The 10th International Conference on Ecological Informatics (ICEI2018) took place in Jena, from September 24th to 28th, aiming at bringing together researchers interested in data-intensive ecology from both an ecological and a computer science point of view. The Conference was held at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität and was articulated in plena…
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The school year recently began with the awarding ceremony of the MEDCIS Scientific Gaming 2017/2018 Competition, held in Lecce, on 28 September 2018. The ceremony was attended by representatives of the winning teams of Senior and Junior categories, who had the chance of presenting their projects and sharing their enthusiasm about this experience. MEDCIS scientific game participants were asked to deepen the objectives of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), enabling the acquisition of knowledge related to the Mediterranean Sea and triggering students’ interest and attention in biodiversity, marine noise and marine litter.
The new school year also sees the start of the new editions of the Serious Game competitions, supported by LifeWatch Italy, addressing different aspects of the study of biodiversity and ecosystems.
The initiatives proposed for 2018/2019 have been organised together with the National Academy of Sciences, University of Salento and Horizon 2020 projects ENVRIplus and Ecopotential. Students are invited to make experimental projects, aimed at the comprehension and application of the scientific method on ecologically related themes, and to challenge each other through an online competition based on a serious game.
The initiatives will have both national and international dimensions, starting with EcoLogicaCup, targeting the Italian landscape with an exclusively online competition, and following with the Scientific games promoted by ENVRIplus and Ecopotential.
The competitions will be going on for the whole school year, offering materials to learn more about the subject, and proposing intermediate steps, such as training sessions and/or the experimental project delivery and evaluation. The final phase, the online competition, will be held during spring 2019, and the exact dates will be communicated on the related platform in the upcoming says.
The Scientific Games are played in teams, competing in Junior or Senior category according to the students’ age. Registration is free of any charges and (shortly) available on the respective web platforms.
Invasive alien species (IAS) are one of the worst threats to the conservation and restoration of ecosystems of our times. Human mediated introductions of plants and animals into new environments caused and are causing massive environmental and economic losses. Globally, it is estimated that more than 1.4 trillion dollars are spent every year for mitigating their damages. More than a half of global extinctions are related to alien species.
Global problems require global solutions. Preventing and mitigating impacts of IAS thus requires international collaborations. Scientists, citizens and practitioners worldwide need to join their efforts to provide a solid scientific knowledge base underpinning best practices for managing IAS.
Therefore, LifeWatch Italy welcomes the recent launch of INVASIVESNET International Association for Open Knowledge on Invasive Alien Species (please visit the website www.invasivesnet.org and the page gathering the related publications).
LifeWatch Italy is indeed very active in this field of research, with its dedicated Virtual Research Environment and case study on Ecosystem vulnerability to Alien Species arrival, providing access to data resources and species lists, environmental and climatic data, and numerous other layers of information for the study of Alien Species distribution, including a Thesaurus for the definition of alien species, additional metadata, workflows, tools for statistical analysis, and on line services.
Likewise LifeWatch Italy, INVASIVESNET aims to strengthen scientific knowledge about biodiversity and provides tools to help better manage ecosystems. Both the network and the infrastructure can support each other in reaching this goal, sharing data, tools and activities, facilitating new collaborations and exchange of ideas and maximizing visibility.
INVASIVESNET facilitates access to high quality and open source knowledge and data on IAS, promoting global exchange of information among those involved in research and management. The International Council, led by Francis Lucy, consists of internationally renowned experts from five continents, and INVASIVESNET members include individuals and organisations.
Lastly, INVASIVESNET offers discounted article processing charges to their members for publishing in one of the open access journals of the Association (Aquatic Invasion IF 1.976, BioInvasions Records IF 1.189, and Management of Biological Invasions IF 2.037).
For more information visit the website: www.invasivesnet.org or follow INVASIVESNET on Facebook or Twitter.
Contact person:
Angela Boggero
LifeWatch Italy
CNR-Water Research Institute (IRSA)
Tel. +39 0323 518300, e-mail: angela.boggero@irsa.cnr.it
From September 12th to 14th, the XXVIII Congress of the Società Italiana di Ecologia (SItE) took place in the Ex-Manifattura Tabacchi, Cagliari (Sardinia), an historic building from the second half of the 18th century, located in the city centre and currently hosting numerous cultural events. With the title “Conservation, restoration and adaptatio…
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The Advanced Phytoplankton Course (APC12) is organized by the Station Biologique de Roscoff together with the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn and the IOC Science and Communication Centre on Harmful Algae.
APC 12 aims to provide participants with in-depth expert knowledge on the identification, classification and phylogeny of marine microalgae (diatoms, dinoflagellates, coccolithophores, other phytoflagellates) by integrating morphological observations with molecular data and new approaches. The course will be taught by an international faculty including leading experts in the taxonomy of the different microalgal groups.
