News
17 July 2022
eLTER would like to welcome three new people to its Head Office: Claudia Schuetze, Charlotte Wiederkehr and Uta Koedel.Claudia Schuetze has her background in physics and geophysics and held a professorship in electrical engineering. She has worked for the UFZ since 2009 and coordinated several geophysical research projects. Since 2017 she has led the implementation and coordination of the MOSES RI (Modular Observation Solutions for Earth Systems) of the German Helmholtz Community. This rese...
17 July 2022
The ILTER scientific conference will take place this year in Novi Sad, Serbia, 12-14 October, 2022. The conference will be open to all interested parties. It will be held side-by-side with the annual ILTER Coordinating Committee meeting. CC members will receive a separate message regarding that meeting.Each presenting author will be required to register for the conference. The Website address for registration will be distributed in due time. The registration fee (stated in Euros, including local...
15 July 2022
SITES (Swedish Infrastructure for Ecosystem Science) is a national infrastructure for terrestrial and limnological field research that partners with eLTER.SITES aims to promote high-quality research through long-term field measurements and field experiments, and by making data and station access available to researchers, regardless of institution. The core of SITES is nine field research stations that represent a variety of Swedish climate zones and ecosystems, including agricultural land, fores...
14 July 2022
Around 400 scientists visited the ENVRI booth during the EGU 2022 event in Vienna, lasting from 23 to 27 May. This marks a significant increase from the last physical EGU event where the booth was also visited by 400 people. However, this year the on site participants were over 2 times fewer than in 2019.eLTER was presented by its head of communication Kaloyan Konstantinov who was offering information about the RI, our brand new brochure, and a number of ENVRI goodies like a coloring book, Rubik...
14 July 2022
The SOILSERV ANR project conducted from 2017-2021 combined biophysical and socio-economic approaches to assess at different spatial scales ecosystem services of agricultural soils within mixed agroecosystems involving crops, livestock and uncultivated areas and to analyse their economic valuation in farmers’ choices or their consideration in territory planning. To address the various scales, the project relied on three main study sites selected as they offer sound existing preliminary infor...
12 July 2022
Dr Jan Dick is a social ecologist at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), a member of the LTER-UK’s Environmental Change Network (ECN) team and an active contributor to eLTER. Jan gave a talk recently, during which she described UKCEH's interest in using passive acoustic monitoring techniques. She was speaking at the UK Acoustic Network's symposium in Manchester (15-16 June 2022).Jan presented work by eLTER that aims to define a set of standard observations and associated methods,...
10 July 2022
The first BioDT webinar presents the project's objectives and goals, and its interaction with the LUMI Supercomputer, fundamental for building its modelling and simulation capabilities. The discussion will pave the way for the four BioDT use case groups and how their development can help scientists in predicting future trends in the biodiversity field. The event gives also the opportunity to meet the people behind the project and to interact with them during a poll session and a panel...
10 July 2022
A seminar on acacia trees and water in the southern Arava was held on 31.3.2022, at the Eilot Branch of the Dead Sea and Arava Science Center (DSASC). The seminar was part of an environmental educational project "Water in the Desert", with the support of KKL, Eilot Regional Council and the DSASC.The seminar was attended by about 50 participants, including KKL representatives, scientists, various stakeholders and local audience. During the seminar, we enjoyed fascinating lectures about acacias gi...
8 July 2022
The Brazil-France Bilateral Thematic Project "BIOgenic emissions, chemistry and impacts in the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo: BIOMASP+" (process 2020/07141-2) offers a post-doc fellowship to study local emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) and atmospheric concentrations in urban forests, contributing to advances in the understanding of the local photochemical processes and their potential interactions and impacts in polluted regions.The researcher will be based in the Instit...
7 July 2022
On 15 May, a team from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology jointly hosted an event (with Dundee University) in Kincraig as part of the Cairngorms Nature Big Weekend. The event aimed to show people some of the scientific research that takes place in the Cairngorms National Park. Aimed at all age groups, it was an opportunity for people to contribute their own ideas about the research needed in the park.Environmental Change Network monitoring at the Cairngorms ECN site was among the activiti...
17 August 2013
LTER-Europe has teamed up with the LIFE+ project EnvEurope for its annual meeting in Rome this week. It should be an important event.
The meeting is an opportunity for infrastructure managers and scientific users interested in LTER-Europe to meet and hear about the science that LTER-Europe helps deliver and to exchange ideas, strengthen interactions, identify development priorities and explore possible collaborative projects.
In build...
4 July 2021
The Swiss Geosciences Community completed its Roadmap for Research Infrastructures 2025–2028. It recommends strengthening the multidisciplinary nature of the geosciences by putting all activities under the roof of the Integrated Swiss Geosciences. They will be supported by four specific research infrastructure pillars (Figure 1) that provide the basis for a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary integrated and harmonized geoscientific research environment.
Pillar I, Integrated Long-term Observato...
2 July 2021
On 7 April 2021, the Government of Slovakia approved the first Roadmap for Research Infrastructures (SK VI Roadmap 2020 - 2030). This is a key document for research infrastructures (RI), which not only monitors the past development and current state of research infrastructure in Slovakia, but also its connection to the economy, domains of smart specialization, international cooperation in the context of the ESFRI and Horizon Europe. On 7 Apr...
