It is our great pleasure to announce the Inaugural GFBI Conference & Joint GFBI-FECS Symposium, to be held in Beijing, China, on September 6-9, 2017.

Forests are critical in the fight against biodiversity loss and climate change. But successful policy to govern these valuable resources necessitates a fundamental understanding of forests at a global scale. Until now, the required large-scale understanding of forest ecosystems has been based on remote sensing data. We can now supplement this information with massive ground-sourced inventory data at a global scale, which will greatly enhance our understanding of forest dynamics in a global context.

The GFBI is a global research network focused on the use of big data to enhance our fundamental understanding of the global forest system. We would like to invite you to join us in our first conference in Beijing in September 2017, which will bring together experts from around the world that are focused on the use of "big data" to understand forest systems. By combining our expertise and knowledge on a range of approaches, we hope that this conference can serve as a platform to strengthen the connections within this vibrant research community.

The Conference features: a) Opportunities to develop research collaboration with current and prospective GFBI members from around the world; b) Development of GFBI legislation and data-sharing protocols; c) Plenary and Concurrent sessions of top-tier research presentations (we accept papers/presentations from any discipline that can provide interesting contributions about the structure and dynamics of forest ecosystems, and their services to people); d) Guest speakers from UN FAO.