This project has received funding from the Euopean Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731065

Responsibility for the information and views set out in this report lies entirely with the authors. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Deliverable No 2.2: Report on science strategy to answer scientific questions, policy requirements, and societal challenges

within AQUACOSM

Project Title: AQUACOSM: Network of Leading European AQUAtic MesoCOSM Facilities

Connecting Mountains to Oceans from the Arctic to the Mediterranean

Project number: 731065

Project Acronym: AQUACOSM

Proposal full title: Network of Leading European AQUAtic MesoCOSM Facilities

Connecting Mountains to Oceans from the Arctic to the Mediterranean

Type: Research and innovation actions

Work program topics addressed:

H2020-INFRAIA-2016-2017: Integrating and opening research infrastructures of European interest

Due date of deliverable:

31 December 2018

Actual submission date:

29 December 2018, revision: 08 April 2019

Version: V2

Main Authors: Timo Tamminen, Dominique Durand, Jens Nejstgaard

This project has received funding from the Euopean Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731065

Responsibility for the information and views set out in this report lies entirely with the authors. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Project ref. number 731065

Project title AQUACOSM: NETWORK OF LEADING EUROPEAN AQUATIC MESOCOSM FACILITIES

Deliverable title Report on science strategy to answer scientific questions, policy requirements, and societal challenges within AQUACOSM

Deliverable number D2.2

Deliverable version V1

Contractual date of delivery 31 December 2018

Actual date of delivery 29 December 2018 (Updated report V2 8 Apr 2019)

Document status Updated after Mid Term Review

Document version 1

Online access Yes

Diffusion Public

Nature of deliverable Report

Workpackage 2

Partner responsible SYKE

Author(s) Timo Tamminen, Dominique Durand, Jens Nejstgaard

Editor Katharina Makower

Approved by Jens Nejstgaard

EC Project Officer Agnès Robin

Abstract AQUACOSM Science Strategy will re-define the AQUACOSM identity from a technique-based network to target-based RI definition. We address pending research questions, which are defined from the 2 main driving perspectives: (A) scenario-testing of the most urgent policy-relevant and societal knowledge needs connected to the Grand Challenges, and (B) advancement of the most rapidly developing scientific areas in community ecology. Positioning AQUACOSM successfully in the future European RI landscape necessitates interfacing our experimental approach to neighbouring RI networks, which provide long-term time series data on parameters relevant to the aquatic systems. Science Strategy target is thus to create natural alliances throughout the environmental RI network landscape.

Keywords Aquatic ecosystems, science strategy, RI landscape, Grand Challenges, experimentation

This project has received funding from the Euopean Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731065

Responsibility for the information and views set out in this report lies entirely with the authors. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Disclaimer

This deliverable is a living document and will be updated as project progresses. New versions will be available and published on the project website: www.aquacosm.eu

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Table of Contents

1. Executive summary .............................................................................................................................................. 5

2. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 6

3. Background .......................................................................................................................................................... 6

3.1 FP7 MESOAQUA network ......................................................................................................................... 6

3.2 AQUACOSM approach: Harmonization and Joint Research Activities across gradients ......................... 7

4. Steps towards AQUACOSM Science Strategy ...................................................................................................... 7

4.1 Kiel Workshop summary .......................................................................................................................... 7

4.2 ESFRI 2018 Roadmap analysis .................................................................................................................. 8

4.3 AQUACOSM: Taking role in environmental RI integration .................................................................... 10

4.3.1 ENVRI initiatives and BEERi ............................................................................................................... 10

4.3.2 Habitat-based collaborations ............................................................................................................ 11

5. Components of a sustainable AQUACOSM Science Strategy ............................................................................ 13

5.1 Grand Challenges and aquatic experimentation ................................................................................... 13

5.2 Specific scientific challenges to be addressed: topics and collaboration .............................................. 13

5.3 Interacting within the RI landscape ....................................................................................................... 14

5.4 Interacting with regional and national aquatic data shareholders ........................................................ 14

5.5 Open Access data management and knowledge dissemination ........................................................... 14

6. Next steps .......................................................................................................................................................... 15

7. References ......................................................................................................................................................... 16

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1. Executive summary

AQUACOSM Science Strategy will re-define the AQUACOSM identity from a technique-based network to target-based RI definition. This will be necessary to formulate a sustainable role for aquatic experimentation in the European-wide landscape of environmental Research Infrastructures, for the first time sketched in the recent ESFRI Roadmap 2018 Landscape Analysis.

