Weever fish sevenfold increase reported by SeaWatch-B might be linked to warmer waters

weever fish

SeaWatch-B (https://www.vliz.be/projects/seawatch-b), the VLIZ citizen science project supported by LifeWatch Belgium, has observed that the weever fish counts were seven times higher this year, compared to the same period of time (April to June) of 2024. This venomous species buries itself in the sand and stings through its dorsal or gill-cover spines, and its surge along the Belgian North Sea coast seems linked to warmer waters.

The aim of the SeaWatch-B beach observation network is to address the lack of reliable long-term data that allow to identify trends in the ever changing landscape of the North Sea. In fact, during the last 50 years, the North Sea has noticeably changed, warming twice as fast as the global average for ocean and seas.

This fast change has affected especially cold-water species, causing an increase in animals and plants originating from the Atlantic Ocean or further south. Through the description and evaluation of the long-term evolution of this shifts, SeaWatch-B can provide science with the necessary data to inform and advise policy.

Trained volunteers have been conducting standardised surveys along various costal transects, four times a year since 2024, to provide data on beach usage, marine life, sea temperatures, pollution and early dune formation, and they will issue a report in 2026.

Read more about the weever fish increase on the LifeWatch Belgium website: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/sevenfold-increase-stinging-weever-fish-observed-seawatch-b

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.

European Agroecology Partnership members meet in The Netherlands

agroecology partnership meeting

LifeWatch ERIC actively participated in the in-person WP5 European Agroecology Partnership meeting, “Accelerating farming systems transition: agroecology living labs and research infrastructures”, held at Wageningen University & Research from 18 to 20 June 2025.

The meeting, co-organised by WUR and LifeWatch ERIC, brought together key partners to review progress on monitoring and data management strategies for assessing agroecological transitions in Europe. A central focus was on enhancing cross-task collaboration to support the design and implementation of sustainable farming systems across the continent.

Hosted at the WUR Impulse Building, the meeting included plenary sessions, cross-task workshops, and a field visit to the organic dairy farm De Hooilanden and market garden De Lichtveen.

Representing LifeWatch ERIC, José Manuel Ávila and Iria Soto, leaders of Work Package 5, coordinated and moderated several sessions, facilitating strategic discussions to shape the Partnership’s second phase.

The Agroecology Partnership, funded under Horizon Europe, supports multi-actor innovation through a unique integration of Living Labs and Research Infrastructures. It fosters collaboration among scientists, farmers, advisors, policymakers, and citizens to co-create resilient and sustainable food systems.

Biodiversity and Ecosystem responses to Climate Change: scientists in Lecce discuss the invisible cost of the ecological crisis

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Responses

The international workshop “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change” took place on 12–13 June 2025 at MUST Museum in Lecce.

The National Biodiversity Future Centre (NBFC), Italy’s first national research and innovation centre for biodiversity, funded by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR) through NextGeneration EU funds, organised the workshop in collaboration with LifeWatch ERIC’s Working Group on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change.

Climate change is deeply altering the living conditions of organisms across the planet, influencing their geographic distribution, abundance, and even the daily cost of survival. These effects are especially severe for species which cannot regulate their body temperature and must expend more resources to maintain metabolism and behaviour in warmer, more unstable environments.

The consequences of these changes extend far beyond the ecological sphere. They impact key ecosystem functions that support human well-being, potentially affecting economic growth (GDP) and the achievement of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Acknowledging that climate change does not act in isolation but reshapes entire ecological contexts, the workshop focused on assessing possible ecological responses and exploring ways to integrate them into adaptation and mitigation strategies.

One of the central questions guiding the discussions was: How will biodiversity’s response to climate change affect our economy and society in the coming decades?
The reflection was based on a simple yet crucial premise: we cannot safeguard our well-being without first safeguarding the ecosystems we depend on.

The full programme remain available at:
https://www.lifewatch.eu/thematic-services-working-groups/wg-climate-change/meetings/workshop-biodiversity-and-ecosystem-responses-to-climate-change

Noise pollution in the North Sea: Marine Environment Service and DG Shipping launch awareness campaign supported by LifeWatch VLIZ

The North Sea is one of the busiest seas in the world. All this human activity creates a lot of noise underwater, that can have harmful consequences for marine mammals and other organisms. This noise pollution originates primarily through shipping, explosive ordnance disposal, sonar, the construction of wind farms, and sand extraction and dredging.

