Lake Baikal diatom taxonomy workshop

Following a welcome to the ECRC, Rick Battarbee went on to stress the importance of quality assurance in environmental science. It is a fundamental principle of science that results are reproducible. Standardisation of methods is an important element in achieving this objective. Water chemistry has long practised analytical quality control (fa.QC) within and between laboratories. For biology, taxonomic quality control (TOC) is more recent but an equally important issue, especially in international studies involving shared material. This is particularly true for Lake Baikal diatom studies where teams in the US, Russia, UK, Japan and others are working on major projects based en diatom remains in long and short sediment cores. This vvorkshop marks the first real attempt to introduce taxonomic control into these prcjects.