The rapid growth of linear infrastructure networks worldwide is posing a global threat to biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, in the last decades careful planning and appropriate solutions have been implemented to counteract the negative impacts of these infrastructures. Monitoring results are becoming increasingly available and innovative structures and actions are being tested and promoted. Valuable tools as landscape genetics, connectivity modelling, remote sensing, and GPS animal tracking, among other, are implemented into infrastructure planning and management. New ways of mitigation design and thinking (e.g. multifunctionality) are emerging or being consolidated. Habitats related to Linear Infrastructures are progressively seen as an opportunity for biodiversity conservation and key contributors to Green Infrastructure development. There is equally a raising awareness on the sustainable coexistence of infrastructures and biodiversity while citizens want to and have the tools to participate in this process.

We aim to increase infrastructure sustainability by joining and sharing the experiences of those involved in linear infrastructures planning and management worldwide. The focus of the Conference will be on transportation infrastructures but other linear infrastructures, as electric power lines, will be equally considered. We will emphasise the impact and the opportunities that these infrastructures bring for nature conservation; discuss previous successes and failures in mitigation and monitoring; and prospect how new thinking and technology can better harmonise infrastructures and the surrounding environment. The role of legislation, financing and civil society involvement in promoting sustainable solutions will be actively debated. At the end, we will have strengthened relations to overcome the challenges associated with balancing linear infrastructures and biodiversity.

The University of Évora, in the framework of the LIFE LINES project, and the Infrastructure and Ecology Network Europe welcome you to the IENE 2020 International Conference, with the main theme LIFE LINES – Linear Infrastructure Networks with Ecological Solutions. The Conference will take place through live programming ONLINE, between 12 and 14 of January 2021. Training Sessions will be held on January 11. We challenge researchers, engineers, landscape planners, managers, administrators, and policy makers to conciliate linear infrastructures and biodiversity while meeting the demand for a sustainable development. The Conference will include thematic sessions, side events, workshops and training sessions. We hope to see you online at IENE 2020. Please share this invitation with your friends, colleagues and other people that may be interested in attending the Conference.