Uniting Science for One Health: European RIs sign Declaration of Intent at BEeS 2025

Declaration of Intent

The BEeS 2025 Conference began on Monday, 30 June 2025, with a discussion about adopting a Declaration of Intent during the European Research Infrastructures (RIs) “Working Table on Life component of the Biosphere: Complementarities and Synergies”, which was chaired by Christos Arvanitidis, LifeWatch ERIC’s CEO, Peter van Tienderen, LifeWatch ERIC’s VLIZ Director and Alberto Basset, LifeWatch ERIC’s Service Center Director.

The Declaration of Intent, the Crete Declaration, follows the event’s objective of defining a collaborative roadmap and formalises the intent of the parties involved to collaborate.

The closed-door Working Table involved RIs, e-Infrastructures, EU-relevant projects and scientific publishers, all united by the common cause of advancing the One Health approach, a strategy that optimises the health of people, animals, and ecosystems, through collaboration, research product integration, and open science.

This is of vital importance since the challenges of our time (climate change, biodiversity degradation, and emerging diseases) are complex and deeply intertwined, and they demand a joint effort of complementary strengths.

The Declaration focused the signatories’ commitment around four key strategic points:

  1. Strengthening the strategic collaboration
  2. Advancing data integration and FAIR principles
  3. Supporting Open Science Ecosystems
  4. Informing Policy and Practice

The parties welcome all European stakeholders committed to One Health to endorse this Declaration and contribute to its implementation.

New release of Metadata Catalogue!

Metadata Catalogue

We are thrilled to announce the new release of the LifeWatch ERIC Metadata Catalogue (https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu), a standard-based information management system based on GeoNetwork 4.2.11.

The system is designed and implemented to enable access to several resources from a variety of external providers, represented in the Catalogue as “groups”, through descriptive metadata, enhancing and promoting the information exchange and sharing among organisations and research infrastructures.

The Catalogue is operational since 2020: its main goal is to increase collaboration within and among organisations, in order to reduce duplication and enhance information consistency and quality. It also aims to improve the accessibility of a wide variety of resources along with the associated information, organised and documented in a standard and consistent way.
Moreover, the LifeWatch ERIC Metadata Catalogue allows (upon validation and verification) the creation of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for resources that do not have it, by exploiting the GeoNetwork – DataCite connection.

The system allows to manage metadata related to five kinds of resources: Datasets, Research Site, Services, Virtual Research Environments (VREs), and Workflows by using the EML 2.2.0 and a customised ISO 19139 standards respectively. The new release adds a sixth one to the list, that is the “Training resource”, whose metadata schema is based on the EOSC training profile to ensure and improve the resource discoverability.
This version also includes significant performance improvements, bug fixes, and user interface upgrades to make your experience smoother and more intuitive.

Moreover, with this release, you can now explore several new functionalities:

  • a more user-friendly editor with new functions to easily create metadata records (copy to function, prefill utility, validators, etc.);
  • a direct connection with EcoPortal Thesauri and Controlled Vocabularies to address the metadata inconsistency or incompleteness challenge;
  • a full redactional workflow to support and validate the entire publication process with appropriate roles and email notifications;
  • an easy and improved approach to require the DOI;
  • the FAIRness assessment tool, that allows to assess the FAIRness of the entire catalogue, by resource type and on specific metadata record;
  • the continuous monitoring on reachability of URLs;
  • the possibility to create new metadata profiles via user interface;
  • more info for the users in terms of metrics and KPIs;
  • direct connection with the LifeWatch ERIC Help Desk knowledge base to show the relevant FAQs.

The APIs are available here (https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/doc/api/index.html). The new version of the documentation is under development and will be published soon. If you have any question, please do not hesitate to contact us at service.centre[at]lifewatch.eu.

MARBEFES Autumn School 2025: Save the date

MARBEFES Autumn School

The MARBEFES project (MARine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning leading to Ecosystem Services) aims to evaluate and characterise the links between marine biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services and the resulting societal goods and benefits in coastal communities.

The results of these evaluations feed into easy-to-use tools to help practitioners and policy maximise the ecological value and optimise a sustainable socio-economic use of the marine system for current and future generations.
The project members will present and discuss these tools, for biodiversity and ecosystem assessment and measurement, and ecological, social and economic evaluation, during the Autumn School 2025 “Protecting marine biodiversity for nature and humans”.

