Highlights from the BES Annual Meeting in Liverpool

BES 2024

From 10 to 13 December 2024, over 1500 ecologists gathered in Liverpool for Europe’s largest conference dedicated to ecology.

The event held particular relevance for LifeWatch ERIC, thanks to a rich programme of Thematic sessions, addressing the biodiversity crisis, nature restoration policies and practices, novels tools and technologies to tackle current challenges, and much more.

This annual meeting also brought together one of the most relevant scientific communities for LifeWatch ERIC’s mission.

Earlier this year, LifeWatch ERIC was featured in the autumn issue of the British Ecological Society’s Niche magazine, reinforcing the strong connection between the research infrastructure and the ecology community (read more here).

LifeWatch ERIC attended the conference with a booth dedicated to research communities facilities, services and resources (including ENVRI-Hub NEXT), and a series of talks dedicated to biodiversity monitoring, conservation strategies, and more.

The booth was a great success, directly engaging more than 300 attendees. A unique opportunity to collect feedback on user needs and research priorities.

Researchers were invited to share their views via brief surveys about the challenges they face and how LifeWatch ERIC’s services could support their work.

The response was extremely positive: 275 scientists and researchers from 33 different countries participated, representing different demographics and career stages, from early-career researchers under 30 to established experts over 60 years old. A great result, that highlights a growing interest in our services and offers insights into the needs, priorities and engagement level of researchers. This will help us to better tailor our services to match the expectations of ecologists, and biodiversity and ecosystem researchers.

The conference also proved to be a powerful engagement tool in involving scientists within the new LifeWatch ERIC flagship initiative, dedicated to its Thematic Service Working Groups (Ecological responses to Climate Change, Animal movement and bio-logging, Biogeography, Biodiversity observatory automation, Habitat mapping and Taxonomy). These groups have the objective to promote collaboration and innovation within the research community. With 67% of respondents willing to join one or more of the thematic working groups, the surveys have been an indicator of the relevance of our thematic services and the desire of researchers to collaborate with the infrastructure.

The feedback and connections made during the conference will help us refining and expanding our services to meet the evolving needs of researchers.

For more information on the Thematic Services Working Groups you can visit this page: https://www.lifewatch.eu/thematic-services-working-groups which will be regularly updated with new developments.

Highlights from the EGI 2024 Conference

EGI 2024

LifeWatch ERIC participated in the EGI Conference 2024, held in Lecce from September 30 to October 4. Co-hosted by EGI and CMCC, the conference took place at the Hilton Garden Inn, located in the same city as our Service Centre. This conference provided an ideal platform for our team to showcase innovative solutions that apply disruptive technologies – such as AI and Blockchain – to ecological research. 

LifeWatch ERIC and EGI share a mission to advance scientific understanding across Europe. The collaboration between these two organisations has been consolidated over time through several European Projects. Two of these, EOSC Beyond (https://www.eosc-beyond.eu/) and ENVRI-Hub NEXT (https://www.egi.eu/project/envri-hub-next/), held their annual consortium meetings during the conference. 

Our team participated with a dedicated booth, along with demonstrations and presentations. Sara Montinaro and Cristina Mancarella (LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre, Lecce) staffed the exhibition booth throughout the conference, introducing participants to our e-Science infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystem research. Other members of our Common Facilities offered presentations on the Metadata Catalogue, LifeBlock and NaaVRE: a great chance to explore new opportunities for collaboration. Below is a summary of these presentations.

NaaVRE (Notebook-as-a-Virtual Research Environment)

Zhiming Zhao (VLIC Technical Manager) and Gabriel Pelouze, (Virtual Research Environment Developer) from our Virtual Laboratory & Innovations Centre in Amsterdam introduced the NaaVRE platform. NaaVRE supports researchers in creating digital twins and customised scientific workflows. Their presentations addressed two perspectives: digital twin development, and the research data lifecycle. 

The challenge behind this platform is to combine the strengths of Computational Notebooks (widely used, interactive, great for developing models), and Virtual Research Environments (great for sharing models in a more mature stage).

