A better science to address the challenges in front of us

“Biodiversity is the most important natural resource that we have on our planet, the only one that actually can protect ourselves, can give us food, sustain the economy for us and give us a future […] How can we combat the loss of biodiversity and the loss of overall standing biomass that we are expected to have in the next 20-100 years? That is the great question that we have in front of us and we need to find a solution. No chance to go any different way. Clearly LifeWatch has a role in this game: as an e-Science Research Infrastructure, LifeWatch can support all the scientists, can support all the components in the game to do a better science, to do a faster science, to improve our development in the shortest possible term, and that is going to be crucial to address the challenge that we have in front of us with climate change and with all the other challenges that could be minor when compared to climate change, but they actually occur.”

The video message of Alberto Basset, Director of the Service Centre of LifeWatch ERIC, at BEeS 2023, the LifeWatch ERIC Biodiversity and Ecosystem eScience Conference.
More information here: https://www.lifewatch.eu/bees-2023/

Supporting the Science for the Future

Christos Arvanitidis, Chief Executive Officer of LifeWatch ERIC, presents the vision of LifeWatch ERIC and the exciting challenges ahead in the coming year during the the LifeWatch ERIC Biodiversity and Ecosystem eScience Conference “BEeS 2023”, on May 22-24, 2023, in Seville. “This conference was instrumental in aligning all the members of our community, in giving us the opportunity to develop synergies with the main projects and other types of stakeholders in the field of biodiversity and ecosystem research, and we did that within these three days by exchanging information”, he says.

More information here: https://www.lifewatch.eu/bees-2023/

Scenarios and interventions to solve the world’s problems of today

Peter van Tienderen, Director of the Virtual Laboratory and Innovations Centre of LifeWatch ERIC, explains the great challenge we face to solve the world’s problems of today while highlighting how LifeWatch ERIC supports biodiversity and ecosystem research.
“It’s not only biodiversity that we want to conserve” he says, “but it’s also dealing with climate change, or water shortage, or human activities, like recreation or agriculture. Biodiversity is one aspect of this total picture; so, what is important, in my view, is that we want to find the optimal solutions to combine these different functions in a way that is good for biodiversity, but it’s also good for many other functions that we want at the same time.”
Watch the video and find out more!

More information here: https://www.lifewatch.eu/bees-2023/

Exploring the impacts of biological invasions

What are the main challenges of those studying alien species today? Monserrat Vilà, Doñana Biological Station, CSIC, is conducting research on biological invasions, and she is worried about their impacts not only on biodiversity, but also in ecosystem services and in human well-being. In this video interview she explains to us how LifeWatch ERIC can support her field of research, for example providing tools about mobilisation of datasets which are available, and in terms of merging them to answer questions which are of interest. “I think – she says – that LifeWatch ERIC can support research on biological invasions in different ways: one would be by being the repository of datasets also making them available in different formats for the scientific community and also for society or for environmental management.” Watch the video and find out more!
More information here: https://www.lifewatch.eu/bees-2023/

Putting a value on nature

Fernando Rodríguez, University of Salamanca, USAL, is working on the economic evaluation of the ecosystem services and natural capital. He thinks that the main challenges facing nature conservation and restoration experts today do not come from the biological or ecological side, but from society, because of the fact that people do not consider the loss of biodiversity a huge issue, or they tend to forget very soon about this sort of issue. So, we need society to be better informed, and we need politicians to act, and for that politicians need proper metrics, and very concise and simple and straight messages.
“Putting a value on nature”, he says, “be it a monetary value or not – we don’t need it to be it a monetary value – but putting a value on nature it helps us to take better decisions.”
Watch the video and find out more!

More information here: https://www.lifewatch.eu/bees-2023/

Bat populations trends in Southern Europe

Elena Tena López, post-doc at the Doñana Biological Station, CSIC, is currently involved in the SUMHAL project with the bat lab group, her line of research being in particular focused on an endangered species of bat, called the greater noctule. The greater noctule is the largest bat in Europe, its most important populations are located in Southern Europe and converge in a geographical triangle of 136,000 hectares: María Luisa Park (Seville), Doñana Biological Reserve- CSIC (Huelva) and Zoobotanical Garden of Jerez (Cádiz). “LifeWatch ERIC has improved a lot the research of biodiversity”, she says, “as it has really powerful tools, providing resources, e-science infrastructure and facilities that can help us – as researchers – to know more about different species and find solutions to preserve nature. (More insights and information here – starting from 1:34).”
Watch the video and find out more!
More information here: https://www.lifewatch.eu/bees-2023/

Nature conservation and restoration: challenges and strategies

Carl Beierkuhnlein, University of Bayreuth, explains the greatest challenges for nature conservation and restoration today: to find the right reference. “[…], the most important contribution for an efficient management of natural systems is to manage for biodiversity. But not just like a lottery, but also to consider the biotic interactions, the trophic levels of the species, and also their ecological niches and how they would really create interactions and a complex ecosystem when they coexist. We have to learn from the past, but also realise that the past is no longer the right reference […] We need to know how biodiversity functions and how it contributes to the ecosystem services that humanity is dependent on, and LifeWatch ERIC provides the important platform for that.”
Watch the video and find out more!
More information here: https://www.lifewatch.eu/bees-2023/

The challenging study of karst underground biodiversity

Slovenia represents an important hotspot of cave biodiversity in the world, even if biodiversity and nature conservation research faces several challenges, related more or less with shortages of personnel, funding, and sometimes with the risks of doing research in the caving systems.
“LifeWatch ERIC for Slovenia is very important because it brings us opportunities to get national fundings for our institutes in the consortium” explains Magdalena Aljančič, researcher from the LifeWatch Slovenian node. “We now have 10 institutions forming the consortium in Slovenia, and being part of the LifeWatch ERIC community actually strengthens us as a community, and gives us opportunities to build further the research infrastructures in Slovenia. So, for us LifeWatch ERIC is opening new paths to research and gives us opportunities to conduct further and to expand our research field.”
Watch the video and find out more!
More information here: https://www.lifewatch.eu/bees-2023/