More detailed information are available on the website: https://sites.google.com/view/apc12/home. Please apply before September 1, 2018 at https://sites.google.com/view/apc12/applications
The Annual Conference of LifeWatch Italy 2018 took place in Rome, from June 25th to 27th, and was open to the national scientific community, presenting the latest developments of the national node, welcoming also external contributions on case studies and technological solutions, creating new opportunities for interaction and cooperation with the Infrastructure.
The Scientific Conference was held in the Department Environmental Biology University of Rome – La Sapienza. It was articulated in plenary and parallel thematic sessions addressing key topics at the heart of LifeWatch Italy activities in the last two years, focusing on “Data & Metadata”, “ICT Services & Semantics Resources” and “Citizen Science, Communication of Science & Education” with 6 plenary talks and 5 oral sessions, comprising 37 contributions (including 4 digital posters).
In the session “Data & Metadata“, experiences, models and case studies on the use of data and metadata in the study of ecosystems and biodiversity were gathered. Actually, it is increasingly demanded to host data resources in public accessible archives ensuring transparency, reproducibility and sustainability of scientific research and its results. It is of great importance that in this process, data are described in a rigorous manner, completed by metadata, essential to deeply understand data and make them accessible, interpretable and reusable over time.
In the three parallel sessions dedicated to the “ICT Services & Semantic Resources“, researchers brought the experience of a number of projects and infrastructures in the development of web services and Virtual Research Environments for the study of biodiversity and ecosystems and in the implementation of semantic resources, such as controlled vocabularies and ontologies, to support interoperability among different data infrastructures.
Finally, in the session dedicated to “Citizen Science, Communication of Science & Education” ICT tools and resources to collect and analyse citizens’ observations, as well as the possibility to access training programs were presented. Presentations focused on the development of both web services, applications and ICT platforms to facilitate citizens’ involvement, from data collection to result analysis and of learning environments and gaming resources, essential to provide students the key competences to understand the context surrounding them.
All presentations are available here. Abstract book is available on the conference website.
PT1 – Alberto Basset: The HUB of LifeWatch Italy for data resources on biodiversity and ecosystems
PT2 – Fabio Attorre: The thematic node on plant biodiversity
PT3 – Nicola Fiore: Semantics for research on biodiversity and ecosystems
PT4 – Palma Blonda: A Community Modeling Platform
PT5 – Stefano Martellos: A Citizen Science Platform
PT6 – Antonello Provenzale: Protecting Natural Ecosystems: from Earth Observation to Virtual Museums
The Portuguese Ecological Society – SPECO, together with the European Ecological Federation – EEF, calls the United Nations to establish the Ecology Day on 14th September 2018. The date is symbolic as it refers to the publication date of the modern definition of the ecology concept by Haeckel. In fact, this proposal directly follows up on the celebration for its 150th anniversary organized by the EEF back in 2016 and concluded by a Round Table held at the European Parliament in Brussels.
Would you like to join/support Ecology Day? – Like and share the Ecology Day facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ecologyday – Read and share the proposal to UN for the establishment of an ‘Ecology day’ – Join the events foreseen for 14/09/2018
14/09/2018, Lisbon (Portugal), “Ecology for a Sustainable Development” organised, a debate organised by SPECO (http://www.speco.pt/pt/iniciativas/ecology-day/63-eventos-2018);
14/09/2018, Cagliari (Italy), Training Day “Promoting education to sustainibility and disseminating innovative practises in Ecology teaching”, SItE Annual Conference (https://www.congressosite2018.it)
13/09/2018, “A guided tour to the urban permaculture project of FCUL”, Lisbon (Portugal) (http://hortafcul.wixsite.com/home);
“Changes in distribution patterns of epiphytic bryophytes in urban environments and their ecological and climatic significance”, provided by the cE3c (http://ce3c.ciencias.ulisboa.pt/). – Organise your event for the ‘Ecology Day’. Please, contact Alberto Basset (alberto.basset@unisalento.it) and/or Maria Amélia Martins-Loução (maloucao@fc.ul.pt)
From 25 to 27 June 2018, LifeWatch Italy held its annual national conference in Rome. The Annual Conference of LifeWatch Italy, open to the national scientific community, aimed at presenting the latest developments of the national node, at the same time, welcoming external contributions on case studies and technological solutions, creating new opportunities for interaction and cooperation with the Infrastructure.
The Scientific Conference (25-26 June 2018) proposed three thematic sessions focusing on some of the key aspects on which LifeWatch-ITA has been active in the latest year, such as data and metadata, ICT services and semantic resources, citizen science, communication of science and training.