Organised by the MARBEFES project, and aimed at students, early career scientists, young researchers, early career practitioners (in statutory agencies, consultancies, etc), this 3-day Autumn School will take place from 8-10 October 2025, in Seville (Spain).

The Autumn School will welcome 20 participants, offering accommodation, travel (up to a predetermined amount, if exceeded participants will have to cover the difference) and lunch for the duration of the programme.
The Call for Applications will open in mid July on the project’s official website: https://marbefes.eu.
Stay tuned for updates!

Biodiversity and Ecosystem eScience and the Triple Planetary Crisis: the LifeWatch ERIC Community meets in Heraklion at BEeS 2025!

The BEeS Conference 2025 is approaching! From 30 June to 3 July, Heraklion, Crete, will host the 2025 edition of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem eScience Conference (BEeS), LifeWatch ERIC’s flagship event, hosted this year by the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) and the Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture (IMBBC). The event will gather researchers, policy-makers and ecosystem experts to discuss some of today’s most urgent global challenges.

Under the overarching theme of the Triple Planetary Crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution), BEeS 2025 will explore how eScience and European Research Infrastructures (RIs) can contribute to understanding and addressing its complex impacts.

This year, contributions have been structured around six thematic areas, reflecting the priorities identified by LifeWatch ERIC in collaboration with its National Distributed Centres, and coordinated by the corresponding Thematic Services Working Groups:

  • Biodiversity & Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change
  • Mapping Life on Planet Earth: Biogeography in a Changing World
  • Taxonomy: Identifying the Units of Diversity in Life
  • Exploring Boundaries of Life Hosting Spaces: Habitat Mapping
  • Biodiversity Observatory: Smart Systems for a Living Planet
  • Tracking the Wild: Animal Movement, Behaviour, and Biologging

The Call for Abstracts closed in May, and the submissions are currently under evaluation by the Working Group coordinators. These abstracts will shape the content of the oral and poster presentations distributed across the four-day programme.

The event will begin with a closed round table for representatives of European Research Infrastructures, aimed at identifying complementarities and synergies between their activities. The session brings together infrastructures working on biodiversity, ecosystems and the social components of the biosphere, under the lens of the One Health approach.

The first day will be fully dedicated to Research Infrastructures and presentations from the plenary speakers:

  • Prof. Anastasios Eleftheriou (HCMR), “Man and the Sea”
  • Prof. Carole Goble (University of Manchester), “Sharing and Re-using Computational Workflows – WorkflowHub and FAIR Workflows in Biodiversity”
  • Dr. Nikos Kyrpides (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), “The Dark Matter in Biology”.

The thematic sessions in the following days of the conference, will see the participation of Dr. Richard Field, (University of Nottingham), and Dr. Tammy Horton, (National Oceanography Centre).
In addition to scientific sessions and poster presentations, the conference will offer hands-on workshops focused on key LifeWatch ERIC services, including its Virtual Laboratories (vLabs) and Virtual Research Environments (VREs). The final day will be dedicated entirely to training activities.

Participation in BEeS 2025 is free of charge but subject to registration via the online form. The conference also offers special networking opportunities, including joint lunches and a social dinner with wine tasting and a vineyard tour at the stunning Scalarea Estate.

BEeS 2025 is supported by sponsors including Pensoft and Cretan Rhizotomists, and will see the participation of several related projects and initiatives.

Stay updated via the conference page, and keep an eye out for the upcoming publication of the Book of Abstracts through our website and newsletter.

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change Workshop

biodiversity ecosystem responses workshop (2)

Lecce, Italy

The LifeWatch ERIC Working Group on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change and the National Biodiversity Future Center organise the workshop on “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change“, to be held in Lecce, Italy, on 12 and 13 June 2025.

Climate change is profoundly affecting biodiversity and ecosystem processes, with implications at the global scale for primary productivity, standing biomass as well as potential impacts on human well-being and the achievement of SDGs. Biodiversity and ecosystem responses span ecological scales, encompassing structural and functional components, from individual life cycles and energetics to inter-individual interactions, population and species densities and distributions, to ecological networks and ecosystem services.

