Introducing LTER-DK and SITES Denmark - Infrastructure for long-term ecosystem research in Denmark
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: LTER-DK is a network of ten existing Danish platforms for long-term monitoring of ecosystems. In 2020, LTER-DK was accepted on the national Danish roadmap, and received funding for five years as the Danish node for eLTER RI in 2022. The Danish research platforms include terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal systems spread across the country. LTER-DK uses whole ecosystem approaches to observe and analyse the environmental system, with a focus on the interaction between biodiversity, biogeochemistry, hydrology and land-use. Several of the research platforms in LTER-DK are part of other networks, including three ICP Forest sites, Wadden Sea research, NEC-Emission Directive stations, Critical Zone Observatories, ICOS and AnaEE, as well as aquatic and terrestrial sites with globally unique long-term data series. To better utilize and employ our efforts, LTER-DK is teaming up with three other ESFRI RI’s: ACTRIS, ICOS, and AnaEE, in a joint application to establish SITES Denmark. While funding is not yet secured, it is anticipated later this year. The goal of SITES Denmark is to facilitate interdisciplinary research in the functioning of natural and managed ecosystems, and to strengthen society’s capacity of to address critical environmental challenges. SITES Denmark will integrate and upgrade the existing RIs to provide comprehensive research facilities and data access. A core concept of SITES Denmark is cross-RI coordination of investments and activities. The initiative will provide easy access to research facilities and FAIR data, enhancing the capacity for evidence-based decision-making and policy development. The strategy of SITES Denmark focuses on: meeting international RI obligations in accordance with the statutes of each RI, creating co-location of RI facilities and activities, including investments into flexible, mobile technologies for shared use across-RIs, and enabling the study of ecosystem interactions by leveraging mobile technologies to examine gradients or transitional zones between ecosystems. meeting international RI obligations in accordance with the statutes of each RI, creating co-location of RI facilities and activities, including investments into flexible, mobile technologies for shared use across-RIs, and enabling the study of ecosystem interactions by leveraging mobile technologies to examine gradients or transitional zones between ecosystems. These efforts will create synergies, improve the efficiency of technologies and equipment, and pave the way for the integration of research communities and enhanced interdisciplinary research activities. Moreover, this will provide us the opportunity to explore the feasibility of developing co-locations and mobile systems to enhance interdisciplinary research and address complex environmental challenges. In order to show the interdisciplinary value of integrating the RIs in SITES Denmark, a demonstrator project will perform multiple measurement campaigns using mobile systems at a new, co-located forest facility (Sorø/Suserup Forests). This will become a living lab, where the landscape contains several ecosystem types in close proximity, i.e. agricultural croplands, grasslands transitioning into forest, and forest transitioning into a lake. The Sorø/Suserup Forests facilities are located within 13 km, and they are candidates to form a future joint co-located eLTER master site. The demonstrator will therefore also serve as a test of the comparability of the two sites. Mobile systems allow for new gradient studies across boundaries/transitional zones between different ecosystems with gradient approaches. We will launch six Mobile Systems (MS) simultaneously integrated to the ACTRIS, ICOS, AnaEE and LTER facilities. Covering multiple domains (from atmosphere to soil microbiome), these systems will produce data on individual ecosystems, as well as along transects spanning ecosystems transitions, helping to uncover the importance of processes taking place in the transitional zones of the landscape. The coordinated production of new data across the four RIs will be further used as a test case for the development and adaptation of common new data tools, protocols and templates, as a crucial step in the FAIRification process of SITES Denmark.
Source: ARPHA Conference Abstracts
Institution: University of Copenhagen
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4410826473