventscloud.com/iavs2021 to register for the Symposium and to submit your abstract before the deadline listed below. Unfortunately, at this moment, we cannot process the membership renewal and registration payment. Therefore, we suggest that you pay the registration fee after obtaining the decision letter of whether your abstract has been accepted for the Symposium.