A proposal for a Special Issue including a selection of the workshop contributions has been presented to Ecological Indicators. Contributions will be presented as short talks of 10 minutes.

To find out more about our speakers, register and submit your abstract, please visit the following page:

https://www.lifewatch.eu/thematic-services-working-groups/wg-climate-change/meetings/workshop-biodiversity-and-ecosystem-responses-to-climate-change

Project RESTORE4Cs launches a School Competition about Coastal Wetlands

RESTORE4Cs School Competition

Coastal Wetlands are broadly defined as “areas of saltwater and freshwater located within coastal zones”1. These areas are among the most crucial ecosystems, playing a key role for climate neutrality, biodiversity protection, zero-pollution, and circular economy.

The project RESTORE4Cs recently launched a Serious Game School Competition: a fun and easy way to make school students learn about this fascinating world.

Acting as natural sponges, coastal wetlands are able to regulate the water cycle and mitigate both floods and droughts. Some particular types can actively sequester and accumulate organic carbon, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, they host a range of plant and animal species uniquely adapted to their specific characteristics and soil conditions.

To give you an idea of just how vital they are, here’s an example we recently came across from the US: an initiative called “Wild Mile” (https://wildmile.org/), by the nonprofit organisation Urban Rivers. Volunteers at Urban Rivers are building a floating eco-park on the Chicago River, made up of artificial habitats that actually mimic wetlands, with the objective of restoring the river’s waters to their pre-industrial state. The rapid development of the city and the use of the river’s waters as a channel for industrial shipping in the 18th Century, in fact, had left the river floor in conditions of extreme pollution.

In Europe, coastal wetlands are disappearing at a fast rate (here’s some data collected by RESTORE4Cs in occasion of the World Wetlands Day: https://www.restore4cs.eu/world-wetlands-day-2024/). But let’s focus on the positives! Some of our original wetlands are still holding on and fighting to survive: it is vital that we do everything in our power to protect them.

A lot of effort is already being dedicated to research and policy investments: a good indicator that the scientific and policy communities are becoming increasingly aware of the issue. Another crucial front in the fight to protect these ecosystems is education.

That’s where the Serious Game School Competition comes in. Taking place in mid-April 2025, this engaging initiative invites students aged 12 and older from across Europe to explore the essential ecological functions of wetlands, their role in biodiversity and how they contribute to climate resilience, all through a fun, interactive gaming experience.

Schools and teachers interested in participating can find all details and registration information on the RESTORE4Cs website: https://www.restore4cs.eu/restore4cs-school-competition/.

If you’re a teacher, or know one who might be interested, don’t miss this opportunity to introduce future researchers to these vital concepts!

  1. Source: RESTORE4Cs 1st Policy Brief: https://www.restore4cs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Policy-Brief_web.pdf ↩︎

LifeWatch ERIC & friends transform knowledge into practice at the Science Summit 2024

Science Summit 2024

In the scope of its ongoing commitment to supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals, LifeWatch ERIC co-organises a workshop as part of the Science Summit 2024 at United Nations General Assembly (UNGA79) activities in New York (USA), within a network of European organisations (you can find the full list of the event sponsors and partners at the bottom of this page: https://sciencesummitunga.com/science-summit-unga79/).

The Science Summit 2024 is the global event dedicated to scientific and technological challenges of our time, such as climate action, One Health, biodiversity, food systems, AI and other topics relevant to the UN SDGs.

Every year since 2013, the event serves as a dynamic platform for thought leaders, scientists, policymakers and innovators around the world to showcase cutting-edge research and promote knowledge and collaboration. 

Through discussions and networking opportunities, it facilitates the exchange of ideas and the development of actionable strategies.

This year marks the 10th edition of the event and it is particularly important, as it coincides with the UN Summit of the Future. It will place a special emphasis on the Africa Science Leadership Coalition, which was launched at the UN Civil Society Conference on May 9, 2024, to promote African leadership in science policy decision-making. The event takes place in hybrid form, with a Virtual Programme running from 10th to 27th and a physical programme running from 17th to 27th in New York which is also streamed live.

