Excursions from April - November 2023

Middle spotted woodpecker (Photo: hedera.baltica, CC BY-SA 2.0 ) (Clip)

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Many of us have noticed in the past summers how important the joint field trips are. Learning by observing plants and animals requires an exchange about what you are looking at. This, however, corresponds to the old tradition of our association to organise the summer with excursions.

On the one hand, there are excursions as natural history tours through striking parts of the landscape, plants and animals that the group encounters are explained and ecological contexts are explained. Today, this falls under "environmental education" and the events listed here fulfil this task by addressing an interested public in a generally understandable way. In addition, the working groups also bring together people who are more intensively involved with a group of animals or plants and go on excursions at their meetings, where distribution data is collected and documented, new discoveries are made or observations on temporal occurrence are collected, thus gaining important data on the state of the native flora and fauna. In view of the biodiversity crisis, the documentation of changes in flora and fauna is an important scientific task, which, booked today as "citizen science", has been successfully pursued in the NWV for over 150 years. Citizen science does not mean cheap assistance for established research institutions, but independent, solid research with its own questions, by people with very different educational biographies .This is also a good tradition in the association and has been reflected in our journal, the "Abhandlungen des NWV", from the beginning. As an example, we would like to refer to two excursions of the botanical working group, which in April and September focused on "gems of typical harbour flora", a classic topic in the association that deserves special interest in view of the current structural change to the "Überseestadt".

Of course, "Citizen Science" thrives on cooperation with other associations and with the colleges and the university. It is precisely from these institutions, which are currently developing their own sustainability activities, that we would like to see cooperation in the joint tasks in the area of biodiversity change and environmental education, which have been established in our working groups since 1864 or, as in the case of marine science, can be newly established.

The programme shows that the Marine Science Society in particular, but also other working groups, want to intensify the exchange of experiences, the discussion of goals, methods and results, and the cultivation of scientific contacts with evening meetings in the summer.

In the vague hope of returning to more peaceful times, I wish us all an instructive and productive but also healthy summer. (DeepL-translation)

Hakon Nettmann (28. March 2023)

State: 27. Mai 2023

Print templates / "Booklet" (pdf)

Notes on participation in excursions