Practically all other environmental RI networks rely on an observational approach, while AQUACOSM focuses on an experimental approach to natural aquatic food webs. This enables us to address, in detail, functional properties of aquatic ecosystems, by means not available for observational measurements alone. This strength allows pending research questions to be addressed efficiently, which are defined from the 2 main driving perspectives: (A) scenario-testing of the most urgent policy-relevant and societal knowledge needs connected to the Grand Challenges, and (B) advancement of the most rapidly developing scientific areas in community ecology, including trait-based approaches and BEF (Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning) research.

Positioning AQUACOSM successfully in the European RI landscape necessitates both explication of shared experimental approaches to the identified key research questions, and integration of our experimental approach to neighbouring RI networks, which provide long-term time series data on parameters relevant to the aquatic systems. The cross-cutting nature of AQUACOSM, in terms of aquatic habitats ranging from pristine mountain lakes through eutrophied inland waters to the coastal sea and offshore ocean, makes this an interesting and highly rewarding challenge. Therefore, fulfilment of these tasks will require a truly pan-European view to unify research questions and to create natural alliances throughout the environmental RI network landscape.

Analysis of these tasks in AQUACOSM was initiated at a kick-off meeting attended by the members of the AQUACOSM General Assembly, Steering Committee, other consortium members as well as external invited experts, at a combined WP2 and 3 Workshop in Evora, Portugal (Month 12). This task was further advanced during a Science Strategy Workshop 1, arranged in connection with the WP3 Workshop Optimizing mesocosm design and operational procedures in Kiel, September 2018 (Month 21; deliverable D3.3).

The deliverable at hand (Month 24) summarizes the first steps towards defining the key elements of the AQUACOSM Science Strategy. These include: analyses of the Grand Challenges and the role of aquatic experimentation in developing answers to them; specific scientific challenges to be addressed (topics and collaboration); interacting within the European environmental RI landscape; interacting with regional and national aquatic data shareholders; and Open Access data management and knowledge dissemination.

AQUACOSM Science Strategy will be continuously updated until the delivery of the final Science Strategy deliverable on Month 44.

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2. Introduction

This Deliverable presents the initial version of the AQUACOSM Science Strategy, to be further developed during the project lifetime until the final delivery in Month 44. Science Strategy is a central component for the sustainable future of AQUACOSM RI. It will analyze the specific role of experimental aquatic mesocosm facilities in the pan-European landscape of environmental research infrastructures.

Therefore, the strategy will have two equally important dimensions: firstly, an “internal” analysis of the theoretical and methodological specificities of experimental aquatic ecology, allowing mission-oriented, scenario-testing research for the most urgent societal and policy-relevant knowledge needs connected to the Grand Challenges. This will eventually include a SWOT-analysis of the existing AQUACOSM RI network, with strategic assessment of future development directions to fill the identified gaps.

Secondly, an “external” analysis will define the position of AQUACOSM in the European RI landscape, as currently described in the ESFRI 2018 Roadmap and its Landscape Analysis. The cross-cutting nature of AQUACOSM, in terms of aquatic habitats ranging from pristine mountain lakes through eutrophied inland waters to the coastal sea and offshore ocean, will require an extensive survey beyond the present ESFRI Landscape analysis, of the most fruitful ways to co-design and co-benefit from integrated actions with several neighbouring environmental RI networks that provide long-term time series data on parameters relevant to the aquatic systems.

3. Background

3.1 FP7 MESOAQUA network

The foundations of the current AQUACOSM network were laid out in the FP7 project MESOAQUA (2009-2012, GA ID: 228224), which assembled leading European marine mesocosm facilities and established the first international network of mesocosm facilities in general. MESOAQUA worked actively to improve exchange of technology, experience, cross-disciplinary fertilisation, transnational network building and coordination of mesocosm research, as well as training young scientists.

