Coordination ActivitiesCoordination Activities
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The overarching goal of the networking activities is to establish strong long-lasting cooperation between the 2 communities (experimental and observational sites) and infrastructure components involved in the project to achieve the long-term vision of the ExpeER integrated infrastructure via 6 work packages :
A range of facilities to study ecosystems have been developed in Europe, but they have been developed independently of each others. In vitro facilities (ecotrons) are extremely expensive to build and maintain, hence it is important that these facilities are well coordinated on a European level to ensure efficient use and complementary with respect to scientific questions, climatic and geographic regions and ecosystem types. Highly instrumented experimental and monitoring field sites are more numerous and represent a large investment. With a coordinated approach such as developed in ExpeER, they will deliver more powerful results. However, a detailed and coherent description of these facilities doesn’t exist in Europe and is needed to develop complementarities and coordination. An in-depth review of the available instrumentation, conditioning systems, methods, experimental designs, coverage of ecosystem types and geographic regions, institutional support and contact points for these facilities will be performed in this work package. As a result, a roadmap outlining strategies for synergies and integration of European infrastructure components will be developed to enable a coordinated approach to the implementation of the future EXPEER integrated infrastructure both during the project and in the post-funded phase.
WP 2 : Standardization of core variables and protocols.
WP 3 : Information management and data access.
WP 4 : Creating a sustainable network. The starting point for ExpeERs networking towards an improved infrastructure for terrestrial ecosystem research in the European Research Area are the two original groups merged in ExpeER with the key strengths i) to structure the experimental component of the European ecosystem research at different scales (ANAEE), ii) to test and integrate this component with highly instrumented observational approaches, as well as iii) conceptualize their embedding in large scale ecosystem monitoring schemes (LTER-Europe). But the preparation of a permanent (structural) impact of ExpeER needs to go beyond the limits of the original communities, even if selected top sites of these communities form the backbone of ExpeER action. This work package will establish links with related infrastructures on the network level, including integration in broad scale site networks (observational power, representativeness), in order to prepare for the post- funded phase of EXPEER and explore options for permanent funding of the EXPEER distributed ecosystem research infrastructures.
WP 5 : Communication and dissemination.
WP 6 : Management of the calls for Access.
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