Template Categorie Articoli: Gutemberg

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 11^th 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:

EcoLogicaCup

ENVRIplus Scientific Game

Ecopotential Scientific Game

MEDCIS Scientific Game

 The LTER-Italy network towards an open and sustainable infrastructure

The 12^th annual LTER – Italy meeting and the scientific Conference will take place in Bolzano, at the EURAC-Research premises, on May 28^th and 29^th. The event will close, on May 30^th, 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.

Phytoplankton are an extremely diverse group of microscopic photosynthetic organisms, which play an important role, accounting for half of global primary production and affecting the biogeochemical processes. Moreover, phytoplankton provide a good model system to test trait-based approaches, because of their relative simplicity and the well-defined traits that determine their ecological niche.

To address basic and applied researches on phytoplankton ecology, the LifeWatch e-Infrastructure provides tools and services to enable researchers sharing and analysing phytoplankton data. Among them, LifeWatch Italy developed the “Phytoplankton Traits Computation“, a web service designed to support traits-based researches on phytoplankton communities. The main purpose of this web service, based on R functions, is to provide a user-friendly workflow, including all the fundamental steps for the computation of some phytoplankton traits, without using any command line. It allows to calculate morphological and demographic traits, such as hidden dimension, bio-volume, surface area, surface-volume ratio, cell carbon content, density, carbon content, and total bio-volume (for more details about phytoplankton traits, please visit the PhytoTrait Thesaurus).

The web service can work on data resources shared on the LifeWatch Data Portal and harmonised according to the “LifeWatch Data Schema”.

LifeWatch Italy and EVER-EST, the H2020 project European Virtual Research Environement for Research (Earth Science Themes), have thus signed a joint letter of intent.

This cooperation is possible thanks to key role played by the Italian National Research Council in both initiatives and will allow LifeWacth Italy to benefit from and accommodate the EVER-EST VRE suite of tools and services, providing, at the same time, EVER-EST with the opportunity to reach a wider community of diverse users. 

The Letter of Intent freshly signed formalises LifeWatch Italy and EVER-EST mutual will to define a framework for cooperation, fostering the use of common standards and protocols, supporting the fulfilment of open access policies for publications, data and softwares, and encouraging the joint development of tools and services

The main goal of the Horizon 2020 GLOBIS-B “GLOBal Infrastructures for Supporting Biodiversity research”, a project which has originally been promoted by LifeWatch, is to bring together different top expertise related to Biodiversity in a broad and multidisciplinary forum in order to advance the worldwide harmonised implementation of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs). To achieve this goal, internationally acknowledged biodiversity scientists, computer scientists, experts of research infrastructures and legal interoperability have attended four workshops until now.

After the first two workshops focused on ‘Species populations’ EBV class, and the third one focused on ‘Species traits’ EBV class, about fifty chief biodiversity, research infrastructures, ICT and policy specialists have met in Bari from 26 to 28 February 2018, at the occasion of 4^th workshop focusing on the ‘Species interactions’ EBV class. Taking into account three main case studies about plant-pollinator, predator-prey, and microbial interactions respectively, basic concepts, current challenges of data and computational tools availability, standards establishment and policy issues have been discussed in order to assess the minimum set of essential measurements and general workflows to monitor species interaction for the estimation of EBV.

“The workshop has been an occasion for LifeWatch-ITA to reinforce its integration in a fully international context and in a particularly interesting field” says Graziano Pesole (LifeWatch-ITA, CNR-IBIOM, Bari, Italy).”These workshops, dedicated to species interactions, are of a key importance for LifeWatch-ITA, in fact one of the four main pillars of its e-Biodiversity Research Institute, the Interactions Thematic Centre, focuses its research activities in this domain” adds Alberto Basset (LifeWatch-ITA, University of Salento, Italy)

From 25 to 27 June 2018, LifeWatch Italy will hold its Annual National Conference in Rome.

The Annual Conference of LifeWatch Italy, open to the national scientific community, aims at presenting the latest developments of the national node of the European infrastructure, welcoming, at the same time, external contributions on case studies and creating new opportunities for interaction and cooperation with the Infrastructure.

More in details, the Scientific Conference will be held on 25 and 26 June 2018 and will be articulated in three plenary and parallel thematic sessions addressing key topics at the heart of LifeWatch Italy activities in the last two years. These will focus on:

1. Data, Metadata & ICT Services.

2. Semantics Resources.

3. Citizen Science, Communication of Science & Education.

The Annual Conference will be closed by an institutional day with a round table, hosted in the fascinating Italian Presidential Estate of Castelporziano. In collaboration with the Secretariat General of the Presidency of the Italian Republic, LifeWatch Italy is gathering the main National stakeholders and relevant Research Infrastructures, to present itself and the opportunity offered for a deeper knowledge and better management of biodiversity and ecosystems, and to discuss how interconnecting the RIs active in the field.

