Contacts
LifeWatch Belgium
- www.lifewatch.be
- LifeWatchVLIZ
- francisco.hernandez[at]vliz.be
- +32 59 34 21 30
Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ),
InnovOcean site,
Wandelaarkaai 7, 8400 Ostend, Belgium
LifeWatch Belgium is a distributed virtual laboratory and is used for biodiversity research and climatological and environmental impact studies. The Belgian LifeWatch node aims to:
- Design a central LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone
- Construct a Belgian LifeWatch Observatory
- Develop a Belgian LifeWatch e-Lab and Marine VRE
- Conduct data archaeology
- Develop an ecotopes database for Belgium
- Monitor and synthesis ecosystem dynamic descriptors
- Build an Antarctic Biogeographic Information System (AntaBIS)
- Develop a Barcoding Facility for Organisms and tissues of Policy Concern (BOPCo).
Download the leaflet to know more about LifeWatch Belgium.
Organisation
Belgium makes varied and complementary in-kind contributions to LifeWatch. These are implemented in the form of long-lasting projects by various research centres and universities distributed throughout the country and supported by each respective political authority.
LifeWatch Flanders Team (funded through FWO Vlaanderen)
- Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) (coordinator of LifeWatch Belgium)
- Research Institute for Nature and Forests (INBO)
LifeWatch Wallonia-Brussels Team (funded through the Wallonia-Brussels Federation)
- Earth and Life Institute (UcL)
- Biosystems Engineering Department (ULg-Gembloux ABT)
Belgian Federal Institutes (funded through the Belgian Science policy office (Belspo)
- Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS)
- Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA)
- Belgian Biodiversity Platform (BBPf) (which acts as the Belgian LifeWatch Support Committee)
http://lifewatch.be/en/project-belgian-lifewatch-infrastructure
Activities
Access to regional and global biodiversity data systems is facilitated by means of several data services (Belgian LifeWatch E-lab), data publication, marine and non-marine data archaeology and the construction of a local marine-freshwater-terrestrial observatory.
Furthermore, a central Taxonomic Backbone combines taxonomic, biogeographical, trait and genomic data and disseminates this via web services.
Four ecosystem dynamic descriptors are derived from satellite images. Their weekly average profiles are calculated at a European scale. Furthermore, a database describing homogeneous units of the landscape,ecotopes, has been developed.
Biodiversity.aq is building an Antarctic Biodiversity Information System (AntaBIS), as a thematic LifeWatch virtual laboratory.
The Barcoding facility for Organisms and tissues of Policy Concern (BOPCo) project is setting up a virtual laboratory that uses molecular techniques to identify unknown biological material to species/population level.
Projects
The GEANS project (Genetic tool for Ecosystem health Assessment in the North Sea region) aims to harmonise and consolidate existing DNA-based methods, to ensure their application for assessing ecosystem health in the North Sea environment. Synergies are built with the marine genomics observatory activities as part of the LifeWatch observatory.
Blue-Cloud: Piloting innovative services for Marine Research & the Blue Economy. EurOBIS is one of the data infrastructures in the Blue-Cloud project. LifeWatch Belgium observation data is used in demonstrator #1 on zoo and phytoplankton Essential Ocean Variables.
Jerico S3: Joint European Research Infrastructure of Coastal Observatories: Science, Service, Sustainability. LifeWatch observatory (plankton, phytoplankton) systems and data management expertise (EurOBIS) used in the project.
DiSSCo Flanders: Towards a collection management infrastructure for Flanders. LifeWatch Species Information Backbone as in-kind contribution to DiSSCo (Belgium).
The ETN (European Tracking Network) is an online platform for tracking data from electronic tagging. The ETN data portal is developed by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) as part of the Flemish contribution to LifeWatch.
The aim of WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species) is to provide an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms, including information on synonymy. WoRMS is a component of the Species Information Backbone.
The EMODnet Biology data portal provides free access to temporal and spatial distribution data of marine species and species traits from all European regional seas. It is built upon WoRMS and EurOBIS, both components of the central Species Information Backbone.
ASSEMBLE Plus integrates over 30 marine biological stations and installations from various regions of the world's oceans and seas; providing scientists from academia, industry and policy with the services of these marine stations. LifeWatch BE and GR deal with data management and analysis.
ENVRI-FAIR is the connection of the ESFRI Cluster of Environmental RIs (ENVRI) to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The goal is that all participating RIs build FAIR data services to enhance researchers' efficiency & productivity, support innovation, enable data/knowledge based decisions & connect ENVRI Cluster to EOSC. LifeWatch ERIC coordinates WP11 (implementation in Biodiversity/Ecosystems subdomain) & co-coordinates WP6 (training). VLIZ (LifeWatch Belgium) participates in and represents the marine domain for LifeWatch ERIC.