Update from the Terrestrial Ecosystems Flagship

By the flagship chair Angela Augusti (angela.augusti@cnr.it), CNR

Future plans

The Terrestrial Ecosystem flagship plan to submit a project proposal to the Svalbard Strategic Grant call (deadline 17th March 2021) for flagship activities in 2021-2023.

The flagship chair Angela Augusti just send around an email to the flagship group to inform about the process and give interested scientists the opportunity to participate in the proposal writing. In February 2020 a smaller flagship group met in Tromsø to start discussing the new flagship project aiming to strengthen cooperation and collaboration among scientist working on Terrestrial Ecosystems in Ny-Ålesund, and to define, based on the scientific gaps highlighted in the recently submitted review publication, future strategic research activities.

If you did not receive the email, but would like to take part in this process, please contact Angela at angela.augusti@cnr.it.

The activities planned within the flagship project will anyhow be open for all, and no formal membership to the flagship is required to take part in the work and activities. Still, we seek active scientists that would like to take part in the proposal writing and contribute to forming the flagship activities for the next 2-years period and beyond.

December 2020

The review paper led by Åshild Ø. Pedersen (NPI) “Five decades of terrestrial and freshwater research in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard: Current status and knowledge gaps” was submitted to Polar Research in December 2020. The paper is the final product of the project funded to the Terrestrial Ecosystems Flagship in 2017 and of the meetings in Ny-Ålesund in 2018, in Longyearbyen in 2019 and in Oslo in 2019.

November 2020

Under the SIOS umbrella, a workshop about core data was organized.  The workshop aimed to define, and eventually work on measurement protocols, about the changes occurring in Arctic regions and ecosystems. For the terrestrial part the discussion was focused on two topics: biodiversity (both terrestrial and marine) and processes connected mainly to carbon, nutrient and water cycles.

November (and March) 2020

At the NySMAC meeting projects and activities of the research community of Ny-Ålesund are discussed. Among other things, there has been a discussion about the identification of the Ny-Ålesund Research Station infrastructure gaps and future development. As flagship, “we are invited to discuss, identify and prioritise research infrastructure needs based on the present and planned research and monitoring activity in Ny-Ålesund”. Among these the new terrestrial laboratory built in Ny-Ålesund will soon be equipped with basic instruments. As a community, we can contribute with our proposals to contribute to shape the common infrastructure for the future research plans.

October 2020

In the context of the joint-flagship project “Nutrient cycles in Arctic ecosystem” funded by Svalbard Science Grant early in 2020, there has been a 2-day online seminar. This was organized with keynote presentations, and Maarten Loonen and Pete Convey presented very comprehensive and inspiring results from their terrestrial research on this topic. The complete list of the speakers, presentation titles and recordings of the talks can be found under the description of cross-cutting flagship activities.

The participation was quite high and around 30 participants were interested in the terrestrial aspects of the Nutrient cycle.  The workshop will be followed by an in person workshop in 2021 in Italy organized at the Institute of research of terrestrial ecosystem at CNR.