Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Infrastructures ─ Challenges and Opportunities

Research infrastructure comprises the "hard" infrastructure, such as the networks of diverse sensors, the long-term monitoring plots and national sample archives; and the "soft" infrastructure, such as the standardisation of data collection, handling, meta-data, licensing and storage methods and tools. These research infrastructures are needed to recognize negative developments in our terrestial ecosystems and initiate timely countermeasures or mitigate the negative impacts on society through long-term observations. This book brings together major knowledge on experimental infrastructures in ecosystem science for testing and predicting future environmental conditions, designing new approaches, identifying priorities and providing solutions to close current gaps in environmental monitoring.

Abid Chabbi?

Dr. habil. Abad Chabbi, Director of Research at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), is a plant ecologist and soil biogeochemist. He worked at the Louisiana State University, USA; the Faculty of Environmental Science in Cottbus, Germany; the University of Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris, France; and the INRA where he has been leading the national Observatory for Environmental Research-Agro-Ecosystems, Biogeochemical Cycles and Biodiversity (www.soere-acbb.com) since 2009. His current research centres on understanding the link between soil carbon sequestration, nutrient availability and stoichiometry in the Plant-Soil System, biodiversity and the influence that land use management and climate change may have on these dynamics.

During his career, Dr. Chabbi has coordinated a number of international multidisciplinary projects, chaired and organized numerous international symposiums and edited books and several special issues of leading international journals. He has presented a number of keynote lectures, seminars around the world. Currently, Dr. Chabbi is a member/expert of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, the Chinese Academy of Science, the Czech Science Foundation, the German Research Science Foundation (DFG), the Hercules Foundation (Hercules Stichting) Belgium, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) UK, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) UK and of the European commission (DG Research & Innovation and DG Agriculture and Rural Development). Dr. Chabbi is the coordinator of two strategic European FP7 projects: ‘ExpeER’ (www.expeeronline.eu) and ‘ANAEE’ (www.anaee.com) and deeply involved in ENVRIPlus, a cluster H2020 project. Since April 2013. he has also been leading the C2 component of the Ecosystems Task at Group on Earth Observations (GEO).

Henry W. Loescher?

Dr. Loescher’s career has been at the nexus of science, engineering and project development. Formally educated as an Ecosystem Scientist, he received his PhD and MSc from the University of Florida (Forest Ecology) and undergraduate degrees from State University of New York (SUNY) and Vermont State College (Environmental Science, Agronomy, and Applied Science). His active research projects include determining the biotic and abiotic controls on ecosystem-level carbon, water and energy balance across a range of spatial and temporal scales, and challenging ecological theory.

Dr. Loescher is the Director of Strategic Projects in the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a first-of-its kind continental-scale major research facility that integrates science, engineering and project management. Henry has lead multiple NEON Project Science Teams and engineering efforts (instrumentation, mobile deployment, aquatic science, etc.), and he is currently pioneering international and domestic effects to link large scale environmental observatories and their ‘Big Data’ to address current and future environmental problems facing society today. As such, he sits on numerous large-project, international advisory boards. Prior to his tenure at NEON, he was at Oregon State University administrating the DOE AmeriFlux QA/QC Program.