Virtual Posters

Dr. Lucia Campos (Latin America CAMLcoordinator) and Dr. José Xavier (APECS vice-president) encouraged the start of APECS activities in Brazil in 2008. MSc Erli Costa and Dr. Roseane Palavizini started APECS-Brazil and made the activities known. To enhance the breadth of APECS Brazil, a Council was established in 2009 with six polar early career scientists and educators who started to coordinate the activities in five different areas representing Brazil in that international group. Five areas were defined as follow: Ecology/Biology (Erli Costa); Education/Outreach (Miriam Almeida and Roseane Palavizini); Geography (Rosemary Vieira); Physical/Biological Oceanography (Rodrigo Kerr) and Paleontology (Thièrs Wilberger). One of the group's challenges is to have the other areas also represented and to have more people involved in the activities. During the "International Polar Week" of 05-09 October 2009 a series of Education/Outreach activities were coordinated by the group in Primary and Secondary schools and in universities in different parts of the country (Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Claro, Araraquara, Rio Grande, São Leopoldo and Erval Grande). The activities were supported by experienced polar researchers in their Institutions and also by other members of APECS Brazil, which helped to settle and facilitate the integration of the scientists and brought up excellent discussions. We hope to achieve, with the support of APECS, very strong integration between early career scientists of all scientific areas from different countries in order to evaluate the consequences of the ongoing environmental, social and geopolitical changes in the polar regions, and to define the priorities of polar research. This can only be achieved by exciting the present and future generations of researchers and educators. APECS was founded as an answer to that necessity and as a legacy of the International Polar Year, and Brazil is willing to contribute strongly to the growth of that Institution.