More details and future updates will be available on the Conference website.

The Call for Abstracts is available here.

To send a contribution for the scientific conference, please register and fill in the whole form. You have time until 4 May 2018.

Bridging the gap between freshwater mollusk research and conservation in the Old and New World

Conservation of freshwater mollusks is essential to maintain the important ecosystem functions and services they provide. Nonetheless, they are at risk as evidenced by their rapid and extensive global decline due to multiple causes, mainly of anthropic origin. Conservation strategies to stop this negative trend and maximize current biodiversity are urgently needed but are hampered by the lack of key information. The Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society (FMCS) can be a reference for everyone but, to date, the Society is primarily serving members in the United States and Canada. This recognition prompted the idea of expanding the Society’s role on other continents, starting in Europe.

Conservation of freshwater mollusks is essential to maintain the important ecosystem functions and services they provide. Nonetheless, they are at risk as evidenced by their rapid and extensive global decline due to multiple causes, mainly of anthropic origin. Conservation strategies to stop this negative trend and maximize current biodiversity are urgently needed but are hampered by the lack of key information. The Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society (FMCS) can be a reference for everyone but, to date, the Society is primarily serving members in the United States and Canada. This recognition prompted the idea of expanding the Society’s role on other continents, starting in Europe.

Deadline for early registration: 30 April;  abstract submission: June 30, 2018

https://molluskconservation.org/EVENTS/2018-INTNL/2018_FMCS-INTNLMeet.html

There is no doubt that Environmental Science is undergoing a period of major change, having to tackle the challenge of data collection, in an era driven by data themselves. Large amounts of data. This approach is necessary when we decide to address the study of ecological processes, from the niche level to the macro-ecological one, investigating multiple species in multiple habitats at the same time.

The relationship between native and alien biodiversity and environmental suitability for land-based biological invasions already poses a complex challenge, in marine habitats the scenario get even more complicated due to a greater quantity of animal phyla. The distribution of the species is here a much more complex phenomenon compared to other environments, being able to develop equally in time and 3D space.

With this in mind, a good number of European projects and infrastructures offer great opportunities making available both primary biodiversity and geographical data. Unfortunately, these data often come from different sources, needing to be harmonised, validated and cleaned up to make them effectively interoperable. A challenge successfully tackled by LifeWatch Italy, which has made available on its Data Portal big data and services to investigate the vulnerability of marine habitats to biological invasions. Taxonomic records have been gathered from specific datasets belonging to several research institutions, both public and private. These data have been shared within the context of the Virtual Research Environment Alien Species of LifeWatch Italy.

Overall, 12521 records (5067 planktonic, 7105 benthic, and 349 nektonic) from 93 marine sites have been gathered by the LifeWatch community in Italy. The data validation has been made in the VRE by its data cleaning semi-automatic service (http://www.servicecentrelifewatch.eu/lifewatch-data-validation) available in the LifeWatch Data Portal, and based on the LifeWatch-ITA Global Names Architecture, referring to PESI, WoRMS, and Catalogue of Life. The study led to the publication of a scientific paper entitled “Ecosystem vulnerability to alien and invasive species: a case study on marine habitats along the Italian coast“. The manuscript has is epistemological grounds in the LifeWatch Italy Alien Species Thesaurus, and is based on a glossary developed by the infrastructure researchers, together with its ICT group. It provides the key terminological resources for the development of the information architecture for the online LifeWatch portal and search platform about alien and invasive species.

The results of this macro-ecological approach focus on the importance of performing large-scale studies, since adopting ecosystem approaches to marine invasion management seems especially fruitful.

At the occasion of the next SItE Congress, which will be held in Cagliari from 12 to 14 September 2018, LifeWatch Italy is organising a session on “Data resources and eco-informatics tools for biodiversity“.

LifeWatch Italy is working on developing tools and services to collect, store and share ecological data, to further understand and better tackle environmental issues, facilitating cooperation among different Institutions and Organisations on the large scale.

This session is an opportunity for different insitutions to present the tools and services they are willing to share within the infrastructure, showing to the national scientific community how LifeWatch-ITA can support research groups in carrying on their own activities.

Updates and information will be published on this page.

The eLTER H2020 project offers researchers funded access to nine European long-term ecosystem research sites.

The related TA call is currently open for applications and will close on 11 March 2018.

For full details, see the European LTER website: http://www.lter-europe.net/elter/ta