News
2 May 2022
A proposal for the world's first science national park is currently being considered by the Finnish government. The 4800 ha park would be situated within southern Finland's Lammi LTER and aims to strengthen scientific activities in the area as well as serve as a platform for the general public and scientists to interact.The Evo area has a rich history of scientific research dating back over a century and has been the site of intense ecological research and monitoring for many decades. With almos...
27 April 2022
Over 600 researchers from all around the world gathered for the three eLTER Sites and platforms forum workshops on time series analysis. Based on the questionnaire results on training needs from sites, the first two workshops, led by Ulrike Obertegger (FEM-CRI, Italy), focused on time series analysis. They were open to everyone from students to researchers, independent of involvement in eLTER projects.These workshops gave an introduction to the challenges of time series data and demonstrated dif...
26 April 2022
The third meeting of the eLTER Interim Council (IC) was held virtually on January 27, 2022. All 18 countries were represented in the meeting, which decided on the ongoing process for eLTER Service Portfolio development and on the strategic goals of eLTER Integrated Governance.The eLTER PPP project did initial screening of over 230 service workflows that the RI can provide to identified stakeholder groups. Next, the work proceeds with careful mapping and prioritisation and detailed specification...
22 April 2022
The eLTER discussion paper on key standard observation variables (SOV) suggested 179 variables of importance to eLTER science. Now the eLTER PLUS project task 4.2 has identified data sources providing official statistics relevant for eLTER and has tested a way to make them available to the eLTER user community.The team systematically screened almost 30 main EU and global data platforms for statistical data relevant to SOV and identified 116 datasets related to 42 SOV. Based on the pilot phase an...
20 April 2022
Under the aegis of the University of Salzburg, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Environment Agency Austria, LTER-Austria and eLTER are organising a forum on “Potential and Challenges for GI Science in the context of Long-Term Ecosystem, critical zone and socioecological Research (eLTER)” at the GI_Salzburg22 on July, 5.The forum is aiming to provide information on eLTER and to show examples of using data compiled by the network to address different research questions, highlighting the sp...
18 April 2022
NILU’s research is of direct relevance to human health and the environment. A key activity area of expertise is in the science-policy interface where NILU provides support to the development and implementation of air quality and climate change policies in Europe.It is seeking for a senior scientist/scientist with interest and capabilities to strengthen its activities on science-policy interaction, to support international and national environmental policy processes and policy/legislation develop...
18 April 2022
TROPOS is currently looking for two Post Docs who are interested in investigating the impact of controlled seeding experiments on the evolution of mixed-phase clouds. Expertise is required either in the field of radar-lidar remote sensing techniques or in cloud-resolved modelling.PostDoc-1 will work on the characterization of the transition of the seeded supercooled liquid stratiform clouds into mixed-phase clouds using synergistic, multi-wavelength and polarimetric ground-based remote sensing w...
15 April 2022
With our whole system, place-based approach, the eLTER RI is well placed toaddress some of the most pressing environmental problems facing Europe today. However, a single Research Infrastructure (RI) cannot hope to generate all the knowledge needed to build a sustainable future. Instead that knowledge has to come from multiple sources, including a range of RIs. Co-location of multiple RIs at the same physical location offers a unique opportunity to create actionable knowledge synthesized from th...
12 April 2022
In 2021 the Netherlands Long-Term Ecosystem Research Network (LTER-NL) was included in the list of Large Scale Research Infrastructure (LSRI) by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).This means that LTER-NL is now recognized as a LSRI and can apply for funding within the Dutch system. We therefore put in a large grant earlier this month where LTER-NL teams up with LifeWatch-NL and with a national scheme that monitors abiotic environmental variables (NemNet).Making use of the...
12 April 2022
The SMEAR site (Station for Measuring Ecosystem-Atmosphere Relations) is situated in the Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station of the University of Helsinki, in southern Finland. The site consists of a managed, 60-year old boreal Scots pine forest stand, two open oligotrophic fen sites and a humic lake with a forested catchment. In addition to eLTER, the site belongs to the ICOS and ACTRIS infrastructures with four labelled ICOS stations and an ACTRIS labelling process currently beginning. There are a...
4 December 2019
Improving knowledge about ecosystem functioning is essential for addressing the crucial challenges of managing limited natural resources in a sustainable manner, to assure long-term human wellbeing on the planet. The Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructure initiative (GERI) aims at establishing indispensable infrastructures across continents. GERI was discussed in a high level conference of the G7 Group of Senior Officials (GSO) in Shanghai last week, and approved as a GSO use case.
The pote...
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...