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

News

13 February 2023
Ninety researchers from 26 countries, part of the eLTER PPP and eLTER PLUS projects, gathered in Mallorca from 16 to 20 May 2022 for the first ever consortia physical meeting. This was a great opportunity to capture the spirit of the projects, so a professional team was hired to shoot 23 videos which we present to you now. They are grouped into three categories: - eLTER Stakeholders Information: The videos here aim to provide comprehensive and tailored information to the four main Stakehold...
13 February 2023
Berchtesgaden National Park is Germany's only national park in the Alps. It offers unique opportunities for research on mountain landscapes and their natural dynamics. Particularly relevant research topics include species conservation, ecosystem dynamics, long-term ecological monitoring across trophic levels, and learning from protected areas for ecosystem management. Research and monitoring in Berchtesgaden National Park is led by Prof. Rupert Seidl, Chair of Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Manag...
7 February 2023
The cross-border project SIMILE (Italian acronym for “System for the Integrated Monitoring of Insubric Lakes and their Ecosystems”) financed within the Interreg Italy-Switzerland Cooperation Programme 2014-2020, is coming to an end. SIMILE focused on three subalpine lakes, two of which, Maggiore and Como, belonging to the LTER Italy network.The project’s general objectives were the improvement of lake monitoring and the strengthening of the coordinated management of water through an intensificat...
6 February 2023
The LTSER Sabor site in the Northeast of Portugal has been participating in the LIFEPLAN project for the last two years. LIFEPLAN is coordinated by Helsinki University, with several partners across the world aiming to assess the global diversity of a wide diversity of terrestrial taxa, including birds, mammals, insects, plants, and fungi.Using the most recent advances in sampling methods, as well as in molecular, bioinformatic, bioacoustics and statistical analysis, the project aims to set the s...
6 February 2023
Atmospheric pollution is associated with demonstrated health and climate issues. Our understanding of the sources and transformation processes are confronted with the chemical complexity of the particulate phase, and more particularly of its organic fraction. The metrological limits of the instruments commonly used in the various observatories therefore deprive us of a complete vision of the mechanisms involved.Indeed, it has been recently underlined that in Paris, for instance, around 80% of or...
6 February 2023
The ESA EarthCARE Team is looking for a young graduate trainee to undertake an investigation into the EarthCARE mission. EarthCARE’s objective is to investigate the interaction between clouds, aerosols and radiation, providing global profiles of clouds, aerosols and precipitation along with co-located radiative flux measurements. The data will be used to evaluate the representation of these constituents in weather forecasting and climate models. The payload consists of the ATmospheric LIDar...
3 February 2023
The Riserva Naturale Montagna di Torricchio is a protected area in the Central Apennines, Italy. During a recent survey of the reserve's insect biodiversity, directed by Dr. Federico Landi, a new species of beetle was found.As reported by Magrini (2021), Duvalius landii is a medium to large species of beetle that lacks eyes and pigmentation. It belongs to the straneoi group, cirocchii subgroup (sensu Magrini 2017).ReferencesMagrini P., 2017 - Revisione dei Duvalius Delarouzée, 1859 dei Gruppi be...
2 February 2023
The Karst Research Institute at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) is the leading partner of the LTER Slovenia consortium which belongs to eLTER. Within the consortium, multidisciplinary research focuses on karst areas, regions characterized by water-soluble rocks, which results in the absence of water at the surface, as water flows mainly underground through fractures.On the surface, the most characteristic karst landforms are karst plateaus and various...
1 February 2023
The permanent position of scientist at INRAE in soil sciences (erosion and effect of plant cover), at the LISAH lab is now open to competition, with the following schedule.Candidates must have a PhD or equivalent. In-depth skills in soil science and, ideally, in soil physics are highly recommended. Knowledge in modelling would be particularly appreciated. Basic knowledge of functional ecology would be a plus. Good interpersonal skills and openness to multidisciplinary are essential.Candidates sh...
1 February 2023
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, is looking for a PostDoc (2 years) or PhD student (3 years) in ground-based remote sensing of low-level clouds and fog in the context of the European Aerosol, Clouds and Trace Gases Research Infrastructure (ACTRIS) project. The successful candidate will work with state-of-the-art ground-based remote sensing instrumentation and collaborate locally and in the wider ACTRIS network. Learn more and apply here.
7 September 2017
This paper considers the benefits linking two approaches - Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) and Ecosystem Integrity (EI) -  in the context of two global networks - ILTER and GEO BON.                 The lead author, Peter Haase, along with many of the paper's co-authors, is involved in European LTER and it's development. Abstract Global change effects on biodiversity and human well-being call for improved long-term environmental data as...
20 May 2017
The Brief 'Pursuing benefits for nature and society' presents some of the key research findings and practical experiences presented at the international ALTER-Net conference in May 2017 on ‘Nature and society: synergies, conflicts, trade-offs’. It formulates calls to policymakers that follow from these findings and experiences as well as from the panel debate that was part of the conference.Key messages in the Policy Brief are:Considering multiple values, including relational values, is essentia...
19 February 2015
The LTER-Europe conference (19-20 February 2015) starts today in Vienna, Austria, hosted by Environment Agency Austria.             The meeting is an opportunity for representatives from national Long-Term Ecosystem Research (LTER) networks across Europe to meet and share LTER-related issues and new developments within the field. The strategic development of LTER-Europe will be discussed, as will Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER). We'll consider new and...
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...
21 December 2021
On 23rd November 2021 Kevin Bishop (Sweden), the new Chairperson of the eLTER Interim Council (Ministerial delegations) met several members of the eLTER team (Jaana Bäck, Terhi Rasilo, Marjut Kaukolehto & Michael Mirtl) in Helsinki, Finland.A full day was dedicated to clarifying several strategic eLTER matters, discussing the status of eLTER across 26 countries and working on the agenda of the third eLTER Interim Council (IC), to be held on 28 and 29 January 2022.A deeper understanding of th...
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...
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...
2 November 2021
"Frontiers in Soil Science" announced a call for articles for its special issue on "Greenhouse gas measurements in underrepresented areas of the world".  The submission deadline is 24 March 2022. This Research Topic aims at facilitating the communication of results from studies that have measured or estimated greenhouse gas fluxes and budgets in underrepresented areas or the world. Submission of original research articles focused on the following themes, both from natural and anthropog...
2 November 2021
The Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute invite applications for a joint professorship in Aerosol Chemistry. The new professor will act as Head of the Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry at PSI. The successful candidate, an internationally renowned expert in the field of aerosol chemistry, will head the Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry and will further advance the laboratory’s expertise in the investigation of atmospheric aerosol chemi...
21 September 2021
Insects have an important function for both ecosystems and the economy. Almost 90% of flowering wild plants worldwide depend at least partially on pollination by animals. And more than 75% of all crops also need pollinators if they are to produce a high yield and good quality. But what about these important helpers? Where are their populations threatened? And what can be done about it? So far, there has been a lack of systematic inventories in Europe that can provide answers to these questions....
15 November 2016
The 10th anniversary of the Italian LTER network, which comprises terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine sites, will be marked with a conference in Mantova, Italy, on November 16th. The event will be an opportunity to present the results of 10 years of intense environmental research and observation, to celebrate past projects and to discuss new initiatives. Participants will discuss the achievements of LTER-Italy during this 10 year period and identify areas on which to focus efforts in...