1 July 2021
Understanding the Earth is not possible without interdisciplinary science. We need a holistic approach where environmental data, research products and services produced by the different Research Infrastructures (RIs) are harmonized and easy to access and use for scientists from any field of environmental research. Such integration efforts are organized within the European environmental Research Infrastructures (ENVRI) community.ENVRI is a cluster of terrestrial, solid earth, marine and atmospher...
30 June 2021
After a scientific evaluation by peers from the community, 24 applications were approved for funding from the first eLTER call for Transnational and Remote Access (TA-RA) under the eLTER PLUS project.
Overall 67 scientists from across 10 countries will benefit from the scheme, using the sites in 11 other countries: Germany, France, the UK, Israel, Italy, Greece, Austria, the Czech Republic, Romania, Spain, Finland.
The proposals cover a wide variety of ecosystems and topics to be researche...
13 May 2021
Over 150 people from both consortia of the eLTER PPP and eLTER PLUS projects took part in 25 sessions with the audience for each of them varying between +30 to >150. Naturally, due to the high number of participants and sessions, this presented a significant organizational and logistical challenge which was successfully overcome with the joint efforts of both organisers and participants.The meeting started with high-profile guest speakers valorizing the framework where an international resear...
23 April 2021
A data paper has been published in Earth System Science Data journal describing how the eLTER Information System infrastructure has been expanded by a climate service data product, providing open access to pre-processed regional climate change scenario data from a state-of-the-art regional climate model ensemble of EURO-CORDEX.The paper demonstrates a number of the strengths of eLTER including its extensive site network, Information System and ability to publish European-scale data products.The...
21 April 2021
The first eLTER call for Transnational and Remote Access (TA-RA) proposals to be organised under the present eLTER PLUS project gathered 20 applications.
The projects are currently being run through a plausibility check and scientific evaluation. For the details and the sequence of the TA-RA related processes, see the reference document on the TA-RA Scheme.
Reviews are conducted by peers from the eLTER community. The outcome of the evaluation process will be announced soon. Successful...
8 April 2021
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting 2020 was held between 1-17 December as an entirely virtual event.
As 1 of 6 partners in the Global Ecosystem Research Initiative (GERI) eLTER presented GERI achievements and plans in a session on “Global Environmental Measurement and Monitoring Technologies: Current Capabilities and Future Needs”.
One of the highlights reported by Michael Mirtl was the completion of the GERI Memorandum of Cooperation signing process by December 2020.In...
6 April 2021
The eLTER France community shares the news of receiving 9.6 million euros in the span of the next 8 years for research under the infrastructure project TERRA FORMA. The project’s objective is to design and test smart observatories of socio-ecological systems in the Anthropocene (geological age starting roughly in the mid. 20th century onward, debates are still ongoing on the exact time it encompasses).
Led by CNRS, TERRA FORMA aims at developing a new kind of observatory of the critical zone...
2 April 2021
We are continuing to develop an eLTER cookie-cutting tool, designed to make it easy to explore and collateharmonised datasets for a spatial unit like an eLTER site. Extracting data that are relevant for a site now takes a minute instead of potentially hours. This is one of the first steps towards establishing “information clusters” for each site benefiting from multiple data sources beyond data gathered at the site.The prototype eLTER cookie-cutting tool is being tested after it was demons...
1 July 2013
News of a magazine article on long-term research
"In the era of Big Data, research projects that focus on phenomena that unfold across decades have distinct benefits—and some drawbacks". This article in 'The Scientist' discusses long-term research, it's merits and the associated challenges: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36091/title/The-Long-View/
2 February 2013
Several members of ILTER - including Martin Forsius of Finnish LTER - have edited a special issue on ecosystem services.
Ecosystem services: climate change and policy impacts is a special issue of the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, and is edited by Bojie Fu, Martin Forsius and Jian Liu. The issue includes papers by the editors, including one by Forsius et al., which is directly based on Finnish LTER data. Also included is a paper by Vihervaara, et al.,...
27 December 2012
A paper published at the end of 2012 by a team of ILTER members demonstrates the importance of the International Long Term Ecological Research network in studying and monitoring environmental changes at a global level.
The paper, authored by Dr Petteri Vihervaara (Finland) and co-workers, is entitled "Using long-term ecosystem service and biodivers...
11 November 2012
The International Long Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER), of which LTER-Europe is a part, is leading the development of the GEO BON Global Network of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Observation Sites. The medium terms aims of this initiative are to pull together the "community of common interest" of individuals and contact points for sites and networks that would be willing to contribute to the network.
A meta-database of sites will al...
18 August 2012
The Global Land Project has formally accepted ILTER as an endorsed network, enabling ILTER to participate more strongly in GLP research programmes.
The International LTER network, ILTER, has been accepted as an endorsed network of the Global Land Project (GLP), a joint core Project of both the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). The GLP...
9 March 2012
The EU's INTERACT research infrastructure project, which includes some ILTER research sites, has recently been highlighted by the EU as a success story.
The EU is funding a number of infrastructure projects aiming to build environmental research and monitoring capacity. INTERACT is one such project. Its main objective is to build capacity for identifying, understanding, predicting and responding to diverse environmental changes throughou...
14 June 2011
News of the LTSER workshop that took place in Helsinki in June, co-organised by LTER-Europe and ALTER-Net
The workshop 'Long term socio-ecological research: What do we know from science and practice?' was co-organised by LTER-Europe and ALTER-Net. It took place in Helsinki, Finland from 14-17 June 2011. The workshop was attended by 33 people; 14 European LTER networks were represented. The programme featured nine keynote presentations, e...