Integrated European
Long-Term Ecosystem, critical zone and
socio-ecological Research

News

5 October 2022
DEIMS-SDR is one of the most comprehensive publicly available catalogues of long-term ecosystem research and monitoring sites in the world. It was created to reduce fragmentation and to increase the findability, interoperability, and accessibility of in-situ sites and data.Today, DEIMS-SDR contains detailed site information of about 760 eLTER sites in Europe as well as sites outside of Europe. It offers information on long-term research sites and access to data sets.In order to promote DEIMS-SDR...
3 October 2022
The University of Helsinki, Institute for Atmosphere and Earth System Research/Department of Forest Sciences, is looking for a Postdoctoral researcher to a Horizon Europe project BioDT (Biodiversity Digital Twin), and the eLTER ESFRI process, where the PI at Helsinki University is professor Jaana Bäck.BioDT aims at pushing the current boundaries of predictive understanding of biodiversity dynamics by developing a Biodiversity Digital Twin (BioDT), providing advanced modelling, simulation and pre...
3 October 2022
The long wait for a physical Interim Council (IC) meeting came finally to end when the delegations met face to face in Uppsala, Sweden, on September 28-29 2022.The IC04 meeting was hosted by SLU and chaired by Prof. Kevin Bishop. Delegates from seven countries attended the meeting physically, with a further 11 delegations joining via Zoom.Apart from the joy of really meeting many people for the first time, there were also important items on the agenda. The IC discussed the recently established e...
30 September 2022
LIFE MODERn(NEC) (LIFE20GIE / IT / 000091) was launched in October 2021 to meet the requirements of Art.9 of the EU Directive "NEC" (National Emission Ceiling, 2016/2284), that commits Member States to monitor the impacts of air pollutants on terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. The European countries pursue the objectives of the Directive through a network of monitoring sites representative of the main European ecosystems.The current NEC Italy Network consists of six forest and four freshwate...
22 September 2022
Each year, the different LTER-Pt partners prepare dissemination events for the general public to promote knowledge and generate discussions about the role of ecologists within LTER sites, as part of an Ecology Day celebration.Ecology Day emerged as a celebration of the 150th anniversary of ecology in 2016, marked with a roundtable at the European Parliament in Brussels. The 14th September was the chosen date since it coincides with the day Ernst Haeckel defined ecology as a science. Since 2017,...
22 September 2022
Air pollution is a major and global concern, arising for the most part from human activities. Air pollutants can be emitted by a variety of sources or formed directly in the atmosphere. They alter the air we breathe and have clear negative effects on our health. But they also affect the Earth's climate and have a tremendous, often underestimated, impact on our economies. This 3-week course shares the basics of air pollution and its effects. During the first week, you will discover the major...
7 September 2022
On 24th and 25th August an eLTER delegation, led by Michael Mirtl (eLTER PPP coordinator) and Jaana Back (eLTER PLUS coordinator), visited the head offices of their “sister” research infrastructures of ICOS and ACTRIS for an important exchange of experience and support.ICOS was represented by Werner Kutsch (Director General), Katri Ahlgren (Head of Communications), Elena Saltikoff (Head of Operations) and other key members. The ACTRIS group was headed by Eija Juurola and Paolo Laj, both Interim...
7 September 2022
Delft University of Technology has opened several positions for assistant professors in weather, climate and air quality sciences. Anthropogenic climate change is one of the major challenges mankind is facing. In  the department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing, within the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at TU Delft, the institution wants to understand the interaction between human activities, the Earth system, and our living environment. This is done through the combinati...
19 August 2022
The Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment and the Research school Focus on Soil and Water at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences invites PhD students to attend the course "Multivariate methods for ecologists".The course is given entirely on-line. Please visit the course web page for more information and instructions how to apply: https://www.slu.se/mvaThere are a limited number of places at the course. Attendants will be accepted in the order the organisers receive the applic...
15 August 2022
The University of Trento opens the call for positions for the 38th Cycle (Academic Year 2022/2023) of the Doctoral Programme in Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering.The PhD project is called "SHALL – near Surface processes in High ALtitude Lakes" and will focus on gas exchanges, small-scale stratification and turbulent mixing in the surface layers of high altitude Alpine lakes.In preference, the candidate should:- hold a MSc in Physics, Environmental Engineering, Geophysics, or Oceano...