During these four years, MESOAQUA offered access to more than 150 European and non-European marine scientists to its mesocosm facilities, where they were leading or contributing to a total of 23 different cooperative international mesocosm experiments. After the project, MESOAQUA has successfully enhanced the exchange of information and dissemination of knowledge about mesocosm research, by creating a mailing list (≈ 500 contacts) and a web portal that functions as a global information hub for establishing new contacts and for coordination of research activities.

Figure 1. Screen clip from mesocosm.eu, the virtual network for aquatic mesocosm facilities worldwide.

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3.2 AQUACOSM approach: Harmonization and Joint Research Activities across gradients

The current AQUACOSM project has taken the next step to coordinate research, to develop best practices for aquatic mesocosm research, and to open both freshwater and marine large-scale research infrastructures (mesocosms) for international cross-disciplinary participation. AQUACOSM integrates previously scattered know-how between freshwater and marine research infrastructures by uniting aquatic mesocosm science, in an open international network actively promoting transnational access to the facilities.

Apart from offering transnational access to the mesocosm facilities, the emphasis in AQUACOSM lies in the harmonisation of methods between the different disciplinary traditions, and on conducting Joint Research Activities for methodological advances in mesocosm technologies: for developing automated measurements techniques to enhance mesocosm experimentation, and for addressing through coordinated pilot mesocosm experimentation - for the first time - major European geographical gradients (from Crete to Svalbard) and across salinity boundaries from freshwater to full marine environment.

During the AQUACOSM project, a specific target is also to develop a sustainable Science Strategy for mesocosm research, embedded synergistically into the future European environmental RI landscape.

4. Steps towards AQUACOSM Science Strategy

4.1 Kiel Workshop summary

This Science Strategy workshop was organised in connection to WP3 Workshop Optimising mesocosm design and operational procedures in Kiel, September 2018 (reported in D3.3). Representatives from most AQUACOSM partner institutions were present and contributed to the workshop with presentations and input.

The Science Strategy workshop tackled the foundations of the AQUACOSM Science Strategy in the making:

- AQUACOSM niche in the European future RI landscape, alliances with key environmental RI’s - Optimising interactions with other AQUACOSM WPs: state-of-the-art and discussion - Steps towards Science Strategy deliverables (Months 24 & 44)

1. Potential interactions between Task 2.2. and WP7 2. Potential interactions between Task 2.2. and WP8: achievements so far and goals:

implications for Science Strategy. 3. Draft structure of the Science Strategy report: what is needed for Month 24

(December 2018), what will be developed during the second half of the project 4. Summary discussion of possible development of AQUACOSM-plus proposal –

potential collaboration with (e)LTER+, JERICO3, ICOS, and other RI networks

WS Action summary: The science strategy is developed in Task 2.2, which addresses the need to harmonise and integrate the mesocosms in order to address key scientific questions or specific societal needs related to climate change, contaminants and ecosystem disturbances in Europe.

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The workshop started with a short presentation of the recent ESFRI Roadmap 2018. We decided to focus on the Landscape Analysis aspect of the roadmap. Specifically, where does AQUACOSM fit in the “connected RI ecosystem”, what are the connections, and next steps?

The topic of how we see ourselves was mostly connected to the fact that AQUACOSM is special in the RI landscape as large-scale experimental work is the core activity, as opposed to the collection and curation of observational time series and big data, which is a prominent feature in other environmental infrastructures.

Currently, there is a recognised need for long term observations. The role of mesocosm experimentation has been less recognised, or at least so far only conducted at much smaller number of sites than long term observations, even though with mesocosm experiments, we are able to address a wide range of essential research objectives outlined by the EU and other funding bodies (e.g. acidification, warming, multiple stressors, ecotoxicology etc.). More specifically, the experimental approach allows us to test scenarios of future environmental change in aquatic systems before they are manifested, whereas time series data can only look back in time. As this represents a shortcoming in global aquatic science, it was pointed out that we should more effectively highlight the capacity of mesocosm experimentation to unveil processes and ecosystem properties that cannot be discovered by direct observations. Food web interactions are a good example of that, as most observational data depends on snapshots, with sampling intervals far exceeding the generation times of key organism groups, and the presence of many confounding factors affect the interactions observed.

