WP6

The terrestrial biosphere, that in this project also includes inland water (rivers and lakes), is characterized by a complex mosaic of anthropogenic and natural elements in strong interaction among them and with the atmosphere and the marine domain (e.g. river discharge, covered in WP5). Understanding, detecting, tracking, and monitoring the role of and the effects on the terrestrial biosphere in the context of environmental human induced pressures such climate change and pollution is critical to support decisions on adaptation and the context of environmental human induced pressures such climate change and pollution is critical to support decisions on adaptation and mitigation actions. The extreme level of heterogeneity of the terrestrial biosphere both in terms of environments (landuse and climate) and in terms of variables to be monitored or analysed (biodiversity, productivity, specimen, ecophysiology, etc. on land and water) require and integrated approach and a highly diverse set of competences.

The RIs that operate in the context of the terrestrial biosphere are already giving an important contribution to the understanding of responses and roles of the ecosystems in the context of global changes but, due to their high level of heterogeneity, a general effort for a coordination and interconnection is crucial to ensure an integrated and optimal use of the data collected and this is the main aim of the WP. It is a challenging objective because it is going to harmonize and integrate around fundamental questions seven RIs that have a different level of maturity, operate at different scales (spatial and temporal) and that have been built starting from different purposes and basis: continuous ecosystem observations (ICOS, eLTER), manipulation experiments (ANAEE), phenotyping and biotechnology solutions (IBISBA, EMPHASIS), specimen collections (DiSSCo) and data integration and modelling (LIFEWATCH).

The WP activities are all designed to build a coordination structure and domain hub with the aim to support and assist RI in their development and management that must ensure full interoperability, promoting inter-RI data use and whenever possible co-location and standardization of methods and tools. This will be achieved also through the development of common services with high level of competences and avoiding duplications. The coordinated activity will also organize the Italian contribution to the Essential Climate Variables (ECV) and Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) provision and to the Satellite derived products validation, identifying the current gaps and designing and implementing the best strategy to fill them. The activity will put Italy in a leading position at European level where the national and continental coordination, harmonization, and interoperability of the terrestrial biosphere RIs is still a complex and unsolved issue.

The new coordinated landscape of terrestrial biosphere RIs will also allow the inclusion of new important and unique ecological dataset that are currently not included in any of the RIs’ databases but that could give a crucial contribution to the ecosystems understanding. These data, often coming from historical experimental and monitoring activities, will first need a data curation phase (standardization, FAIRness improvement) and then to be associated to the most competent RI (based on the data type) that will oversee the data maintenance and, for new data, the inclusion and curation.

The new simplified and clear data access though a single portal (coordinated between WP2 and WP6) will support data use by the scientific community, with a strong link with the activities planned in the other PNRR initiatives, starting from the National Biodiversity Future Centre and the Center for Technologies in Agriculture (AgriTech). The WP6 RIs can in fact contribute to answer big questions on the ecosystems’ resilience, adaptation and mitigation respect to climate change, environmental pressure reduction in food production, protection, restoration and increase of the biodiversity and more in general contribute to find new solutions for the improvement of human wellness that will characterise the National Centers activities. At the same time, the coordination of the Terrestrial Biosphere RIs will provide a unique and optimal solution for a long-term storage and distribution of the data produced and collected by the National Centers that in this way will be harmonized and linked to the other data RIs products and increase their visibility at international level.