The Marine Environment Service (FPS Public Health) and the Shipping Directorate-General (FPS Mobility), with the support of LifeWatch Belgium (VLIZ), are collaborating on a campaign to raise awareness about underwater noise pollution among the wider public and promote measures, that fortunately exist, to limit noise pollution.

This is a very important objective: for many marine species, such as marine mammals, fish, and even invertebrates, hearing is a crucial sense to survive in the dark underwater environment. Sound waves help these species perform vital functions such as orientation, communication, finding food and reproduction.

In addition, they propagate much more efficiently underwater than in the air, as they are less attenuated and move up to five times faster, posing a real threat to the marine wildlife in the Northern Sea.

The campaign is part of the OSPAR Convention collective actions to reduce noise pollution, that include the application of measures such as improved ship design, reduced vessel speed, a bubble curtain during pile driving, or the gradual startup of sonar devices or machinery used for pile driving.

VLIZ, the Flanders Marine Institute, is contributing to this plan with the help of LifeWatch Belgium and currently developing a library of long-term underwater sounds from the North Sea, set to launch in the summer of 2025. Well-described sound events will be ingested by the library and available according to the FAIR data principles.

Want to learn more? Read the full article on LifeWatch Belgium: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/noise-pollution-north-sea or visit the SoundLib website.

Upscaling biodiversity

upscaling biodiversity bill kunin

“Biodiversity is intrinsically scale-dependent”. Bill Kunin, Professor at the University of Leeds, in this second BioDT Talks tackles one of spatial ecology’s biggest challenges: how do we accurately upscale biodiversity data?

One of the reason that makes upscaling biodiversity challenging is that biodiversity is an unusual variable. Unlike simple additive variables, biodiversity is subadditive: two areas with 6 and 4 species don’t necessarily contain 10 species together due to potential overlap in the species you had in the different samples. This makes scaling from local observations to regional or global assessments particularly complex.

Why does upscaling biodiversity matter? Prof. Kunin explains how it helps us to estimate biodiversity in little-know areas; to predict larger-scale effects from fine-scale experiments; to monitor biodiversity changes across multiple scales; to model spatially realistic futures (e.g. developing more accurate digital twins of ecosystems, linking local and coarser scale patterns); to understand how threats like habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and climate change impact biodiversity differently at various scales.

Enjoy the video on LifeWatching Channel website!

BioDT is a research project funded by the European Union that aims to develop a digital twin prototype for the study and analysis of biodiversity, in support of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The Biodiversity Digital Twin prototype provides advanced models for simulation and prediction capabilities, through practical use cases addressing critical issues related to global biodiversity dynamics.
The BioDT Talks is the new 6-part series illustrating how data science and technology are transforming our approach to the biodiversity crisis.
More information on the BioDT Project HERE.
Watch the full playlist on YouTube and find out more!

Digital Twins solutions for all companies!

Digital Twins solutions for all companies!

What are the barriers still preventing the adoption of ICT technologies by small and medium-sized enterprises?
There are still many obstacles to overcome, such as the high initial costs to develop and exploit Digital Twins, the lack of in-house technical expertise needed to manage and maintain Digital Twin solutions, limitations and fluctuations in human resources available for innovation projects, the resistance to change, the lack of awareness and understanding of the benefits and potential applications of Digital Twins, regulatory and compliance issues. Moreover, companies frequently worry about the time and efforts required to achieve a return on investment from Digital Twin implementations. The uncertainty about measurable economic benefits may prevent them from investing in innovation.

In this sixth and last episode of BioDT Talks, Francesca Flamigni, Innovations Project and Funding Manager at TTTech, shares insights of the Change2Twin project, a collaborative initiative that aimed at accelerating the digital transformation of companies across Europe by harnessing the power of Digital Twin technology.
More in detail, Change2Twin project has crafted a comprehensive framework designed to provide targeted support tailored to the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
This framework is based on the best practices developed within the I4MS initiative, which stands for ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs, and comprises an array of services, including training programs, financial incentives, and scalable Digital Twin solutions.

Watch the video and find out more!!

BioDT is a research project funded by the European Union that aims to develop a digital twin prototype for the study and analysis of biodiversity, in support of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The Biodiversity Digital Twin prototype provides advanced models for simulation and prediction capabilities, through practical use cases addressing critical issues related to global biodiversity dynamics.
The BioDT Talks is the new 6-part series illustrating how data science and technology are transforming our approach to the biodiversity crisis.
More information on the BioDT Project HERE.
Watch the full playlist on YouTube and find out more!

EULAC EnergyTRAN mobility event in Seville

EULAC ENERGYTRAN mobility event

On 20 May 2025, the second day of the EULAC EnergyTRAN mobility event took place at the Statutory Seat of LifeWatch ERIC, located in Plaza de España in Seville, Spain. This initiative is part of the EU-LAC cooperation framework, aiming to strengthen scientific collaboration between European and Latin American research infrastructures, particularly in the environmental and energy transition domains.

The second day gathered a diverse delegation of Latin American representatives, including members of: Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM), Argentina (Julian Asinsten, Martin del Castillo, Lilia Inés Stubrin, Valeria Arza, Martin Obaya, Emanuel López), Tecnológico de Aguascalientes, México (Adrian Bonilla-Petriciolet, Didilia Ileana Mendoza-Castillo), National High Technology Center (CeNAT), Costa Rica (Jazmín Calderón Quirós), and LifeWatch ERIC team members (Francisco Manuel Sánchez, Antonio José Sáenz, Joaquin López, Julio López Paneque, Iria Soto, Ana Mellado, Maite Irazábal).

Throughout the day, participants from Latin America had the opportunity to engage directly with LifeWatch ERIC members and explore the organisation’s technological, analytical, and data management services. Sessions included:

  • An overview of LifeWatch ERIC’s data management services and technological resources such as the Scientific Knowledge Graph, LifeBlock, and the MyLifeWatch platform;
  • Demonstrations of data loggers and sensor networks for environmental monitoring;
  • A detailed showcase of the collaborative research platform and analytical workflows developed within the EnergyTRAN project;
  • Insightful presentations on the long-term sustainability of LifeWatch ERIC tools and their application in other European projects, such as AGROSERV and Microbes4Climate.

These in-person meetings are precious opportunities to cultivate openness and constructive dialogue, ensuring long-term international cooperation.

The event concluded with an exchange of ideas for future collaborations and opportunities, which are vital to sustain and expand the EU-LAC research partnerships and respond to shared challenges across regions.

Ecological systems: new insights from ecoinformatics

ecological systems

Imagine standing on the edge of a vast forest, its canopy alive with the chatter of birds, the rustle of leaves, and the occasional flash of colour from a darting butterfly. Now picture this forest fading: a vibrant, thriving ecosystem replaced by silence, its trees felled one by one. What would we lose? What might we gain? This scene isn’t a distant possibility – it’s unfolding now. From the peaks of the highest mountains to the depths of the oceans, life thrives. Yet, the biodiversity that sustains humanity is in steep decline. The benefits we once relied upon – clean air, fertile soil, food, and protection – are increasingly uncertain.
With this vivid visualisation of the current biodiversity crisis, Alejandro Ordonez Gloria, Associate Professor at the Aarhus University Center for Ecological Dynamics in a Novel Biosphere (ECONOVO), opens the first episode of the BioDT Talks, a new 6-part series exploring how data, science, and technology are reshaping our response to the biodiversity crisis.

A theme that is very timely with International Biodiversity Day 2025, celebrated on 22 May 2025 under the theme “Harmony with nature and sustainable development”, to raise awareness of the importance of biodiversity and the urgent need to stop its loss, as recognised by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

In this opening talk, Dr. Ordoñez introduces the field of ecoinformatics, where AI, remote sensing, and ecological theory are combined to forecast the future of nature and guide proactive decision-making. From predicting species shifts to building Digital Twins of ecosystems, today’s tools give us a historic opportunity: not just to see what’s coming, but to choose a different outcome.
By illustrating the current, different approaches of ecoinformatics, he underlines how computational models generate plausible scenarios of biodiversity change while highlighting the role of computational approaches in assessing and prioritising conservation actions, allowing policymakers to focus on the most impactful strategies.

“We can no longer afford to be passive observers of ecological change. We must become active drivers of it […] The ecoinformatics toolbox is transforming science from a reactive perspective of change to a proactive perspective of change, one in which we can think about which actions do we need to take to get us to the future where we want to be in. And by doing this, we will be able to model where do we want nature to be into the future”, he says.

Enjoy the video on LifeWatching Channel website!

BioDT is a research project funded by the European Union that aims to develop a digital twin prototype for the study and analysis of biodiversity, in support of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The Biodiversity Digital Twin prototype provides advanced models for simulation and prediction capabilities, through practical use cases addressing critical issues related to global biodiversity dynamics.
The BioDT Talks is the new 6-part series illustrating how data science and technology are transforming our approach to the biodiversity crisis.
More information on the BioDT Project HERE.
Watch the full playlist on YouTube and find out more!