It was felt that AQUACOSM should enhance its interactions with other European environmental RI networks. It was agreed that it would be very constructive to invest in knowledge-building and collaboration between infrastructures, and especially RI consortia LTER, JERICO-NEXT, DANUBIUS, ICOS-ERIC, and EMBRC-ERIC were discussed in some detail, as infrastructures AQUACOSM should enhance collaboration with in the future. The specific advantage of this would be creating domain-specific alliances, leading to larger collaborations and the transition from aquatic research to an alignment with observational RIs. The concept of joint Supersites was also discussed in this context. T. Tamminen (SYKE) and D. Durand (UNI) agreed to facilitate the communication between the neighbouring RI consortia.

As part of optimising interactions with AQUACOSM components, there were also presentations on the Joint Research Activities of the project (WPs 7, 8 and 9). This consisted of updates on the JRAs, as these activities are important for development of science strategy, representing case studies of how large coordinated joint efforts function.

In a similar fashion, the TA component of the project (WP6) is an important component for sustainable science strategy, since the experiments proposed by external users indicate what kind of research the scientific community at large is interested in conducting with AQUACOSM experimental facilities. In order to further develop the services offered by AQUACOSM for the overall scientific community, it was suggested to do an analysis of the recurring research themes that come up in applications in this and the coming years. The analysis should outline the topical, disciplinary and methodological distributions of external TA proposals on a general level, without revealing detailed experimental plans or other confidential issues that remain the sole intellectual property (background IPR) of the applicants.

4.2 ESFRI 2018 Roadmap analysis

The most important framework of European environmental RI networks is the ESFRI Roadmap (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures). The latest edition (2018 Roadmap) includes, besides the “ESFRI vision of the evolution of Research Infrastructures in Europe, addressing the

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mandates of the European Council, and identifying strategy goals”, also a domain-based Landscape Analysis, providing the “current context of the most relevant Research Infrastructures that are available to European scientists and to technology developers typically through peer review of competitive proposals”.

The basis of the Landscape Analysis is the track record of the periodically renewed ESFRI Roadmaps, where consortia representing different fields of science and their research traditions, have progressed during successive Framework Programs. The succession normally starts with individual projects addressing specific Call items, usually in several successive projects that enable the consortium to develop from project-like short-term assemblages towards more “mature” entities, with shared long-term plan for RI development.

These consortia have the possibility to apply a project status on the ESFRI Roadmap, which has the target to advance their sustainability towards permanent structures, finally supported by Member States. The successful projects advance normally through several stages (design study, preparatory phase(s), operative phase), and after maybe ten years of incubation, they can reach the operational phase, or are otherwise well advanced in their construction, and deserve the “ESFRI Landmark” status. The most common permanent arrangement after this stage is a legal entity called ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium), jointly and permanently supported by Governments of Member States. ERIC is a specific legal form to facilitate the establishment and operation of research infrastructures with European interest. The principal task of ERIC is to establish and operate new or existing research infrastructures on a non-economic basis.

A built-in challenge of the succession of the ESFRI Roadmaps, briefly sketched above, is the tendency of fractionation, as an increasing number of RI consortia develop through this procedure. The level of fractionation partly depends on scientific traditions and history of different disciplines. It is obvious that disciplines with decadal traditions of relatively independently operated research infrastructures have given rise to a growing number of RI consortia, with little or no interaction between them, especially in the marine and terrestrial habitats, while e.g. atmospheric sciences have been far more integrated from the start. The Commission has in recent years, accordingly, emphasized the necessity to better integrate RI consortia, especially in environmental sciences (Fig. 2).

