
Early Career Activities
The nature of integrative Earth system science requires an awareness of different disciplines and development of skillsets that are not provided in traditional education structures. To foster this development and build connections between interdisciplinary colleagues at an early career level, AIMES organizes summer schools and includes early career scientists in its activities. AIMES encourages the broader community to submit endorsements of early career activities and identify specific needs for future activities that AIMES could fulfill.
Current Events

Land Use and Ecosystem Change Summer School
KIT, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
Full Summer School Details
Beginning in 2018, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) organizes an annual international summer school on the topic of land use and ecosystem change at the KIT-Campus Alpin, IMK-IFU (Garmisch-Partenkirchen). Up to 35 master and doctoral students are invited to learn about and discuss a wide range of issues related to ecosystem functioning, socio-ecological systems and land use change. The summer school includes a mix of lectures, practical exercises with student presentations and a field excursion.
Early Career Earth System Networks
Young Earth System Scientists (YESS) community
YESS, the Young Earth System Scientists community, unifies international and multidisciplinary early career researchers in a powerful network, providing a voice and leverage for a better future to serve society. YESS focuses on researchers working in the interdisciplinary field of Earth system sciences, including social and natural scientists. Members within YESS cover a large breath of scientific expertise, including – but not limited to – weather, climate, geophysics, economy, engineering, hydrology, architecture, anthropology, governance, many more. YESS is very active conducting all sorts of activities, such as: publishing joint research and perspective papers; organizing webinars; highlighting the research of YESS members; organsing workshops, early career scientist events at conferences/meetings; and much more. If you are an early career researcher (Master student, PhD candidate, Postdoc within 5 years of PhD) in the Earth system sciences, you can join YESS!
Past Events
Young Scholars Network: Urbanization Interactions with Biogeochemistry and Climate
9-10 September 2006, Mexico City, Mexico
Across the globe, urbanization is occurring at a startling rate. Urbanization alters the natural landscape in profound ways that impact biogeochemistry and climate on local, regional, and global scales. Furthermore, this effect is compounded through feedback mechanisms, such as from polluted runoff or the use of energy intensive devices (e.g. air conditioners). Successful understanding and management of the interaction of urban systems with biogeochemical cycles is necessary. The YSN meeting will follow the Conference on Carbon Management at Urban and Regional Levels: Connecting Development Decisions to Global Issues (September 4-8) in Mexico City held jointly with the Global Carbon Project.
Young Scholars Network: Modeling Land Use – Decision Making
2-4 June 2007, Bristol, UK
Globally, about 50% of the Earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface is or has been allocated for various forms of anthropogenic land-use. Land-use alters the natural landscape in profound ways that impact biogeochemistry and climate on local, regional, and global scales. Furthermore, this effect is compounded through feedback mechanisms including the linkages between land, water, and air. Successful understanding of how decisions are made in land-use and land-use change is needed in reducing the impacts of climate change and predicting future climate. This small workshop will focus on understanding decision making on land-use issues, in order to move towards modeling these processes in Earth System Models. We encourage interdisciplinary applicants from the natural and social sciences, economics, engineers, and scholars from the humanities with research interested in the Earth System.
Young Scholars Network: Cultural Uses and Impacts of Fire: Past, Present, and Future
14-18 July 2008, Boulder, Colorado, USA
For millennia humans have utilized fire as a tool of landscape management, and in some regions this process continues. The historic impacts of fire on the environment and climate are thought to be significant. In this workshop we explore the drivers of human use of landscape fires, as well as the impacts. We will explore indigenous and contemporary management of landscape fire across scales from anthropologic, historic, paleoclimate, ecologic, biogeochemical and climate perspectives.
Young Scholars Network: Historical Ecology: Integrating Biophysical, Historical, and Ethnographic Evidence at the Landscape Scale
29 June – 3 July 2009, Uxeau, Burgundy, France
This workshop is an activity of Integrated History and future Of People on Earth (IHOPE) activity of AIMES. The overarching goal of IHOPE is the understanding of linked environmental and human processes since the Late Pleistocene. The objective is to combine new and existing data sources to produce an integrated historical account of changes in climate, atmospheric chemistry, material and water cycles, ecosystem distribution, species extinctions, human settlement and land use, technologies, patterns of disease, language and institutions, conflicts and alliances, and other variables. Until recently there have been few attempts to integrate historical information across dissimilar fields of study. Bridging these knowledge communities is an essential step in understanding the factors contributing to global change and in developing workable strategies for the future. Historical ecology provides a framework to integrate perspectives, theories, tools and knowledge from a variety of disciplines across the biophysical and social sciences and the humanities.