6 April 2022
The Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Gothenburg is looking for an Associate Senior Lecturer in Ecosystem Science. The Department trains Earth scientists and geographers, who can meet the increased need for geoscientists and geographers in society. It has bachelor and master programs in Earth Sciences and in Geography as well as third-cycle education in several Earth Science subjects. Its main research themes are “Climate and Climate Change”, “Earth Surface Processes” and “The Ge...
4 April 2022
The annual meeting of the French OZCAR NRI (Critical Zone Observatories, research and applications) was held in the South of France, March 7 to 10th, 2022 at Vogüe on the banks of the Ardèche River under the scientific banner "sediments and contamination".The OZCAR NRI gathers 21 long-term field observatories monitoring one or several compartments of the Critical Zone and aims to develop a systemic understanding of the environment. The conference was held in a hybrid mode and allowed the pa...
9 March 2022
The upcoming 2022 Alternet Conference on the topic of "Transformative Changes for Biodiversity and Health"   announced its call for abstracts. If you would like to apply, send the following information by email to secretariat@alterneteurope.eu.TitleAuthorsPresenting authorsInstitutionAbstract(max 600 words)Session choice (choose from session themesbelow):Biodiversity and Ecological HealthBiodiversity and Human HealthTransforming Food Systems Lock-ins and levers to re-localize food syst...
28 February 2022
ILTER OSM Kunming, China, 12-15 September 2022, calls for abstracts. Deadline for abstract submission is 31 May 2022.Please note that you will have to register for the conference in addition to submitting this abstract. Registration will open soon on the conference website.The meeting will take place as a hybrid conference (both in-person and remote participation possible). The conference will likely run from 9-17 CST (China standard time, UTC + 8) each day.General Themes: A Sensitivity, me...
5 January 2022
The German Research Foundation (DFG) is establishing a new Collaborative Research Centre (CRC). In the CRC “Regional Climate Change: The Role of Land Use and Water Management”, researchers are investigating the hypothesis that human-induced land use change and intensified water management also influence regional climate – leading to unintended changes in the natural regional water and energy cycle.Phenomena such as droughts or increasing precipitation are attributed to global warming and th...
5 January 2022
The Academy of Finland will continue funding the Finnish research infrastructures. The INAR RI consortia "Integrated Atmospheric and Earth System Research Infrastructure: Integrated observations for effective climate solutions in terrestrial ecosystems" has received funding of 3.7 M€ for the 2022–2025 period.The funding will support research in several fields: meteorology and atmospheric sciences, climate research, environmental science, forest sciences and ecology, evolutionary biology and ecop...
4 January 2022
A joint Citizen Science (CS) initiative is being developed within the well-known iNaturalist network to create an umbrella project that will promote long-term biodiversity data registration. This initiative aims to have an impact on the eLTER network, both at a local scale, by strengthening the relationship between citizens living in LTSER areas and the researchers and managers who operate them, and at a European scale, by strengthening the interaction between platforms.Individual projects will...
2 January 2022
On Thursday, October 28, 2021, an unusual audience gathered at the Mitzpe Ramon Community Center - scientists from various fields of knowledge, along with stakeholders from the Negev Highland and the Makhteshim country.The Scientific consortium of the LTSER Platform, led by Dr. Noa Avriel-Avni, organized the conference around three socio-ecological issues:1. Restoration of the Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus) population, extinct from the region a few hundred years ago - the session dealt with i...
31 December 2021
In 2019, as a response to alarming insect decline in Germany (e.g. Hallmann et al. 2017), the German network for Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER-D) launched the first nationwide Malaise trap project.The aim of the project, run in cooperation with Nationale Naturlandschaften (German umbrella organization of large protected areas), is to collect data on insect species diversity and population development in typical habitats in Germany, and to help to identify the processes underlying insect de...
29 December 2021
Two new scientific papers acknowledge the eLTER PLUS project. In the first, thousands of soil temperature sensors from around the globe allowed Jonas Lembrechts from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, to map the global soil temperature at a 1-km² resolution. These maps are freely available online with the methods described in Global Change Biology.The second paper focuses on the drivers of biodiversity loss. By analysing long-term trends of 1827 plant species 141 sites across mountain summits,...
