Opening up good practices and e-research collaboration opportunities in the Mediterranean with PRIMA Foundation

ICT-Core and FEDERTECH Working meeting with PRIMA Foundation.

The LifeWatch ERIC ICT-Core held an extensive working meeting at their headquarters in the Cartuja Science and Technology Park in Seville, with Octavi Quintana, Director of PRIMA Foundation.
PRIMA’s Director left an important legacy as Director of “European Research Area”, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission, while fostering the development of Research Infrastructures and policies.

LifeWatch ERIC and PRIMA – The Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area – are exploring collaboration opportunities with the intention of extending good practices and use of e-research tools in Mediterranean countries.
The aim of the PRIMA Foundation is to build research and innovation capacities and develop much-needed, shared and innovative solutions for a more sustainable management of water and agri-food systems in the Mediterranean basin. PRIMA focuses in particular on new research and innovation approaches to improve: sustainable management of water in arid and semi-arid Mediterranean areas; sustainable farming systems under Mediterranean environmental constraints; sustainable Mediterranean agri-food value chain for regional and local development.

LifeWatch ERIC CTO, Juan Miguel González-Aranda, introduced the team and explained the major initiatives in applied research and innovation, and the digital tools that LifeWatch ERIC is designing and developing to protect biodiversity and ecosystems, both in natural and urban environments. All this in collaboration with international networks such as GBIF, UNOOSA and IUCN-Med, while contributing to strengthen networks such as the EU-CELAC Working Group on Research Infrastructures.

Researchers and Project coordinators, José Manuel Ávila-Castuera (Agroecology), Jaime Lobo Domínguez-Roqueta (Satellite & HAPS Operations), Rohaifa Khaldi and Yassir Benhammou (Data Science & Artificial Intelligence), presented in detail the ongoing projects and their challenges, such as the transition from productive models to agroecology, or the generation of more precise and reliable data for the sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystem services.

For further information about PRIMA, please visit its official website.

LifeWatch ERIC strengthens international outlook at the EU-LAC Knowledge Forum

EU-LAC Knowledge Forum

On 24–25 April, LifeWatch ERIC participated in the working groups of the EU-LAC Knowledge Forum, held in Montevideo, Uruguay. The event was organised by the EU-LAC International Foundation, with the Uruguayan International Cooperation Agency (AUCI) and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) as main partners. Its purpose was to generate input to feed the agenda of the high authorities of the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean at the Summit of Heads of State and Government in the field of access to knowledge, higher education, and science, technology, and innovation. This CELAC-EU Summit of Heads of State and Government is scheduled for 17–18 July 2023, within the programme of the Spanish presidency of the European Union.

120 representatives of international or national organisations and entities participated in the EU-LAC Knowledge Forum. In addition to the plenary sessions, the work in the forum was structured in 3 face-to-face and 3 virtual groups to exchange good practices, experiences and balances of cooperation in science, technology and innovation, higher education and opportunities. LifeWatch ERIC was represented by its CTO, Juan Miguel González-Aranda, and by Maite Irazábal Plá, EU-LAC Fundraising, Networking & Projects Manager.

Within the framework of the international expansion process of LifeWatch ERIC, and with the objectives of this high-level strategic discussion forum, Juan Miguel González-Aranda held meetings with numerous authorities and representatives of the academic and scientific communities, experts from international organizations, and senior government officials. Among others, with the Vice Chancellor of the Republic of Uruguay, Nicolás Albertoni; with the Vice Minister of the Environment of Uruguay, Gerardo Amarilla de Nicola; with the Executive Director of the EU-LAC Foundation, Adrián Bonilla; with the Director of Innovation, Science and Technology of Uruguay, Alberto Majó; with the Ambassador of the EU in Uruguay, Paolo Berizzi; with the Ambassador of Spain in Uruguay, Santiago Jiménez; and with AUCI Executive Director, Mariano Berro.

The meeting with Gerardo Amarilla de Nicola, who received LifeWatch ERIC’s CTO at the complex of the Presidency of the Republic of Uruguay, had special relevance. They delved into local governance mechanisms to help implement e-Biodiversity measures in compliance with the 2030 SDGs, in synergy with the EU Green Deal and themes of Blue Growth, Agroecology, etc., applying the Motto “Thinking globally, acting locally”. They also discussed the establishment of a LifeWatch ERIC Office in Uruguay.