A key element in AQUACOSM’s Science Strategy must therefore be a careful analysis of our area of unique expertise, or “niche”, in the future European environmental RI landscape. This analysis was initiated in the Kiel Workshop and is ongoing, also as a part of essential preparations for the March 2019 INFRAIA deadline for the next stage of AQUACOSM consortium. Some first conclusions are highlighted in the next sections.

Figure 2. The ESFRI 2018 Roadmap (screen clip above) emphasizes the integration and collaboration of RI consortia to address effectively complex scientific problems, e.g. the Grand

Challenges.

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Figure 3. One version of the ENVRI illustration of European

RI activities on a “domain map”. In different versions, an “Aquatic domain” can appear with widely different aquatic RI

activities (like here), sometimes only “Marine domain” is presented (with an ample collection of actors), and

freshwaters are invisibly embedded in “Ecosystem” or “Biosphere” domains.

4.3 AQUACOSM: Taking role in environmental RI integration

4.3.1 ENVRI initiatives and BEERi

The European Commission supports the development of major pan-European RI alliances through a set of H2020 funding instruments, with the aim of “providing Europe with a comprehensive landscape of sustainable Research Infrastructures helping to respond to challenges in science, industry and society”. Among these instruments, integrating/collaborative actions include e.g. successive H2020 ENVRI projects (“Common Operations of Environmental Research Infrastructures”; ENVRI, ENVRIPlus, ENVRI-FAIR) bringing together “Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures, projects and networks together with technical specialist partners to create a more coherent, interdisciplinary and interoperable cluster of Environmental Research Infrastructures across Europe” (http://envri.eu/).

These RI interaction platforms aim to gather “all domains of Earth system science – Atmospheric domain, Marine domain, Biosphere and Solid Earth domain to work together, capitalize the progress made in various disciplines and strengthen interoperability amongst Research Infrastructures and domains”. This ambitious goal is naturally challenging to operationalize, not the least because of varying definitions of “domain-based” activities.

An example of these are the several different illustration versions of the “ENVRI domain view”, where a collection of permanent ERIC structures is visualized with past and present RI networks, projects, and other entities (See Fig. 3 with text). Especially, the aquatic domains (marine/freshwater) are problematic to place on such a constellation, as “ecosystems”, or even the “biosphere”, do not appear to contain the marine realm at all, and sometimes freshwater systems are subsidiaries to “biosphere” (i.e., terrestrial systems), sometimes opposite to that.

The illustration obviously originally aimed to cover simultaneously both the domains of operation of the RI consortia, and their level of advancement in the ESFRI process (“The inner grey circle shows RIs in the ESFRI 2010 Roadmap”; http://www.envriplus.eu/research-infrastructures/). The ambiguity of an attempt to mix a “managerial view” with a conceptual visualization of “Earth biosphere domains” might not be the most fruitful approach to identify real-life interfaces between RI consortia. It also perhaps reflects a relative shortage of ecological insight in the “Environmental and Earth System” coordination endeavour, which is actively advanced by leading RI consortia based on physical sciences and especially atmospheric research.

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As fostering cross-disciplinary RI collaboration, and production of interoperable data on the key biosphere processes, are necessary targets for the future RI landscape, AQUACOSM has actively participated in the ENVRI platform interactions, e.g. through the Board of European Environmental Research Infrastructures (BEERi). Through its open data policy, including a publicly available metadataportal on experiments carried out under AQUACOSM TA, AQUACOSM is taking great strides towards adopting the FAIR data guidelines. After the lifetime of AQUACOSM, this metadataportal will migrate to the mesocosm.eu web portal, ensuring sustainable tractability of data sources. A key target for AQUACOSM Science Strategy development will be to actively communicate the cross-domain (freshwaters to marine) and experimental assets of AQUACOSM in the ENVRI context, and develop concrete synergies with neighbouring RI consortia in the process.