This is not the first workshop organised by the European partners in the Summit. Again this year, these organisations are representing active communities – including LifeWatch ERIC – from the fields of biodiversity, ecology and engineering domains, aiming to strengthen science, technology and innovation efforts. With combined expertise, these communities selected Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as a testbed to strategically contribute to the implementation of the SDGs. The focus is on the emerging properties presented as a network, rather than as individual organisations, projects or initiatives.

The workshop is called Transforming Knowledge into Practice: Science, Technology and Innovation in Support of the UN SDGs and will take place on Thursday, September 26, 2024, from 9:00am to 4:00pm EDT (3:00pm to 10:00pm CEST).

Online joiners can register for free and have the possibility to follow the livestream of the event, which will take place on the Rooftop of the Science Summit venue.

The agenda consists of two parts: one in the morning, on the collective contribution to the implementation of the UN SDGs, and one in the afternoon presenting expectations from the participating science and technology organisations on the above topic.

The workshop ends with the presentation of an open call to forge an international alliance, to further integrate biodiversity conservation into the priorities of the UN Summit of the Future agenda priorities, and the post-SDG agenda.

Christos Arvanitidis, LifeWatch ERIC’s CEO, will open the workshop in a welcome session presenting the objectives, and presenting LifeWatch ERIC as a practical example of the European collaborative effort on biodiversity. 
Follow this link to get the detailed agenda and register to the workshop: https://sciencesummit2024.sched.com/event/1jzig

G20 – Biological Diversity and Conservation Units: Collaboration with the EU Research Infrastructures

Alberto Basset talks about biological conservation at G20

The G20 Brazil 2024 took place in Manaus on September 17 and 18.
Upon invitation from the Ministry of the University and Research of Italy (MUR), Alberto Basset, Director of LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre and Full Professor of Ecology at the University of Salento, joined the panel dedicated to Biological Diversity, Conservation Units and Biosphere Reserves.

This panel, coordinated by Joe Miller from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), focused on promoting collaboration in scientific research, implementing conservation programs, exchanging data and technologies, and setting up environmental management policies. Alberto Basset’s talk specifically addressed the role of EU research infrastructures in fostering scientific collaboration and the key role of research and innovation to cope with global environmental challenges and build a sustainable future for the Amazon region and beyond.

During his intervention, Professor Basset emphasised the critical role of research infrastructures in stimulating innovation and addressing grand societal challenges, fostering openness, excellence and collaboration.

He highlighted how LifeWatch ERIC’s Virtual Labs and Virtual Research Environments contribute to the co-creation of knowledge, which directly supports the wider dissemination of technologies to both the productive sector and society as a whole.

The G20 serves as a vital multilateral platform for nations to collaborate on advancing science and technology in the Amazon region.
The primary focus is on addressing global challenges such as biodiversity loss and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, improving the quality of life for the Amazonian population, boosting the local economy, and promoting inclusive and sustainable development.

International cooperation in research and innovation plays a crucial role in tackling these issues, as well as defining a model for the sustainable development of the Amazonian region, combating deforestation, mitigating climate change and adapting to its inevitable consequences.

As the current president of G20, Brazil is prioritising strong joint efforts in three key areas:

  1. the promotion of sustainable development, over unsustainable global growth;
  2. social inclusion as one step to combat poverty;
  3. reforming global governance.

Additionally, these sustainability actions rely heavily on the generation of new knowledge, and the definition of tools for the dissemination of technologies to both businesses and society at large.

These topics align closely with the priorities of LifeWatch ERIC, the European e-Science infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystem research, which together with other European Research infrastructures, provide the scientific community with essential resources and services to carry out research in specialised fields.

RESTORE4Cs issues Policy Brief on the positive climate impact of coastal wetlands

Restore4Cs policy brief news image

RESTORE4Cs (https://www.restore4cs.eu/) is the EU-funded project dedicated to climate change, biodiversity loss and habitat degradation, focusing on the sustainable management of European wetlands. These natural coastal areas of saltwater and freshwater play a key role in achieving the EU objectives regarding climate neutrality, biodiversity protection, zero-pollution, flood protection, and the circular economy. 

Led by the University of Aveiro (Portugal), the RESTORE4Cs consortium aims to assess the role of restoration action on wetlands’ capacity, through an integrative socio-ecological systems approach.