Also importantly, LifeWatch ERIC participated in the Forum in Working Group 1: Cooperation in science, technology, and innovation, dedicated to topics such as: Research Infrastructures; enabling environments for innovation; technology transfer; open science / open access policies; and the role of research institutions to generate the technical and scientific knowledge and expertise needed to implement EU Global Gateway investment agenda. In this vein, Juan Miguel González-Aranda reaffirmed the work of LifeWatch ERIC as a research infrastructure of best practices in EU-LAC within the framework of Biodiversity, Climate Change and Sustainable Development, citing specific working methods through the Bioregions paradigm.

You can watch the plenary session of the opening day and the conclusions of the second day here.

If you are interested in LifeWatch ERIC’s ongoing collaboration and dialogue with LAC scientific communities, watch this video.

LifeWatch Netherlands in ambitious new project LTER–LIFE

LTER-LIFE

The planet is changing rapidly; to understand and forecast how ecosystems are affected by global change, ecology should become a predictive science. LifeWatch Netherlands is an integral part of ambitious new project LTER–LIFE, starting summer 2023, in which it will contribute virtual laboratories to answer fundamental questions on the functioning and resilience of ecosystems. LTER-LIFE is a Large-Scale Research Infrastructure in the making, one of the nine projects awarded within the Dutch national roadmap for large-scale reseach infrastructre. It will provide a state-of-the-art e-infrastructure to study and predict how changes in climate and other human-induced pressures affect ecosystems and biodiversity, capitalising on recent advances in Big Data science. This will enable ecologists to link scattered long-term data on plants, animals, and the environment; share methods for data analysis, modelling, and simulation; and build digital replicas of entire ecosystems (“Digital Twins”), transforming our ability to understand how ecosystems will respond under different scenarios and mitigation measures.

In addition to fostering crucial scientific breakthroughs, the LTER LIFE infrastructure will also enable research on societal questions, such as how biodiversity will benefit from specific interventions to reduce nitrogen deposition in the Veluwe area, or how mitigation measures will impact the species composition, and thereby ecosystem functioning, in the Wadden Sea. Hence, LTER-LIFE will fit seamlessly into the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and its new EU Nature Restoration Plan, and into Dutch initiatives such as the Deltaplan Biodiversiteitsherstel. By extending the instrument to other ecosystems and their services, LTER-LIFE will also contribute to the European initiative “Destination Earth”, demonstrating technological capabilities in simulation, modelling, data science, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing in the context of biodiversity and ecosystems. Thus, the benefits of LTER-LIFE will be widely felt by scientists in the field of biodiversity, ecology and environmental sciences, as well as a broad range of societal organisations.

Together with LifeWatch Netherlands, which develops virtual laboratories to answer fundamental questions on the functioning and resilience of ecosystems, LTER-LIFE is built on:

  • Long-Term Ecosystem Research Netherlands (LTER-NL): carries out and connects time series on long-term ecosystem monitoring within so called LTER sites, and makes these data available for research. LTER-NL is part of LTER-Europe, which is on the European ESFRI road map for large infrastructure.
  • National Environmental Monitoring Network (NemNet): runs a national scheme of abiotic monitoring of soils, water and air.

For more information, please read this article from the Dutch Research Council.

LifeWatch Belgium User Story: There’s no plaice like an offshore wind farm

offshore wind farm

Offshore wind farms are built at a high rate in European waters as part of the green transition, taking up marine space that is often not available anymore to other users such as the fisheries sector. However, knowledge on the ecological effects of wind farms on commercial flatfish was lacking. Understanding the ecological impacts of an offshore wind farm on a fish species requires knowledge on its movements within and its association to the wind farm area. Therefore, a tagging study making use of an acoustic receiver network was carried out in the Belwind wind farm (Belgium), by PhD student at the Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO) and Ghent University, Jolien Buyse. This study aimed at detecting the presence of plaice Pleuronectes platessa, an important commercial flatfish species, and to study its small-scale movements around the turbine foundations.

Acoustic telemetry was chosen as a method to study their residency, site fidelity and small-scale movements around the hard substrates in order to gain insight into their behaviour within an offshore wind farm. The residency of a fish, calculated from the presences of the fish over a certain period, represents its level of association to the study area. A high residency would thereby indicate that the fish rarely leaves the wind farm, which increases the protective capacity of the area. Further, the authors were interested whether the fish returned to the wind farm area after their spawning migrations during the winter months. They studied their presence within the wind farm area over the period of an entire year. Lastly, to determine whether and when plaice preferred the hard substrate or the soft sediment, fish positions around certain turbines were calculated based on the detections. Patterns in distances to the hard substrate in relation to the time of day were analysed to detect habitat preferences that were potentially linked to feeding behaviour.