4.3.2 Habitat-based collaborations

The cross-cutting nature of AQUACOSM, in terms of aquatic habitats ranging from pristine mountain lakes through eutrophied inland waters to the coastal sea and offshore ocean, makes our niche definition in the RI Landscape a scientifically interesting and highly rewarding challenge. Fulfilment of this task will require a truly pan-European view to unify research questions and create natural alliances throughout the environmental RI network landscape. Despite AQUACOSM being a dedicated aquatic RI, it is also a truly multi-domain consortium in this respect. As water is the carrying element of life in all domains from atmosphere to even deep solid earth, aquatic ecosystem-scale experimental facilities offer a unique nexus for understanding and testing processes between virtually all domains. This further emphasises the yet far from explored potential in multi-domain aspects of AQUACOSM.

An alternative way to visualise a nested Earth biosphere, with examples of respective European RI consortia, is presented in Figure 4. The aquatic and atmospheric domains connect Earth’s habitats through physical, chemical and biological transport and interaction processes. Cross-platform identification of these key processes would facilitate formulation of interfaces between currently disconnected RI consortia.

Positioning AQUACOSM successfully in the European RI landscape necessitates an explication of our shared experimental approaches to the identified key cross-cutting research questions.

A specific challenge for AQUACOSM Science Strategy is therefore the integration of the experimental approach of AQUACOSM to neighbouring RI networks, which provide long-term time series data on parameters relevant to the aquatic systems.

Figure 4. A tentative visualization of nested Earth biosphere domains, with examples of respective European RI consortia.

The aquatic and atmospheric domains connect Earth’s habitats through physical, chemical and biological transport and

interaction processes.

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5. Components of a sustainable AQUACOSM Science Strategy

Below, a first sketch of the AQUACOSM Science Strategy key components is briefly presented. The further analysis and elaboration of these components will take place throughout the project, until a final Science Strategy deliverable is due in Month 44.

AQUACOSM Science Strategy will re-define the AQUACOSM identity from a technique-based network to target-based RI definition. This will be necessary to formulate a sustainable role for aquatic experimentation in the European-wide landscape of environmental Research Infrastructures, for the first time sketched in the recent ESFRI Roadmap 2018 Landscape Analysis.

5.1 Grand Challenges and aquatic experimentation

Practically, all other environmental RI networks rely on an observational approach, while AQUACOSM focuses on an experimental approach to natural aquatic food webs. This enables us to address in detail functional properties of aquatic ecosystems, by means not available for observational measurements alone. This strength allows addressing efficiently pending research questions, first and foremost scenario-testing of the most urgent policy-relevant and societal knowledge needs connected to the Grand Challenges.

Grand Challenges (GC) are formulations of global problems that can be plausibly addressed only through coordinated and collaborative effort. Environmental key GCs deal with several aspects of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, such as Climate Action with all repercussions of climate change (global warming, ocean acidification, extreme climatological events, disruptions of biogeochemical cycles, habitat and biodiversity changes), Clean Water, Life Below Water, Life On Land, and Responsible Production and Consumption.

Aquatic systems are key mediators of many of these challenges, and several associated environmental threats cannot be addressed with observational time series, either due to a lack of representative historical data for emerging threats, or simply because the threats are connected to immediate processes and feedback mechanisms within aquatic ecosystems and their food webs, for which no direct or proxy measurements are available. The AQUACOSM experimental approach allows us to test scenarios of future environmental change in aquatic systems before they are manifested, whereas time series data can only look back in time.

5.2 Specific scientific challenges to be addressed: topics and collaboration

The scientific challenges for feasible scenario-testing are connected to the currently most rapidly developing scientific areas in aquatic community ecology, including trait-based approaches and BEF (Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning) research (e.g. Litchman & Klausmeier 2008, Hillebrand & Matthiessen 2009, Edwards, Litchman & Klausmeier 2013, Stibor et al. 2018). These advancements call for strategical collaboration initiatives towards leading ecological modelling communities by the AQUACOSM RI consortium, to strengthen the conceptual basis for experimental research, and accordingly the prognostic value of mesocosm experimentation. Latest development in community ecology modelling include e.g., Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (HMSC) as a general, flexible framework for modern analysis of community data (Ovaskainen et al. 2017), allowing promising connections of experimental trait-based and observational time series data, which would be highly relevant for strategic AQUACOSM targets.