8 December 2021
eLTER announces its call for funded Transnational Access (TA) and Remote Access (RA) for scientists working in the areas of biodiversity, biogeochemistry, hydrology or socio-ecological research.All 38 sites in 19 countries are equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation to enable comprehensive ecological measurement and experimental campaigns. The long-term data on those sites is available to compare with or to be used as a reference. Likewise, state-of-the-art socio-economic research is cond...
10 November 2021
Between 20 and 22 October the eLTER PPP and PLIS consortia and important guests gathered online during the Mars meeting, the fourth big virtual event since the beginning of the pandemic. In addition to the project consortia, the members of the eLTER Associate Partnership Programme were also invited. The meeting consisted of an opening and wrap-up plenary and self-organised sessions convened by Work package, Theme- or Gearwheel-leads. In addition to an overview of the status and achievements...
2 November 2021
Plant biomass production is co-dependent on climatic and edaphic factors, which in turn are under increasingly anthropogenic pressure. Disentangling effects of climate and soil on plant biomass production is challenging, especially along large climatic gradients. To address this, a multispecies phytometer was developed (i.e., standardized plant community in local site soils and a standardized substrate) and installed in 18 sites across a pan-European aridity gradient.The study revealed that arid...
1 November 2021
On 8 September 2021, NWO (Dutch Research Council) presented the new National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Infrastructure 2021 to the minister of education, culture and science Ingrid van Engelshoven. The eLTER Dutch team is happy and pleased to announce that eLTER-NL is on this roadmap. This does not guarantee funding, but it greatly improves the chances of obtaining financial support. To do this important task, eLTER-NL will write a joint application together with LifeWatch (LifeWatch...
31 October 2021
This year, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) adopted eLTER in its operational plan for Research, Technology and Innovation (RTI) for the years 2021-2023.The operational plan sets concrete targets for implementation within the framework of the RTI strategy towards the year 2030. Research Infrastructures are one pillar of the strategy.With the adoption, eLTER is now ready for implementation towards an Austrian National Research Infrastructure compiling sites...
29 October 2021
Scientific research on SocioEcoSystem (SESs) has grown exponentially since the seventies, but because of the heterogeneity in the actors, the disciplines and the collected data, some efforts are still necessary to build a common language anda thesaurus for indexing data. Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods were used to analyse a French corpus derived from the 5th colloquium of the French long term socio-ecological research network RZA (Réseau des Zones Atelier) which marked the network'...
29 October 2021
LTER-Greece has finished updating its website and is happy to present its brand new look to the public. The online address remains the same: https://www.lter-greece.gr/.Apart from a fresh new visual identity, the website also delivers updated fact sheets about all Greek LTER sites like: Koiliaris Critical Zone Observatory (established in 2004); Hydrological Observatory of Athens (established 2005); Pinios Hydrologic Observatory (established 2015); Samothraki Nature Observatory (established 2014)...
27 October 2021
The international team of researchers working to advance the eLTER data service portal concept and pilot socio-economic and environmental data welcomed a sixth LTSER platform to the fold. The eLTER Slovakian partners, ILE SAS, responsible for the task in eLTER PLUS focused on "Harvesting of official statistics", decided to join the five funded pilot LTSER platforms as they were effectively half-way there when completing their task. The six platforms are tasked with determining stakehold...
26 October 2021
In June 2021, the Czech LTER network successfully held their annual meeting near Sokolov (CZ). The decision was made to meet in person because of significant recent progress in Czechia's involvement in the building of eLTER RI after the government expressed conditional political support for eLTER last autumn. Following tradition, the second day of the annual meeting was dedicated to a field trip to one of the Czech LTER sites, this year to LTER Sokolov post-mining ecosystems, led by its sit...
28 September 2021
It will be an exaggeration to say that most people barely remember what working on international projects was like before the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is true that we got used to “the new normal” – seemingly endless virtual meetings, repurposing our homes into offices, all our colleagues suddenly turning into “floating heads” in hazy backgrounds. To some this almost sounds like a dystopian, futuristic novel.However, the hope is that with the vaccination process going strong the situation is slo...
