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Concept

Continental biosphere plays an important role on global changes of the planet by means of its interactions with atmosphere and hydrosphere and also by the fact that most of the continental ecosystems are subjected to severe manipulations through human activities leading to severe environmental problems in conjunction with global changes.

Attempts to relate directly atmospheric conditions or anthropogenic management in ecosystems to their consequences on environmental fluxes have often been misleading because:  
 
  • each individual flux (e.g. nitrate leaching, phosphorus transfer, N2O and NH3 emission, CO2 sequestration or emission, water flows, xenobiotic fluxes, etc…) has been studied separately from each other (disciplinary research) despite their great interdependency. 
  • the characteristic rate functions of the different processes involved in the dynamics of the system are not well known.
  • the residence time of the different elements (C, N, P…) within the different compartments of the ecosystem has not been well evaluated.

As a consequence, some of the environmental outputs that we observe today could be the delayed consequences of changes in land use and management that occurred several years or decades ago. Similarly, if we want to induce changes in land use and management systems for restoring and enhancing environment and biodiversity, we need to know more precisely the time response of the whole system: vegetation, soil, microbial communities and micro- and meso-fauna. For these reasons, it is necessary to develop long term integrated experimental facilities for determining baseline conditions and for studying the dynamics of evolution of different ecosystems under anthropogenic forcings.
Due to the various scales and the complexity of the interactions between ecosystem processes and the environmental conditions, meeting this challenge requires a sustained research effort with various approaches closely linked. The coupling of in silico (theoretical and mechanistic models), in vitro (closed controlled facilities: Ecotrons) and in natura experimental approaches to address these issues is then crucially needed. Theoretical and mechanistic models, powerful ‘ecosystem analysers’ and long term field experimentations are all needed to analyse, model and predict the consequences of global changes on biogeochemical fluxes and biodiversity.

These tools need a strong, concerted and innovative development across Europe. Such a development is the objective of the Infrastructure ANAEE (Analysis and Experimentation on Ecosystems). This infrastructure aims at becoming the hard bone of the development of ecosystem science into modern systems biology using in silico, in vitro and in natura experiments to generate and test hypothesis and to make predictions.

The ANAEE research infrastructure will therefore expand and network these complementary experimental platforms.

Ecosystem analysers (Ecotrons):

Terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystem can be studied in Ecotrons at various scales, from microcosms of a few litres to macrocosms of several tons. Integrated responses of ecosystems will be measured, in particular the components of biogeochemical cycles, as well as their underlying mechanisms at the level of organisms, populations and communities.
Reconstructed, model ecosystems representing a simplification of the full complexity of natural ecosystems can also be studied in Ecotrons. It allows to study, for example the relationship between structure and function, or the impact of complexity on ecosystem dynamics.

An innovative use of Ecotrons, especially when their measurement capacities are well developed, is to analyse the physiology of blocks of ecosystems which have been subjected in situ for years to various treatments within Long Term Experimental Platforms (LTEP) systems (see below). In that case, Ecotrons can be seen as ecological analysers receiving samples for analysis 

Long Term in situ Experimental Platforms (LTEP)

A network of LTEP will constitute a large-scale European-Field Laboratory with the aim of providing fundamental, mechanistic information on ecosystem structure, function and resilience. Five thematic areas are concerned:
  •  the patterns and controls of primary productivity.
  •  the spatial and temporal distribution of representative populations of plants, animals and microbes.
  •  the distribution and dynamics of organic matter in soil, water or sediments.
  •  the patterns of inputs and movements of inorganic nutrients and chemicals through the ecosystem.
  •  the patterns and effects of disturbances.
The role of these LTEP facilities should be:
 
  •  to maintain in the long term the different treatment by appropriate management systems
  •  to insure the monitoring of all state and flux variables at appropriate time steps
  •  to construct and maintain data base and to open it for all scientific community
  •  to create and conserve collections of soil, vegetation, water, and organisms samples.

 

These platforms should be organised for hosting some complementary experiments and measurement facilities allowing the analysis of some processes and mechanisms through the use of isotope tracers, portable growth chambers, FACE systems etc… 

Modelling and bioinformatics facilities

It is also crucial to develop theoretical frameworks and simulation models to help interpreting the results of the Ecotron and Long Term Experimental Platforms and to suggest new experiments. The information and knowledge gained from this research will also feed scenario simulations to evaluate environmental hazards and impacts on functional biodiversity resulting from a wide range of contrasting land use and management systems. ANAEE will initiate a modelling platform.

The results of the research programs carried within ANAEE must feed a common integrated data base and information system allowing exchanges and communications between different research teams of different disciplines. A European (Eco) Systems Biology Centre will have to be developed which will also operate a Virtual Institute for Theory and Modelling when this distributed infrastructure exists.
 

Analytical platforms


 Large-scale European Analytical Facilities in close connection with experimental designs within LTEP, Ecotron, and Modelling facilities should enhance the European capacity to strengthen the link between data collection in ecosystems and understanding and control of inherent processes.

The Analytical Platforms should have the following objectives:

  • Concentrate facilities with high- or ultra-high-resolution physical-chemical and biomolecular instrumentation to enable efficient elucidation of chemical and biochemical functions in ecosystems.
  • Provide analytical support in the nano- and micro-meter scale to experimental designs in other ANAEE platforms.
  • Develop and concentrate specific instrumental expertise to unravel analytical results on complex bio-organo-mineral matrices in ecosystem domains.
  • Assist modellers to include qualitative and quantitative ecosystem concepts at molecular scale, and build a new generation of models with minimum of black boxes and upscaling errors.
  • Enlarge the technological capacities to rapidly and accurately evaluate changes in complex ecosystem bulk matrices (soils, sediments, plants), as well as to provide their meaningful fractionation.

The Analytical Platforms facilities should encompass:

  • Non invasive instrumental techniques for complex matrices, e.g.: Diffuse-Reflectance and Near Infrared Spectrometry; Solid- or liquid-state NMR spectroscopy; Magnetic Resonance Imaging, (MRI); stable isotopes spectrometry.
  • Liquid- or gas-chromatography coupled to high- or ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry for matrices fractionation and identification of ecosystems biomarkers.
  • Biomolecular (Proteomics, Metabolomics) and Biotechnological (Genomics) instrumentation to understand ecosystems biochemical functions.
  • Physical and biophysical instrumentation to couple chemical and biochemical functions to water fluxes in ecosytems.

The Analytical Platforms should be able to participate to set-up the experimental designs within ANAEE, provide detailed and accurate analysis at molecular level, contribute to elucidation of results, and interphase with modelling activities.

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Writing: MB
Creation date: 02 April 2011

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