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In addition, purely methodological limitations hamper efficient scenario-testing development. A serious bottleneck in mesocosm experimentation has always been the moderate availability of community data. Aquatic communities are highly dynamic due to fast fluctuations in relative and absolute numbers of planktonic species and individuals, reflecting changes in environmental forcing, growth traits and multiple food web interactions. Because of their high turnover, planktonic systems can only be effectively studied using near-real-time monitoring and high-resolution experimentation, which is still incapacitated by the time-consuming microscopical analysis and thus slow accumulation of species-level abundance data. Emerging automated, high-resolution imaging techniques, coupled with Artificial Intelligence developments in computer vision and machine learning, will provide in near future essential breakthroughs. As several partners in AQUACOSM are currently at the forefront of this development we plan to incorporate these critical technological advancements as soon as available in the AQUACOSM RI facilities to enhance our scenario-testing capabilities for Grand Challenges.

5.3 Interacting within the RI landscape

To define and communicate the specific role of AQUACOSM in the European RI landscape – or “connected RI ecosystem” – during the Science Strategy development, we will boost current ENVRI/BEERi-based (cf. 3.3.1) bilateral and multilateral interactions with (at least) the following RI consortia, to concretely identify interfaces of experimental AQUACOSM data to time series data relevant to aquatic systems, along the salinity gradient from mountains to the sea:

LTER/eLTER: Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, Critical Zone & Socio-Ecological Research Infrastructure

DANUBIUS: The International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems

JERICO-NEXT: Joint European Research Infrastructure for Coastal Observatories

EMBRC-ERIC: European Marine Biological Research Centre

ICOS-ERIC: Integrated Carbon Observation System in Europe

5.4 Interacting with regional and national aquatic data shareholders

To analyse in detail the policy-relevant and societal knowledge needs along the salinity gradient from mountains to the sea, AQUACOSM consortium will create contacts to regional and national environmental management authorities, compile a catalogue of the most pressing gaps regarding monitoring and management of aquatic systems, and formulate most promising experimental approaches to tackle these. These formulations are distributed within the AQUACOSM facility providers, and TA opportunities to execute experimental campaigns will be actively encouraged.

5.5 Open Access data management and knowledge dissemination

These tasks, representing key elements of all advanced RI consortia, are specifically dealt with in separate Work Packages during AQUACOSM, and the strategic outcomes will be incorporated into the final version of Science Strategy, to be delivered in Month 44.

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6. Next steps

AQUACOSM Science Strategy will be continuously elaborated during the lifetime of the project, involving the whole partnership in connection to the regular General Assembly meetings. The WP2/Task 2.2 partnership prepares these sessions. Additional special actions include intensive next steps already in the beginning of 2019, immediately after the delivery of this draft, as formulation of the basic elements of the Science Strategy are needed for the currently open H2020 Call (INFRAIA-01-2018-2019, deadline March 2019) on “Mesocosm facilities for research on marine and freshwater ecosystems”.

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7. References

[1] EDWARDS, K.F., LITCHMAN, E. & KLAUSMEIER, C.A. (2013) Functional traits explain phytoplankton community structure and seasonal dynamics in a marine ecosystem. Ecol Lett 16: 56-63

[2] HILLEBRAND H, MATTHIESSEN B (2009) Biodiversity in a complex world: consolidation and progress in functional biodiversity research. Ecol Lett 12:1405-1419

[3] LITCHMAN E, KLAUSMEIER CA (2008). Trait-based community ecology of phytoplankton. Ann Rev Evol Ecol Syst 39: 615-639

[4] OVASKAINEN, O., TIKHONOV, G., NORBERG, A., BLANCHET, F. G., DUAN, L., DUNSON, D., ROSLIN, T. & ABREGO, N. (2017). How to make more out of community data? A conceptual framework and its implementation as models and software. Ecol Lett 20: 561-576

[5] STIBOR H, STOCKENREITER M, NEJSTGAARD JC, PTACNIK R, SOMMER U (2018). Trophic switches in pelagic systems. Current Opinion in Systems Biology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coisb.2018.11.006.