The Annual Conference was closed by an Institutional day Organised in collaboration with the General Secretariat of the Italian Presidency of the Republic in the fascinating framework of the Presidential Estate of Castelporziano, featuring a conference followed by a round table. The institutional conference was opened by Prof Massimo Inguscio (CNR President) and Alfredo Guarra (Deputy Secretary for management activities of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic) highlighting the potential that a research infrastructure combining expertise in ecology and ICT holds in tackling the challenges ahead of today’s society, followed by Giulia Bonella‘s (Castelporziano Presidential Estate Director) welcome to the guests. The conference presented LifeWatch Italy to national stakeholders and showed, thanks to the contribution of the Ministry for Education, University and Research (represented by Gianluigi Consoli), the Ministry of the Environment and Protection of Land and Sea (represented by Maria Carmela Giarratano), LifeWatch-ERIC CEO (Jesús Miguel Santamaria) and ERIC Forum Chair (Juan Miguel Gonzalez-Aranda), how the competences held by LifeWatch can trigger a virtuous cycle capable of concretely impacting, not only on the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems, but also on aspects with high social relevance, such as employment and sustainable development, energy supply, nutrition and agriculture.
Finally, the round table concluded the working session enabling an exchange among representatives of research infrastructures (such as MIRRi, Danubius, LTER, AnaEE, ICOS, EMSO) active in the field of life sciences, contributing to the debate on a coordination strategy to strengthen the competitiveness of the national research on biodiversity and ecosystems, and its synergies with the socio-economic components.
The day was closed by a tour through the Presidential Estate discovering its environmental, historical and archaeological heritage, given by Daniele Cecca (Responsible for scientific and technical management area, environmental research and education).
Article by Franca Sangiorgio, published in Issue n°4 of LifeWatch Italy Bulletin
Raising awareness on the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem research and management towards the younger audiences is a key challenge for a Research Infrastructure, as LifeWatch, with societal implications. Awareness comes from knowledge, and informed students will become tomorrow’s conscious adults, attentive to biodiversity and other ecological issues. Unfortunately, biodiversity and ecology, in general, hardly find their place in curricular Italian schools’ programmes; in this context, LifeWatch Italy and the Service Centre, coherently with their communication and education mission, provide opportunities to approach this study in an informal amusing way.
In particular, LifeWatch Italy promotes initiatives based on informal education, as situated learning and learning by doing are considered particularly effective methodologies in this field, involving students in competitions and tournaments on relevant biodiversity issues, providing support for the implementation of the different ICT tools and platforms necessary.
LifeWatch Italy has been supporting the first Italian online competition on ecology, EcoLogicaCup, celebrating this year its 11th edition, challenging Secondary high school students on key issues for today’s society, such as Pollution and Sea Management and Sustainability. Since this positive experience, LifeWatch Italy has decided to further invest into the serious game potential, and has been working with the H2020 projects ENVRIplus and Ecopotential, and the DG Environement one, MEDCIS, in the organisation of different European tournaments, mixing online and offline activities, during which different teams will challenge each other carrying out a research project on the topics assigned (i.e., Biodiversity and Ecosystem, Natural Hazards, ICT, Marine Biology, Wetlands, etc.) and then competing simultaneously playing online dedicated scientific video games.
Please visit the respective gaming platforms for more information:
The LTER-Italy network towards an open and sustainable infrastructure
The 12th annual LTER – Italy meeting and the scientific Conference will take place in Bolzano, at the EURAC-Research premises, on May 28th and 29th. The event will close, on May 30th, with an excursion to the LTSER site “Val Mazia”, organized by the site Coordinators, which are also hosting the whole meeting.
The Conference will be dedicated to different aspects and perspectives related to the application of the principles of “Open Science” in LTER-Italy.
“Open science” and “sustainability” are two fundamental requirements for the consolidation of long-term ecological research (LTER) networks as research infrastructures, at national and European level. In this context, features typical of the collaborative nature of LTER networks, such as knowledge and data sharing, connection and interaction among different disciplines, transnational access to sites, dissemination of results, need to be increasingly developed and strengthened, since they are crucial for the sustainability of the networks themselves and to effectively address key environmental challenges.
The conference aims to contribute to examining and understanding the limits, challenges and opportunities for the development of open science in the LTER-Italy network. Topics relevant for LTER-Italy and the LifeWatch Italy community as well and connected, directly or indirectly, to the open science issues, will be addressed through invited lectures: the development of socio-ecological aspects, as an opening towards a vision that integrates social and ecological systems in LTER sites; the connection with paleoecology, as an opening to a discipline that has a different perspective of the concept of “long term”; the applications of the principles of open access to the activities of the network, with a dedicated workshop that will foster the definition of best practices. Finally, LTER – Italy researchers will present results from their sites, highlighting as well possibilities and difficulties to make them openly accessible.