Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Infrastructures: Challenges and Opportunities reveals how environmental research infrastructures (RIs) provide new valuable insights on ecological processes that cannot be realized by more traditional short-term funding cycles and are integral to understand our changing world. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Infrastructures bonds the latest state-of-the-science knowledge on environmental RIs, the challenges in creating them, their place in addressing scientific frontiers, and the new perspectives they bear. Each chapter is thoughtfully invested with fresh viewpoints from the environmental RI vantage as the authors explore and explain many topics such as the rationale and challenges in global change, field and modeling platforms, new tools, challenges in data management, distilling information into knowledge, and new developments in large-scale RIs. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Infrastructures serves an advantageous guide for academics and practitioners alike who aim to deepen their knowledge in the field of science and project management, and logistics operations.
Preface: Goals and Structure of This Book
Editors
Contributors
Section I Ecosystem Research Infrastructures: The Need to Address Global Change and Associated Challenges
Integrated Experimental Research Infrastructures: A Paradigm Shift to Face an Uncertain World and Innovate for Societal Benefit
Abad Chabbi, Henry W. Loescher, Mari R. Tye, and David Hudnut
National Ecological Observatory Network: Beginnings, Programmatic and Scientific Challenges, and Ecological Forecasting
Henry W. Loescher, Eugene F. Kelly, and Russ Lea
Field Phenotyping: Concepts and Examples to Quantify Dynamic Plant Traits across Scales in the Field
M. Pilar Cendrero-Mateo, Onno Muller, Hendrik Albrecht, Andreas Burkart, Simone Gatzke, Benedikt Janssen, Beat Keller, Niklas Körber, Thorsten Kraska, Shizue Matsubara, Jinquan Li, Mark Müller-Linow, Roland Pieruschka, Francisco Pinto, Pablo Rischbeck, Anke Schickling, Angelina Steier, L. Michelle Watt, Ulrich Schurr, and Uwe Rascher
Section II A New Generation of Controlled Environment, Field, and Modeling Platforms
Advancing Understanding of Hydrological and Biogeochemical Interactions in Evolving Landscapes through Controlled Experimentation at the Landscape Evolution Observatory
Aditi Sengupta, Luke A. Pangle, Till H. M. Volkmann, Katerina Dontsova, Peter A. Troch, Antonio A. Meira, Julia W. Neilson, Edward A. Hunt, Jon Chorover, Xubin Zeng, Joost van Haren, Greg A. Barron-Gafford, Aaron Bugaj, Nate Abramson, Michael Sibayan, and Travis E. Huxman
Quantifying Relationships between Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function with Experiments
Charles A. Nock, Lander Baeten, Andy Hector, Kris Verheyen, Wolfgang W. Weisser, and Michael Scherer-Lorenzen
Frontiers of Ecosystem Modeling and Large-Scale Experiments
Lifen Jiang, Jiang Jiang, Junyi Liang, Kevin R. Wilcox, Scott L. Collins, Alan K. Knapp, William T. Pockman, Melinda D. Smith, and Yiqi Luo
Section III New Tools to meet New Challenges: Emerging Technologies for Exploring Unknown Ecosystem Processes
Large-Scale Sequence-Based Information: Novel Understanding of Ecology and Novel Avenues to Test Ecological Hypotheses
Achim Quaiser, Alexis Dufresne, Sophie Coudouel, Marine Biget, and Philippe Vandenkoornhuyse
Characterization of Biogeochemical Processes at the Microscale: Concepts and Applications of NanoSIMS
Carsten W. Mueller, Laurent Remusat, and Cornelia Rumpel
Climate Warming Experiments: Selecting the Appropriate Technique
Hans J. De Boeck and Ivan Nijs
Remote Sensing in the Reflective Spectrum: A Powerful and Applied Technology for Terrestrial Ecosystem Science
Arnon Karnieli
A Blueprint for a Distributed Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Infrastructure
Heye Bogena, Harrie-Jan Hendricks Franssen, Carsten Montzka, and Harry Vereecken
Section IV Data Management and Access
Computational Challenges in Global Environmental Research Infrastructures
Paul Martin, Yin Chen, Alex Hardisty, Keith Jeffery, and Zhiming Zhao
ÆKOS: Next-Generation Online Data and Information Infrastructure for the Ecological Science Community
David J. Turner, Anita K. Smyth, Craig M. Walker, and Andrew J. Lowe
Comprehensive and Coordinated Approach of GEOSS to Ecosystem Challenges
Antonello Provenzale and Stefano Nativi
Advancing the Software Systems of Environmental Knowledge Infrastructures
Markus Stocker
Section V Infrastructure Integration and Perspectives
Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network: A Network of Networks Approach to Building and Maintaining Continental Ecosystem Research Infrastructure
Nicole Thurgate, Andrew J. Lowe, and Timothy F. Clancy
Community-Driven Efforts for Joint Development of Environmental Research Infrastructures
Ari Asmi, Magdalena Brus, and Sanna Sorvari
Synthesis Centres: Their Relevance to and Importance in the Anthropocene
Alison Specht
Role of Long-Term Experiments in Understanding Ecosystem Response to Global Change
Henry H. Janzen and Benjamin H. Ellert
Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS): An Infrastructure to Monitor the European GreenhouseGas Balance
Bert Gielen, Ivan A. Janssens, Maarten Op de Beeck, Denis Loustau, Reinhart Ceulemans, Armin Jordan, and Dario Papale