Zhiming Zhao provided an overview of the architecture and core functionalities (https://indico.egi.eu/event/6441/contributions/19668/), like the possibility to containerise notebook cells into functional blocks, organise them into workflows, and share them easily. This system facilitates the reuse of data, models, and computational resources, making it easier for researchers to develop digital twins and complex ecological models. The platform has been tested in several use cases, including ecosystem structure analysis from LiDAR data, radar-based bird migration monitoring, and the Dutch NWO LTER-LIFE project, demonstrating NaaVRE’s potential for supporting diverse scientific communities.

Gabriel Pelouze showed some practical applications of NaaVRE in real-world data-centric research scenarios, (https://indico.egi.eu/event/6441/contributions/19316/). In this intricate lifecycle, the possibility of customising the NaaVRE for specific scientific tasks can be very advantageous. He presented case studies where NaaVRE was used to monitor phytoplankton species and analyse ecological systems, emphasising its utility in building tailored VREs for ecosystem research. Moreover, NaaVRE’s possible integration with cloud infrastructures enables cost-effective and scalable research, by providing flexible access to computational resources.

LifeWatch ERIC Metadata Catalogue

Data and Service Architect Lucia Vaira (Service Centre, Lecce, pictured), introduced the LifeWatch ERIC Metadata Catalogue (https://indico.egi.eu/event/6441/contributions/19338/): a centralised platform designed to improve the discoverability and accessibility of biodiversity data and services. The Metadata Catalogue addresses key challenges in the field, such as data fragmentation, heterogeneity, and inconsistencies in metadata.

The catalogue, built on GeoNetwork technology, offers researchers a user-friendly interface to access datasets, improve their FAIRness, and promote a unified approach to biodiversity data management.

New features are constantly improving this service, such as the integration of metadata FAIRness evaluation tools and templates based on standardised profiles like EML 2.2.0. and ISO 19139/119. These features support data provenance and DOI assignment, which are essential for reliable data management. 

LifeBlock

Julio Paneque (Intelligent Systems, Robotics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles & HAPS Expert, ICT-Core, Spain), presented LifeBlock (https://indico.egi.eu/event/6441/contributions/19619/), a blockchain-based solution for researchers, policy makers, and developers to address the need for data integration and answer important questions about biodiversity. LifeBlock leverages semantic technologies and AI to support ecological and biodiversity research by federating data from diverse sources and creating a unified environment that supports advanced data discovery and analysis.

Through the use of knowledge graphs to enrich data with semantic context, it facilitates complex queries, enabling researchers to draw meaningful connections across datasets. LifeBlock’s integration of AI enhances its data management capabilities by automating tasks like metadata generation and data quality assessment, which streamline research processes. Additionally, the platform ensures proper attribution and provenance tracking, fostering trust and transparency within the scientific community.

For more information about these tools, you can visit the following links:

LifeBlock | https://lifeblock.eu/login 

Metadata Catalogue | https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu

NaaVRE | https://naavre.lifewatch.dev/vreapp 

The ENVRI-Hub NEXT project has kicked off

The ENVRI-Hub NEXT project, of which LifeWatch ERIC is a consortium member, kicked off on February 1. The project builds upon the solid conceptual and technical foundation established by the ENVRI-Hub. The consortium comprises 21 partners and is attending a face-to-face meeting at the EGI Foundation in Amsterdam Science Park from February 6 to 8.

ENVRI-Hub NEXT aims to expand multidisciplinary environmental sciences by fostering operational synergies between environmental research infrastructures. The project leverages complementarities in data and service provision, enhancing the integration of cutting-edge information technology. It contributes to a more integrated, productive, and globally competitive ENVRI Science Cluster. The project is set to run until January 2027, contributing to the European Open Science Cloud. ENVRI-Hub NEXT also promotes collaboration across environmental research infrastructures.

LifeWatch ERIC is actively contributing to addressing the growing demand for environmental scientific knowledge. Our involvement aligns with the project’s goal of further integrating ENVRIs across subdomains (Atmosphere, Marine, Solid Earth, and Biodiversity/Ecosystems) and horizontally, with the e-infrastructures to leverage the full potential of the ENVRI cluster for integrated environmental research.

ENVRI-Hub NEXT aligns with the World Meteorological Organisation’s set of Essential Climate Variables (ECV) and global climate indicators to transform integrated Earth observation into a concept for a global climate observation system. These variables provide empirical evidence crucial for understanding and predicting climate evolution, guiding mitigation and adaptation.

Stay tuned for the launch of the ENVRI-Hub NEXT website.