AnaEE 1st periodic report Nov 2012 – Oct 2013

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1. Publishable summary

1.1. Project context and objectives

The sustainability of agricultural, forested, freshwater and other ecosystems is under threat due to climate

change, loss of biodiversity, disturbance of biogeochemical cycles and land use changes. In order to meet the

challenges of preserving or improving ecosystem services, securing food supply and building a 21 century

bioeconomy, we need to understand and forecast how ecosystems will respond to these changes.

AnaEE is a research infrastructure for experimental manipulation of managed and unmanaged terrestrial and

aquatic ecosystems, supporting scientists in analysing, assessing and forecasting the impact of climate and

other global changes on ecosystems. AnaEE will help scientists and policymakers develop solutions to the

challenges of food security and environmental sustainability, and stimulate the growth of a vibrant

bioeconomy.

Ecosystems will be exposed, using the AnaEE distributed facilities, to environmental scenarios, producing

processoriented data which will feed predictive models and serve to define mitigation and management

strategies.

1.2. Work performed since the beginning of the project and main results

The anticipated services that AnaEE can deliver have been identified. They are a) access to infrastructures,

b) harmonisation, c) data access, d) modelling, e) development of front edge techniques, f) analytical

services, g) science development and integration, h) promoting interaction of users groups, i) general

coordination. Based on this first analysis, a Vision document has been produced with the scheme of AnaEE

(Figure 1 and Figure 2).

The AnaEE stakeholders are identified as: i) scientists (researchers, technicians, students), ii) national and

European policy makers, iii) educators, iii) business, iv) society at large (NGO and citizens). A data base of

potential AnaEE stakeholders has been initiated. A first analysis of scientific users (Figure 3) shown that

Arable Agriculture Temperate Forest and Grassland are the most studied ecosystems. The favoured added

value of AnaEE is the Think Tank and Synthesis activities.

Significant facilities in Europe representing different geographical areas, ecosystem types and approaches

have been selected for mapping of experience and good practices (field scale faciltities, Ecotrons, terrestrial-

aquatic facilities and Analytical platforms). Significant criteria, services and “best practice” should be used

when future AnaEE facilities are selected. A pilot matrix has been developed including the array of

ecosystems, climates, soil types and pressures that AnaEE can address.

An online user survey has been sent to stakeholders to gain an overview of current data access requirements

(Figure 4). The results indicate that the biggest problems arise because datasets are hard to find and data

licensing and intellectual property frameworks can be impede progress. Absence or poor uptake of standards

for data and metadata description are major factors contributing to the problems of data integration in Agro

ecosystems research.

AnaEE will generate procedures to identify and maintain prevalent standards, and develop a set of minimum

requirements for a project’s results to be “AnaEE qualified”. To that effect, a review of European agencies

and projects involved in Environmental standards, as well as standard procedures in other scientific

disciplines is produced. AnaEE data activities were classified in 5 areas (see Figure 5) with standard

requirements for each. A number of agencies were proposed as benchmark in each area.

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AnaEE responded to the ESFRI-EC Assessment Expert Group evaluation. The first Legal Governance

Funding – Advisory Group meeting (2012) obtained approval of LGF-AG Terms of Reference. In the 2nd

LGF-AG meeting (2013), several recommendations were made including a possible governance structure

for AnaEE (Figure 6), recommendations for an interim legal model and also an initial report on available

long-term legal models. AnaEE also tries to integrate data access and management requirements into the

legal and governance structure.

Sustainable funding model alternatives for AnaEE were explored using the practices of similar ESFRI RIs as

examples. Options for the long-term funding are being kept open until the AnaEE structure becomes clearer.

The current situation of funding proposals and commitments of partner countries towards national AnaEE

infrastructures has also been screened. Financial rules start to be drafted, including funding options,

contribution principles, selection criteria of Key Performance Indicators and risk management.

The AnaEE name and logo were registered as trademark to ensure the correct use of them. National

denominations of the logo were also registered to ensure correct use of ‘AnaEE’ at National level. The

AnaEE Communication Plan was produced together with AnaEE brochure (Figure 7) and stakeholder

handbook. A Scientific User Forum was organised in October 2013 with a range of scientists from the public

and private sector to discuss both the overall vision and concrete services for the scientific community.

1.3. The expected final results and their potential impact and use (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

AnaEE will form a unique continental scale, long term, integrated experimental research infrastructure based

four types of highly interacting distributed advanced platforms: in natura platforms, in vitro platforms,

analytical platforms and modelling platforms.

AnaEE aims to foster capacity building in ecosystem science by providing state of the art facilities and

structuring tools for the European ecological and agricultural research community – which will, in turn,

strengthen the European research area.

AnaEE will provide direct access to massive and quality controlled environmental datasets from

experimental ecosystem research, as well as to data analysis and modelling tools specifically adapted to these

datasets. Various stakeholders will use this information to develop policies and engineer management

techniques that will allow mitigation of and adaptation to these changes.

AnaEE will help find solutions to the challenges of the bioeconomy, including food, fuel and fibre

production and sustainable ecosystem services. There is a need to understand the sensitive interdependencies

between ecosystem services and the changing environment if Europe is to develop a green economy centred

on bio-based products and eco-technologies.

1.4. Project public website

www.anaee.com

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Figure 1. AnaEE structure.

Figure 2. Context of AnaEE

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Figure 3. Societal Grand Challenges of Interest to AnaEE research stakeholders (according to an online survey run in

Q3 2013)

Figure 4. Structure of the AnaEE online user survey.

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Figure 5. AnaEE Standards Pyramid Taxonomy of standards applicable to AnaEE.

Figure 6. Possible governance structure for AnaEE

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Figure 7. The first AnaEE brochure (front page)