21 February 2022
The University of Oulu is looking for a Research Engineer to join its to join Oulanka research station. The research engineer would contribute mainly to facilitating field research activities at Oulanka with some additional related field work in Greenland. There would be a strong focus on maintenance, installation, calibration of ICOS type eddy-covariance gas exchange equipment, energy balance measurement instruments, the accompanying sensors, loggers, and other equipment.Apply online latest on...
17 February 2022
The EBAS Team at NILU seeks two dedicated team players with a solid background in information technology to help build solutions that facilitate free and open access to research data for users worldwide.NILU is hosting one of the world's largest databases related to atmospheric composition data (air pollution, climate forcers etc.) to serve various international research and monitoring programs (www.ebas.nilu.no). It consists of 13 people, both scientists and developers, managing atmospheric obs...
16 February 2022
The 11th International Aerosol Conference (IAC 2022) will be held during September 4th-9th, 2022, both virtually and physically in Athens, Greece. The call for abstract is now open (deadline for submissions: March 4th, 2022). Authors can submit their abstract to one of the available topics or special session, which include aerosol technology, atmospheric aerosol studies, atmospheric measurements techniques, aerosol and health, basic aerosol processes. Find more here.
10 February 2022
FORECOMON 2022 - The 10th Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Conference will take place on 30 May - 1 June 2022 and will be followed by the 38th Task Force Meeting of ICP Forests, taking place on 1 - 3 June 2022. The Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE) is the host of both events and is kindly making local arrangements. Both events will be organized as hybrid meetings to account for the possibility of restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The following keynote speakers will participate in the...
25 January 2022
Lund University is looking for a research engineer to work fulltime within ACTRIS Sweden, a national research infrastructure project recently approved by the Swedish Research Council. The research engineer will handle and service several instruments for long-term observations of atmospheric aerosols and reactive trace gases at the Lund University combined ICOS-ACTRIS station at Hyltemossa in southern Sweden.The research engineer will also maintain and further develop the additional equipment and...
24 January 2022
The Earth and Mission Science Division is a dynamic R&D team leading research and development activities, in partnership with European and international industry and academia, with the aim of advancing science, developing future space missions, novel applications, and helping to maximise the science impact of missions in implementation and future mission candidates.ESA is currently searching for Internal Research Fellowship Opportunity in the Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes.Learn...
23 January 2022
As part of the SOFOG-3D measurement campaign that took place in 2018, the Pierre Simon Laplace Institute (Paris) and the National Meteorological Research Center (Toulouse) wish to work together on a better understanding of processes and values reviews of certain variables that may or may not favor the dissipation of so-called adiabatic mists.The dissipation of continental fogs is an important phase because it often takes place during the day, therefore over a period of the day when human activit...
5 January 2022
The Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry at PSI currently offers multiple open positions on experimental aerosol research.They are:PhD position on aviation emissions at airports (https://www.psi.ch/en/pa/job-opportunities/49270-phd-student):Perform experimental campaigns at Zurich airport using a wide range of aerosol instrumentation (Neutral cluster and Air Ion Spectrometer, particle size spectrometers and chemical mass spectrometers)Statistical analysis and interpretation of complex and large d...
5 January 2022
Frontiers in Experimental Research on Changing Environments which will be held between 7–9 June 2022 in Leipzig / Bad-Lauchstädt, Germany, is accepting abstracts.Submission Deadline: 31 January 2022.TopicsLand-use impactsClimate change impactsPollution effects and nutrient depositionContext dependencies and interactions among driversEcosystems of the future: modelling and projectionsAbstracts to be:lecture or poster presentationscopied or written in a form field3,200 characters including blanks;...
3 January 2022
The background, current status and future perspectives of eLTER RI and the European environmental research infrastructures were presented to a wide audience of young scientists in Earth system research by professor Jaana Bäck (eLTER PLUS coordinator) from University of Helsinki on November 18, 2021.The Young Scientist School (YSS) on “Multi–Scales and–Processes Integrated Modelling, Observations and Assessment for Environmental Applications” was organized in memory of distinguished professor Ser...