Within the scope of this objective, on 9 September 2024, the project launched its first Policy Brief, which highlights the aspect of Greenhouse Gas emissions. 

European coastal wetlands have the capacity to reduce emissions consistently, through the so-called “carbon sequestration”, which generally refers to the process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In the case of wetlands, this is made possible thanks to their vegetation, and via sedimentation processes: they can store large amounts of organic carbon in their soil, due to their rapid growth and slow decomposition rates. Additionally, coastal wetlands generally release lower levels of methane compared to other types of wetlands. Moreover, they help trap organic particles carried by the flooding water, increasing the levels of organic carbon in the soil and forming organic-rich reservoirs called “blue carbon sinks”. 

Given their importance in our ecosystem, it is not surprising that Europe is investing in the protection of these precious environments: just a few weeks ago, at the end of August, RESTORE4Cs had joined three akin projects (ALFAwetlands, REWET and WET HORIZONS) in the SERE2024 Conference, an event entirely dedicated to Ecological Restoration. 

With the Policy Brief, authored by members of the European Topic Center, University of Malaga and University of Valencia (Spain), and the German Ecologic Institute, the project reinforces this message, by highlighting some key takeaways:

  1. the important role of wetlands as natural carbon stores
  2. the need to preserve the ones in good status, and urgently restore the endangered ones, as a cost-effective climate mitigation strategy
  3. the use of carbon certification schemes as additional tools to unlock new financial resources.
  4. the promotion of incentives for climate-friendly companies

You can read or download the full document at this link: https://www.restore4cs.eu/restore4cs-1st-policy-brief/

Marine Biodiversity and the One Health Framework Workshop in Crete

The Marine Biodiversity and One Health Framework workshop, co-organised by LifeWatch Greece (GR) and the European Marine Biological Resource Centre Greece (EMBRC GR), took place on August 29th and 30th at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) in Crete. The event brought together experts to discuss the intricate connections between marine biodiversity (and the entire interconnected ecosystem), and human health. Although alterations in the ecosystems often become perceptible only when it’s very late to intervene, these changes are occurring at high rates, with devastating impacts on society and health.

This has traditionally driven the approach of the One Health framework, and the workshop analysed recent advances in relation to the areas of interest of the framework, which include -omics, biodiversity and ecosystem research.

The event featured a range of sessions over two days. Key topics included the importance of research infrastructures in advancing the One Health framework, recent advancements in biodiversity and ecosystem research, and the role of aquatic microbial communities. Day one began with a series of presentations on biodiversity and ecosystem eScience, tackling topics such as data management/integration and FAIR principles, the soil microbiome, and the joint approach to medical and environmental eScience.

LifeWatch ERIC took part in the workshop showcasing its efforts in advancing biodiversity and ecosystem research from a European to a global scale. Christos Arvanitidis (CEO), and Alberto Basset (Interim Director), highlighted the organisation’s work on enhancing biodiversity and ecosystems eScience, providing an overview of how LifeWatch ERIC is leveraging cutting-edge technologies and infrastructures to support the One Health approach.

Moreover, LifeWatch ERIC’s involvement highlighted the importance of collaborative efforts in bridging regional, national, and international research initiatives to address the pressing issues of ecosystem health.

Day two of the workshop focused on marine biodiversity in relation to the One Health concept, exploring how microbial biodiversity can mitigate environmental stressors and prevent biodiversity loss, exploring the interconnectedness of microbiomes in extreme marine ecosystems and the potential of microbial interactions and networks. 

The conclusion of the event was dedicated to data resources, infrastructures, and omics approaches, providing insights into knowledge discovery from global metagenomic data and the importance of Essential Biodiversity and Ocean Variables.

The workshop, chaired by Georgios Kotoulas, Tsigenopulos Constantinos, Nikos Kyrpides, Christina Pavloudi and Haris Zafeiropoulos, was a great opportunity for fruitful discussions on addressing the challenges of ecosystem and human health in a rapidly changing world.
For more details on the event, visit the event page on LifeWatch Greece: https://www.lifewatchgreece.eu/?q=content/marine-biodiversity-and-one-health-framework-workshop-hcmr-crete-29-30-august