A temporal network of acoustic receivers was deployed in the Belwind wind farm over a period of one year in collaboration with the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), focal point for LifeWatch Belgium, and Wageningen Marine Research (WMR). In addition, the permanent fish acoustic receiver network of the Belgian LifeWatch Observatory was also used to detect plaice presence in the Belgian part of the North Sea.

Plaice individuals were caught by divers or using hook-and-line fishery. The authors opted for an external attachment of the transmitters to the fish, as the small body cavity of flatfish makes surgical implantation less suitable. If a plaice equipped with a transmitter swam in the vicinity of a receiver, the unique ID-code of the transmitter was stored on the receiver together with a time stamp. As such, the authors could reveal if fish were present within the wind farm area and whether a fish remained there for a prolonged period of time. Further, they also deployed multiple receivers very close to particular turbines to study the small-scale movements of plaice around the hard substrates. If the transmitter signal is picked up by at least three receivers, the position of the fish can be calculated using triangulation. Such position information reveals something about the habitat preferences of the fish related to the presence of the wind turbines.

The data of both temporary and permanent acoustic receiver networks are stored in the European Tracking Network (ETN) data portal. This data portal was developed in the framework of LifeWatch Belgium and allows the access and sharing of aquatic telemetry data. The data analysis was performed using the LifeWatch RStudio server, which offers high computing power and immediate access to the ETN portal.

The knowledge obtained from this study can be further used to inform management decisions on marine spatial planning and future wind farm developments.

This news is an adapted version of the full user story on the LifeWatch Belgium website.

LifeWatch ERIC Common Facilities Meet to Discuss Strategic Working Plan

LifeWatch ERIC Common Facilities

LifeWatch ERIC is a distributed European Research Infrastructure Consortium, currently composed of three Common Facilities and eight National Nodes. From 12–14 April, the personnel of LifeWatch ERIC Common Facilities from Spain, Italy and The Netherlands gathered in Alghero (Italy) at the premises of the University of Sassari.

ICT developers, scientists, training and communication experts, under the guidance of LifeWatch ERIC CEO, CTO and the Directors of Service Centre and the vLab and Innovations Centre joined together for a technical meeting focusing on the ongoing activities and advancements foreseen by the LifeWatch ERIC strategic working plan for the period 2022–2026.

Many were the issues under discussion, spanning from LifeWatch ERIC e-services, new generation Virtual Research Environments, remote sensing technology development and integration, on which the various members of the team contributed, bringing in their specific competences and expertise.

“LifeWatch ERIC’s most essential ingredient is its people” said CEO Christos Arvanitidis, “these three days have been a great opportunity to further foster collaboration and align the efforts made by the different components of the infrastructure. LifeWatch ERIC is at work to offer a new personalised way to access and use LifeWatch ERIC services and VREs, combining at the same time what’s provided by our infrastructure with each user’s data and needs”.

MARCO-BOLO project launched to better understand marine biodiversity decline and restore ocean health

MARCO-BOLO project

Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), MARCO-BOLO (MARCO-BOLO (MARine Coastal BiOdiversity Long-term Observations) is a €7.3 million, 4-year project that will structure and strengthen European coastal and marine biodiversity observation capabilities, linking them to global efforts to understand and restore ocean health.

The project kick-off meeting took place in Paris from 14 to 15 March 2023, gathering more than 80 participants from the project’s 28 partner institutions emanating from 14 countries and collaborating projects and partners.  The meeting also included representatives from the European Commission, the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON), EU4OceanObs, and related European-funded Horizon Europe and H2020 projects OBAMA-next, BIOcean5D, DTO- Bioflow, EuropaBON. The project is coordinated by the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC), one of the leading European Research Infrastructures, which aims at advancing ocean science to better address global environmental and societal issues.

MARCO-BOLO’s key objectives

The project has the following key objectives:

  • Improve acquisition, coordination and delivery of marine, coastal and freshwater biodiversity observations to relevant users.
  • Enable technologies for cost-effective, timely and accurate biodiversity observations.
  • Test new tools, technologies and models to better understand biodiversity decline.
  • Empower European biodiversity observatory operators, data producers and users by creating and sharing best practice guidelines for gathering and using biodiversity data to contribute to biodiversity restoration efforts.

MARCO-BOLO objectives are of European and global importance. The project deliverables will provide tangible advice for a sustainable research pipeline from data collection to data use and for a better coordinated global observing system that can better connect biodiversity with ecosystem services. A close collaboration between MARCO-BOLO and EU4OceanObs will ensure that the project outcomes are being communicated, in the international ocean governance landscape, as one of the many EU contributions to enhance collection and use of ocean data for societal challenges and needs.

Strengthening Cooperation at the AERAP Africa-Europe Science & Innovation Forum

AERAP 2023

This week, LifeWatch ERIC participated in the AERAP Africa-Europe Science and Innovation Forum, an event to reinforce the contribution of research and science through digital technologies and advance collaboration between European and African institutions through strategic innovation programmes. The forum was held in the South African Embassy in Brussels, and focused on the EU Partnership Strategy with Africa, the African Union-European Union Innovation Agenda, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, compliance with the SDGs, and the Strategy on Research Infrastructures.

LifeWatch ERIC Chief Technology Officer, Juan Miguel González-Aranda, presented in the session ‘Microbial sciences for a sustainable future’, which also featured the participation of Stefano Bertuzzi, CEO of the American Society for Microbiology; Eugene Lottering, of the National Research Foundation in South Africa, and Zeinab Osman, director general of the National Centre for Research in Sudan.

He demonstrated how LifeWatch ERIC promotes synergies in science, technology and innovation between entities and researchers from Africa and Europe, through partnership agreements which foster the green transition and access to energy. Within the AERAP platform, he co-chairs the Green Deal subgroup together with Georgina Ryan, Deputy Director for Green Economy of the Government of South Africa. Furthermore, he explained how LifeWatch ERIC cooperates with the Arab Science Research and Education Network (ASREN) and is helping the coordination of the Indigenous Knowledge Research Infrastructure (IKRI) to support the implementation of the UN Food System Summit. He also made a special mention of African researchers working in the LifeWatch ERIC Artificial Intelligence team, Rohaifa Khaldi and Yassir Benhammou, who just recently were awarded a prize at the AI4Science Workshop by a jury that included representatives from DeepMind and Google.

LifeWatch ERIC Agroecology Coordinator, José Manuel Ávila Castuera, spoke in the session ‘Science for Climate Resilient food systems in Africa’, which included speakers Petronella Chaminuka, Head of the Economic Analysis Unit, Agricultural Research Council of South Africa; and Intisar Soghayroun, who was Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Sudan.

He explained the relevance of LifeWatch ERIC as a distributed e-Infrastructure to support agricultural research and innovation in climate-resilient food systems and foster cooperation between Africa and the EU, as a facility that provides resources and services for biodiversity and ecosystems research communities in the long-term. Likewise, he detailed the involvement of LifeWatch ERIC in the structuring of the EU partnership on agroecology, through projects such as AE4EU and ALL-READY, among others. He explained the ten elements of agroecology to change the production paradigm and achieve new models for food provisioning in a globalised context. Adoption of agroecology principles can drive towards biodiversified agroecosystems, which are more sustainable from an environmental, economic and social perspective. This whole path of innovation could facilitate the implementation of an Africa-EU Research and Innovation Partnership on Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture.

LifeWatch ERIC supports the Regional Government of Murcia in observation and monitoring of Mar Menor ecosystems

Mar Menor

A general protocol of declaration of intent was signed by the Minister for Environment, Mar Menor, Universities and Research, Juan María Vázquez Rojas, and LifeWatch ERIC CTO, Juan Miguel González Aranda in the framework of the JRU LW.ES-Node LW.ES. This protocol is the starting point for the development of joint projects between the two institutions on the Mar Menor, Region of Murcia and Mediterranean Ecosystems.

LifeWatch ERIC will put its infrastructure for the observation and monitoring of Mar Menor ecosystems at the service of the the Regional Government of Murcia, thanks to the signature of a general protocol of declaration of intent between the Minister for the Environment, Mar Menor, Universities and Research, Juan María Vázquez Rojas, and LifeWatch ERIC CTO, Juan Miguel González-Aranda, in the framework of the JRU LW.ES-Node, LifeWatch Spain.
The specific activities foreseen by this protocol will be framed within the constitution of the LifeWatch ERIC Node in Spain, and will focus on the Mar Menor, Region of Murcia and Mediterranean Ecosystems. A Mixed Monitoring Commission will be established to define all pertaining details.


“The objective of this protocol is to integrate research on the observation and monitoring of the Mar Menor ecosystems and its surroundings, into the European virtual infrastructure for science and technology, and to facilitate, through LifeWatch ERIC, the public knowledge of its state. Monitoring data will be disseminated following transparency criteria, synergies and collaborations will be actively identified and promoted, in particular with other research groups from centres and universities specialised in the observation and development of research on marine ecosystems in a broad sense”, explained Vázquez Rojas.


It is within the objectives of this protocol to promote shared access to scientific infrastructures, multidisciplinary collaboration, integration into national and international research networks, and training, focusing on research, observation and monitoring actions of the marine ecosystem in question. Scientific and outreach events may also be organised to bring together experts in different fields of relevance.


In this context, Juan Miguel González-Aranda presented in the conference held in Murcia ‘Infrastructures for the Observation of Biodiversity and Marine Ecosystems of the Mar Menor’, organised by the Government of Region of Murcia, together with the Minister, Juan María Vazquez Rojas; the General Director of the Mar Menor, Víctor Serrano Conesa, and Manuel Erena Arrabal, Coordinator of the Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing Team of the Murcian Institute for Agrarian and Environmental Research and Development (IMIDA).

Horizon Europe project Blue-Cloud 2026 to enhance Open Science in support of ocean protection and restoration

Blue-Cloud 2026

Over the past decades, Europe has developed an impressive capability for aquatic environmental observation, data-handling and sharing, modelling and forecasting. This builds upon national environmental observation and monitoring networks and programmes, complemented with EU infrastructures such as the Copernicus satellite observation programme and related thematic services, the European Marine Observation and Data Network , as well as a range of environmental European RIs and major R&D projects. 

Within this framework, since October 2019, the pilot Blue-Cloud project combined both the interests of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), aiming to provide a virtual environment with open and seamless access to services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and disciplines, and the blue research communities by developing a collaborative web-based environment providing simplified access to an unprecedented wealth of multi-disciplinary datasets from observations, analytical services, and computing facilities essential for blue science. 

Funded by Horizon Europe, Blue-Cloud 2026 aims at a further evolution of this pilot ecosystem into a Federated European Ecosystem to deliver FAIR & Open data and analytical services, instrumental for deepening research of oceans, EU seas, coastal & inland waters. It develops a thematic marine extension to EOSC for open web-based science, in support of the EU Green Deal, UN SDGs, the EU Destination Earth initiative, and the EU Mission “Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030”.

Blue-Cloud 2026 as a key link for EOSC and the Digital Twin of the Ocean

Over the course of 42 months starting in January 2023, the consortium is going to integrate more blue analytical services into the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment, configure new thematic Virtual Labs, improving services for uptake of new data sets from a multitude of data originators and major e-infrastructures, and for discovery and access to their structured data collections.

The existing Blue-Cloud framework is already home to one of the most mature communities in EOSC, and can provide practical examples to younger communities on a variety of aspects ranging from interoperability to data federation, from FAIR practices to cross-domain interaction.

Blue-Cloud 2026 is co-coordinated by CNR and Trust-IT Services, with MARIS as technical coordinator, counting on a core team of partners such as VLIZ (focal point of LifeWatch Belgium), Ifremer, Mercator Ocean International, Seascape Belgium. Overall it mobilises a solid, multidisciplinary, committed team of 40 partners across 13 EU countries. The three-day kick-off meeting in Pisa, Italy, was hosted by CNR (National Research Council of Italy) in collaboration with Trust-IT, and provided the first official opportunity for the consortium to meet in person, take stock of the work performed in the pilot project and plan the key upcoming activities towards a successful implementation of the Blue-Cloud framework by 2026.

Read the full press release here.

Follow Blue-Cloud 2026 on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Call for Abstracts: The LifeWatch ERIC BEeS Biodiversity & Ecosystem eScience Conference

BEES Conference

Roll up, roll up! Abstracts are now open for the LifeWatch ERIC “BEeS” Biodiversity & Ecosystem eScience Conference “Threats and challenges to biodiversity and ecosystem conservation from an eScience perspective”, which is scheduled to coincide with Biodiversity Day 2023. Set in Seville, home to the statutory seat and ICT-Core of LifeWatch ERIC, the conference will take place over two and a half days from 22 May.

Submit your abstract here.

Interested persons can visit the dedicated minisite which will be regularly updated with information. The LifeWatch ERIC BEeS conference will feature keynote speeches from scientists in the community, and seven different topic plenary sessions will take place featuring submissions from the community on:

  • Major threats to the Earth’s biodiversity and ecosystem health
  • Macroecological and biogeographical approaches to biodiversity conservation
  •  Ecosystem and habitat mapping
  • Animal biology and behavioural traits
  • “System of systems” biodiversity observation
  • Biodiversity and ecosystem responses to climate change
  • Natural capital and the “One Health” approach

There will also be a round table on the theme of World Biodiversity Day, moderated by LifeWatch ERIC and keynote speakers. Please note that abstract submission will close on 30 April 2023.

While principally aimed at members of the LifeWatch ERIC national nodes, this is also a fantastic opportunity for members of the wider biodiversity and ecosystem research community to meet and get to know each other better face-to-face. Participation in the Conference is free. Sign up now!

Register here.