The Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research of BAS (IBER–BAS) hosted the specialized training course “Quantitative Numerical Analyses and Data Stewardship Training” which took place from June 15 to 19.  The event was organized as part of the COST Action CA23116 – Open Palaeoecological Data: Analysing the Past, Building Foresight (PalaeOpen). Sixty researchers from 35 scientific institutions in 18 countries participated in the training.

The main objective of the COST Action is to deepen understanding of environmental changes over millennia and the adaptation of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to climatic and anthropogenic impacts through the analysis of various types of palaeoecological data. The initiative promotes the synchronization, standardization, and integration of these data into a unified European system for their storage and sharing, thereby contributing to more accurate assessment and more effective management of ecosystems in the future.

The training program included theoretical lectures and hands-on sessions using the Tilia 3.2 specialized software and the Neotoma Database as well as methods for analyzing, processing, and visualizing data using the R programming environment and the riojaPlot package.

On June 19, the participants took part in a field training session at Vitosha Nature Park – the first protected area on the Balkan Peninsula. The park is home to numerous protected species and endangered ecosystems, and its peatlands serve as key habitats for biodiversity and valuable palaeoecological archives that preserve information about environmental changes over the millennia.

The training was carried out with the financial support of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) and the State Office for Cultural Heritage Management Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. The event was co-organized by Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski.”

The training’s organizing committee included PhD student Yoanna Katreva and Corresponding Member Dimiter Ivanov from IBER – BAS, Prof. Spassimir Tonkov from SU “St. Kliment Ohridski,” and Assoc. Prof. Elena Marinova-Wolff (Germany), with the support of the partners in the PalaeOpen COST Action.

bulgaria_trainingschool_2026 – PalaeOpen