Dr. habil. Abad Chabbi, Director of Research at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) is a plant ecologist and soil biogeochemist. He worked at the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; the Faculty of Environmental Science in Cottbus, Germany; the University of Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris, France; and at INRA, where he has been leading the National Observatory for Environmental Research-Agro-Ecosystems, Biogeochemical Cycles and Biodiversity (www.soere-acbb.com) since 2009. His current research centers on understanding the link between soil carbon sequestration, nutrient availability and stoichiometry in the plant-soil system, biodiversity, and the influence that land use management and climate change may have on these dynamics. During his career, Dr. Chabbi coordinated a number of international multidisciplinary projects, chaired and organized numerous international symposiums, and edited books and several special issues of leading international journals. He has presented a number of keynote lectures and seminars around the world. Currently, Dr. Chabbi is a member/expert of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, the Chinese Academy of Science, the Czech Science Foundation, the German Research Science Foundation (DFG), the Hercules Foundation (Hercules Stichting), Belgium; the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), UK; the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), UK; and the European commission (DG Research & Innovation and DG Agriculture and Rural Development). Dr. Chabbi is the coordinator of two strategic European FP7 projects, "ExpeER" and "ANAEE", and deeply involved in ENVRIPlus, a cluster H2020 project. Since April 2013, he has also been leading the C2 component of the Ecosystems Task at Group on Earth Observations (GEO).
Dr. Henry W. Loescher's career has been at the nexus of science, engineering, and project development. Formally educated as an ecosystem scientist, he received his PhD and MSc from the University of Florida (forest ecology) and undergraduate degrees from the State University of New York (SUNY) and Vermont State College (environmental science, agronomy, and applied science). His active research projects include determining the biotic and abiotic controls on ecosystem-level carbon, water, and energy balance across a range of spatial and temporal scales, and challenging ecological theory. Dr. Loescher is the Director of Strategic Development in the Battelle-National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a first-of-its-kind, continental-scale major research facility that integrates science, engineering, and project management. Dr. Loescher has led multiple NEON Project Science Teams and engineering efforts (instrumentation, mobile deployment, aquatic science, etc.), and he is currently pioneering domestic and international efforts to link large-scale environmental observatories and their "Big Data" to address current and future environmental problems facing society today. As such, he sits on numerous large-project, international advisory boards. Prior to his tenure at NEON, he was at Oregon State University, administrating the DOE AmeriFlux QA/QC Program.
"A long overdue and fine analysis of the importance of ecosystems and ecosystem research in this time of global change. This should be required reading for any one concerned about achieving truly sustainable development."
– Thomas E. Lovejoy, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, United States
"[...] is a timely and comprehensive account of the emergence of large-scale ecological research infrastructure, worldwide. A fortunate convergence between the need to address emerging ecological problems with the technology to understand pattern and process at ecosystem scale has led to dramatic progress in this field. The ability to combine automated sensors, remote sensing, computational power and data management techniques has provided ecologists with a whole new toolbox. It brings with it new challenges of organization and design in order to provide an infrastructure which is fit-for-use, multi-institutional, adaptive and durable. This volume covers the learning achieved so far in implementing research platforms of this kind."
– Robert J Scholes, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
"[...] a very timely book. Large-scale infrastructures are essential to advance our understanding of the Earth System at a variety of scales. The establishment of these is often difficult as it conflicts with traditional short term funding cycles. This book comes at a time when several such large-scale ecological infrastructures are indeed being established worldwide based on a plethora of new scientific ideas and. It deals however not only with the science questions driving the need for infrastructures, but importantly also with crucial issues such as data quality and accessibility and the introduction and development of new technologies. The editors have done a great job in producing this much-needed overview that will enable a new generation of scientists and other users to appreciate the need, value and benefits of large scale infrastructures."
– Han Dolman, Free University Amsterdam, Netherlands
"This volume describes how to approach contemporary global environmental challenges with large and integrated experimental and monitoring infrastructure, including the scientific and engineering platforms necessary to acquire, evaluate, maintain, interpret, and synthesize vast amounts of data in order to produce useful knowledge. Building and connecting research infrastructure across the globe is a frontier science and this book, edited by Abbad Chabbi and Hank Loescher provides valuable lessons learned to date from a number of aspects of networked activities worldwide."
– Jill Baron, U.S. Geological Survey, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA