In the LifeWatch ERIC on-going catalogue of interesting acronyms, LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging. It is an active remote sensing technique that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges to the Earth. The light pulses can penetrate through the canopy of a forest and – combined with other information (e.g. intensity, GPS time) recorded by the LiDAR system carried by aircrafts or drones - generate very precise 3D information about the characteristics of Earth's...

ENVRI is a network, a community of Environmental Research Infrastructures that collaborate to observe the Earth as a whole. Every single research infrastructure, be it from the atmosphere or marine, solid Earth or ecosystems domain, contributes to this community. We collaborate so we can provide open, FAIR, environmental data, tools and other services that everybody can use for free. ENVRI empowers the advancement of scientific knowledge which is necessary to be able to deal with rapid global...

Season Three of 'A Window on Science' features interviews with individuals who contribute to Open Science and the study of Invasive Alien Species. In S3, E4, Joris Timmermans from the University of Amsterdam, part of LifeWatch Netherlands, talks about EBVs, Essential Biodiversity Variables and why they are useful. We live in a world of big data, enormous amounts of information collected from numerous satellites that circle the Earth at a distance of 800 kilometres, data which far exceeds the...

The Critical Zone is the Earth's outer skin, where we all live: the space between the top of the vegetation canopy and the bottom of the surface aquifers, down to the undisturbed rock. It's a very thin layer, where rock meets life, and it is essentially the support system for all terrestrial ecosystems. It's called the Critical Zone because it's critical to ecosystem functioning but it's also critically endangered. Climate change, increases in temperature, pollution, land degradation and...

Season Three of the LifeWatch ERIC podcast 'A Window on Science' starts with a close-up on WoRMS, the World Register of Marine Species, hosted and curated by the Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee (VLIZ), the Flanders Marine Institute, in Ostend. The interview with Stefanie Dekeyzer, data management specialist at VLIZ, takes us from how the Institute was founded by Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden in 1843, to its current operations, the citizen science events, and the Editorial Board, Steering Committee...

The title of S3, E2, Ocean Optimism, does not imply that nothing is wrong with the Ocean, just that progress made in solving marine conservation challenges shows that there are grounds for hope for the future. Increased industrialisation and urbanisation, increased exploitation of resources, and a decreased resilience to larger threats like climate change have certainly led to a dramatic decline in ocean health, as has been well documented. The UN Decade of Ocean Science (2021-2030) and the...

The Biotope validation case is possibly the most complex workflow developed by LifeWatch ERIC within the framework of the Internal Joint Initiative. A biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage of plants and animals, for which 'habitat' is probably the closest equivalent in English. The workflow is the aggregation of high-resolution satellite imagery with statistics across large geographical areas in Europe, to determine what...

The Non-indigenous and Invasive Species in S2, E4 is not an aggressive crustacean or insect, it's a pungent, invasive tree, called Ailanthus altissima, the 'Tree of Heaven', known to horticulturalists as the 'Tree from Hell'.  It excretes toxins to displace other plants, produces millions of seeds a year and extends underground suckers that grow into thick clusters of trees, which makes it difficult to eradicate. Native birds and animals can’t nest or feed anywhere near it, which makes its...

Meet Ana Filipa Felipe from the University of Lisbon and Christina Pavloudi from the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in this third episode of the second season of the LifeWatch ERIC podcast, 'A Window on Science', focused on Metabarcoding.  According to the Living Planet Index, populations of freshwater vertebrate species are declining faster than terrestrial or marine communities. They fell by 81% between 1970 and 2012. That’s a danger signal that researchers at CIBIO-InBIO at the...

Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures placed in European coastal waters and retrieved on a regular basis provide the sampling and data collection context to this second episode in season two of the LifeWatch ERIC podcasts. The ARMS research case that helped validate our ground-breaking Virtual Research Environment is presented by Katrina Exter of the Flanders Marine Institute and Matthias Obst from the University of Gothenburg, and concerns hard-bottom communities. To find out exactly what...

Season Two of the LifeWatch ERIC podcast series 'A Window on Science' looks at the research cases that validated the development of the virtual research environment - the online tools and services that enable biodiversity and ecosystem research at scales never before achieved. The first episode concerns the Atlantic Blue Crab validation case, the story of Callinectes sapidus, a colourfully aggressive non-indigenous invasive species that over the last 50 years has moved into the Mediterranean...

The first season of the LifeWatch ERIC podcast series 'A Window on Science' outlines the  steps forward that the European e-Science infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystem research has made in the last two years, developing cutting-edge services for researchers. Our CEO, Christos Arvanitidis, opens the series, walking us through terminology that may seem challenging to non-scientific audiences: Research Infrastructures, the Joint Internal Initiative, and virtual servers. The...

In conversation with Africa Zanella, LifeWatch ERIC Gender and Equity Expert, on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2022.

 LifeWatch ERIC, the European e-Science Infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystem research, is starting up a free podcast series, called  'A Window on Science'.  We have chosen this easy-access podcast interview format, because reliable information on the environment is of relevance to everybody. The knowledge produced through the LifeWatch ERIC e-Services can inform political decisions and assist businesses in transitioning to a green economy. Have a listen and subscribe to our...