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Analytical Working Group

The need of integrated analytical platforms for experimentation and analysis in ecosystems

Background

There is an increasing recognition of the need for greater integration in ecosystem studies so that the interactions between global change, human management and ecosystem processes can be investigated, understood and modelled. The ANAEE project has been established to consider the potential for a European research infrastructure that brings together people, data and facilities to address experimental ecosystem research scaling from the field, ecotrons, laboratories and models. It is a two year project, funded as a Design Study by the EU, reporting in early 2010.

ANAEE is conducting a series of focussed workshops addressing different aspects of the infrastructure; field scale experiments, ecotrons, analytical resources and ecosystem modelling. This workshop is the third of these, which addresses the need for platforms with the analytical facilities, instruments, and know-how to effectively give light to nowadays relevant environmental questions. The objective is to provide recommendations about whether there is a need for analytical facilities integration, and if so, what form it should take. These recommendations will then be reported back to the EU and will help shape the development of research infrastructure for ecosystem science.

The meeting will be held at “Fundación Biodiversidad”, Patio de Banderas, nº 16, Seville, Spain
 

Objectives of the Working Group

  • The analytical platforms provide a scientific added value to ANAEE since advanced and updated physical-chemical instrumentation will be made available to European scientists conducting experimentation on ecosystems.
  • The specific competence of the scientists running the analytical platforms is also an asset to ANAEE. They will have the necessary expertise and know-how for an appropriate analysis and evaluation of results derived from the experimentation on ecosystems (vs. chemical, biochemical, biomedical experiments)
  • The analytical platforms will strengthen experiments conducted in Ecotrons and LTEP by helping in elucidating the shifts in environmental variables due to changes of soil, sediments and water functions.
  • Analytical platforms will provide answers to ecosystem behaviour particularly in the nano- and micro-meter scale.
  • The elucidation of ecosystem processes and relative data will also help modellers to develop new concepts about qualitative and quantitative changes at the molecular scale. This will improve the reliability of models to larger scales.
  • The analytical platforms should include capacity to analyze both, complex matrices (soil, sediments, plants, etc), parts or separates of them.
  • Non invasive instrumental techniques should be used for complex matrices, e.g.: Diffuse Reflectance Infrared Spectrometry; Solid- or liquid- state NMR spectroscopy; Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI; Analysis of stable isotopes.
  • Specific techniques like Analytical Pyrolysis, Liquid- or gas-chromatography coupled to high- or ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry should be used for fractionation and identification of ecosystems biomarkers.
  • Biomolecular (Proteomics, Metabolomics) and Biotechnological (Genomics) instrumentation should also be part of analytical platforms to follow biochemical functions in ecosystems.


 






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Writing: MB
Creation date: 02 April 2011

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