News
15 September 2019
With the approval of two projects totalling 14 million euros for eLTER, the EU is opening another important chapter in the development of a permanent infrastructure for long-term ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological research in Europe. This funding will enable significant development of the eLTER Research Infrastructure (eLTER RI), in areas such as the RI's organisation, business model and legal basis. It will also give a major boost to scientific work done at eLTER sites and platforms....
17 June 2019
The special issue, entitled “Italian Long-Term Ecological Research for understanding ecosystem diversity and functioning. Case studies from aquatic, terrestrial and transitional domains” is the first published collection of studies performed at LTER-Italy sites. The eighteen papers in the volume present research carried out at two Antarctic and 16 Italian sites, one of which includes a comparative analysis with other International LTER Sites in Northern Europe and USA. Two additional papers are...
12 May 2019
eLTER reps including Michael Mirtl (chair of eLTER, from EAA, Austria), Nick Arnaud (CNRS, France) and Roland Baatz (Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany) were in Vienna last week at the annual conference of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). They joined representatives of many other European environmental research infrastructures (RIs) at the ENVRI community booth. This popular exhibition stand was a source of information about RIs covering many environmental domains (solid earth, ecosystem/bio...
16 December 2018
The ESFRI 2018 Roadmap identifies new Research Infrastructures (RI) of pan-European priority and, as announced previously, eLTER RI is among them. These new research infrastructures will be designed to meet the long term needs of European research communities.
eLTER RI's inclusion on the ESFRI Roadmap is a significant achievement for the European ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological research communities. It paves the way for the further development and formalization of eLTER RI, the...
25 September 2018
On 25th September, representatives of major Irish institutions in the environmental research and monitoring domain along with an eLTER delegation held an "LTER Ireland" exploratory meeting in Waterford, Ireland.The Irish team had invited John Watkins & Mike Brown (eLTER IT core team, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK) and Michael Mirtl (European and global LTER chair) to present and discuss LTER and specifically eLTER Research Infrastructure implementation plans in Europe.The half-day m...
9 September 2018
We are pleased to announce that the pan-European eLTER Research Infrastructure (eLTER RI) has been included on the ESFRI 2018 roadmap. This is a significant achievement for the European ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological research communities. It paves the way for the further development and formalization of eLTER RI. The eLTER ESFRI process is led by the German Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in close cooperation with the Environment Agency Austria (EAA) and with sup...
1 August 2018
In his article, Prof. Kulmala (University of Helsinki) argues that grand challenges such as climate change, water and food security and urban air pollution, despite being linked, are typically studied separately. Specifically, observations of the interactions between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere are poorly linked, with few coupled observations made by satellites and ground stations. Vast areas of the globe are barely sampled at all. "The result is a cacophony of information that yields...
13 June 2018
At the GEO Symposium plenary this week (World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, 11-12 June 2018), Michael Mirtl presented ILTER and eLTER. In the session addressing gaps in the coordination of in-situ terrestrial observations, speakers reported on their network's data, main user communities and envisaged benefits from improved coordination of the in-situ component of GEO.
Michael described the data services that the European LTER (eLTER) is taking the lead in developing. He also explaine...
10 June 2018
One of the objectives of the eLTER Horizon 2020 project is to evaluate the performance of LTSER platforms. Recently published research reflects part of this evaluation: six LTSER platforms were assessed through site visits, coupled with the reflections and insights of the platform managers.
A new paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters presents the result of an assessment of six Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) p...
14 April 2018
In light of the eLTER Research Infrastructure (RI) being accepted on the ESFRI roadmap, the organisers of a recent workshop are keen to share their workshop report. Their workshop, which was called ‘Little Data, Big Data, No Data? Data Management in the Era of Research Infrastructures,’ was one of the initial steps in Finland towards being able to contribute data to the eLTER RI.
The data workshop was an outcome of the collaboration between the Academy of Finland funded MULTICS project (PI He...