Fitness for future: eLTER RI’s representation of climate and land use change
21 February 2025
A recent study by Ohnemus et al. has evaluated the readiness of the Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, critical zone, and socio-ecological Research Infrastructure (eLTER RI) to monitor future climate and land use changes across Europe. The research highlights both strengths and gaps in eLTER RI's network, offering recommendations to optimize its spatial arrangement in response to global environmental transformations.
The study examined whether the existing network is fit to capture critical shifts in climate and land use across the continent. The researchers introduced novel metrics to assess climate and land use change pressures on ecosystems. The study found that regions with large projected precipitation changes, such as the Southern Iberian Peninsula, Poland, and Fennoscandia, are underrepresented in the current eLTER RI network. By incorporating future environmental projections, the eLTER RI can enhance its ability to monitor and support policy responses to climate change.
The researchers quantified climate and land use changes through specific ecological pressures: Biotemperature (BT Pressure), Precipitation (P Pressure), Seasonal Water Availability (SPEI Pressure), Land Use Change (LUC Pressure). Results showed that while the eLTER RI network effectively covers hotspots of biotemperature and seasonal water availability changes, it lacks sufficient coverage of regions with high precipitation shifts and land use changes. These gaps exist under both moderate (RCP4.5) and high-emission (RCP8.5) climate scenarios, emphasizing the need for strategic expansion.
To enhance the network’s effectiveness, the study suggests prioritizing areas where current and future gaps overlap. This targeted approach would improve the infrastructure’s ability to support continental-scale policy decisions, ensuring robust monitoring of ecosystems under climate change pressures.
By integrating future environmental conditions into network planning, eLTER RI can evolve into a more comprehensive and adaptive research infrastructure, strengthening Europe’s capacity to address climate and land use challenges.
The findings mark a significant step in refining research networks for global change science, reinforcing the need for proactive adaptation in ecological monitoring systems.
“The study demonstrates the potential to assess the spatial design of environmental in-situ research infrastructure, not only based on current conditions but also in terms of their suitability for future aspects, such as climate change or changing land use. The novel metrics relating climate change and LUC to pressures on ecosystems enabled us to sharpen the recommendations for eLTER RI development derived from the current coverage. While the novel metrics allow for further spatial ecological analyses, we encourage other research infrastructures and monitoring networks to adapt a representativity analysis to optimise their spatial design towards their target regions.” - conclude the authors.
Read the publication:
Thomas Ohnemus, Thomas Dirnböck, Jaana Bäck, Veronika Gaube, Ingolf Kühn, Michael Mirtl, Hannes Mollenhauer, Harry Vereecken, Steffen Zacharias,
Fitness for future: eLTER RI’s representation of climate and land use change,
Ecological Indicators, Volume 171, 2025
