EGU General Assembly 2025

The EGU General Assembly 2025 brings together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary, and space sciences. The EGU aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career researchers, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geoscience. 

eLTER Coordinators will participate as conveners in two sessions:

"Integration and co-location of Research Infrastructures and networks for addressing environmental challenges" Convener: Jaana Bäck | Co-conveners: Thomas Dirnböck, Michael Mirtl 

Submit Your Abstract by Wednesday, 15 January 2025, 13:00 CET. 

Session description: The global grand challenges such as climate change, air pollution and biodiversity loss are not occurring in isolation in time or space – they are closely interconnected and have potential to amplify each other, create nonlinear feedbacks and result in significant loss of ecosystem services that eventually affect societal well-being and humanity. While immediate impacts sometimes receive considerable attention, little is known about their long-term and systemic effects often resulting from cross-scale interactions. Closing these knowledge gaps requires an improved, transdisciplinary understanding of the multifaceted environmental system - a prerequisite for the development of appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures. It also requires advanced tools and concerted efforts for integration of the data originating from diverse sources.
European-scale research infrastructures and networks, e.g., ESFRI RIs like ACTRIS, AnaEE, Danubius, eLTER, ICOS, and other observation systems like WMO-GAW and ICP-IM, support the delivery of consistent, standardized data based on harmonized methodologies. The more RI networks are integrated through co-location of individual observation sites, the better understanding can be achieved on ecosystem state (e.g., terrestrial carbon storage), biogeochemical constraints (e.g., macronutrient cycles), societal drivers (e.g., land use change) and tradeoffs (e.g. biodiversity). This session will call upon presentations addressing the benefits and challenges of co-located in-situ observations, enabling researchers to address the systemic changes in a holistic manner and to advise the policymakers on cost-efficient tools for mitigation of environmental change.

"Addressing research challenges of environmental change at the global scale via Research Infrastructures collaboration and alignment" Convener: Michael Mirtl | Co-conveners: Werner Leo Kutsch, Beryl Morris

Submit Your Abstract by Wednesday, 15 January 2025, 13:00 CET.

Session description: While the need for global cooperation in the face of global trends is obvious, funding mechanisms for environmental research and monitoring are still largely organised on a national and regional basis. Despite declared intentions to improve cooperation and thematic coordination in the formulation of related research and infrastructure programmes, concrete cooperation is hampered by a lack of resources and time for consultation, even in the case of thematically appropriate calls. This affects not only collaborative projects but also the improvement of interoperability and, ultimately, the concerted development and sustainable operation of services. Initiatives such as the G8 Group of Senior Officials (GSO) with its Recommendations for Global Research Infrastructures (GRI) have not led to a structural improvement of the situation. Still, Environmental Research Infrastructures (ENVRIs), have become a key instrument in environmental science and science-driven environmental politics.
Contributions to this session should present successful examples, experienced constraints and derived recommendations for action. They might address the value chain from open standardised observations and experiments data via scientific analysis towards societal impact through actionable knowledge, but also refer to,basic ENVRI activities like access to long-term operated in-situ facilities. An Impact Lecture will introduce the Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructures Initiative, in which SAEON/South Africa, TERN/Australia, CERN/China, NEON/USA, ICOS/Europe and eLTER/Europe will present their work on harmonised data systems, training and development, and collaboration in the use case 'ecological drought'.