TERENO - Expectations more than fulfilled
TERENO was founded over 15 years ago - the most comprehensive research project to investigate the long-term regional impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems and their socio-economic consequences in Germany. In an article for the open access journal “Earth's Future”, 36 scientists from the #TERENO network have summarized the most important findings of the initiative.
Closing a gap, giving a new impetus - the advance praise was not small when the TERENO initiative was launched at the end of 2008. In fact, TERENO was something new: the largest project in Germany to record the regional consequences of #climatechange. The Helmholtz centers involved not only brought together a broad spectrum of disciplines: together, they established a Germany-wide network of #observatories that were extensively equipped with measuring instruments.
“TERENO is now a key pillar for environmental modeling and forecasting in Germany and serves as an information hub for practitioners and policy stakeholders in agriculture, forestry, and water management at regional to national levels,” states Prof. Harry Vereecken from #IBG3, Forschungszentrum Jülich.
“Only with such systems the data can be collected which is necessary to distinguish long-term trends from short-term fluctuations and develop appropriate adaptation measures,” emphasizes Dr. Theresa Blume from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam - Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ. However, planning, construction and operation require considerable effort - both in terms of resources and funding, which the participating centers largely raise themselves.
Other important findings: in order to adapt to changing research requirements and ensure long-term data collection, a research infrastructure must be designed flexibly. The necessary interdisciplinarity does not arise by itself either. "The culture of institutions is crucial. There must be a willingness to deal with the different views and requirements of the various scientific disciplines and also the user communities and ultimately to make compromises, for example with regard to locations or measurement methods. In TERENO, this has been achieved in an exemplary manner,” says Prof. Peter Dietrich from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). "All this shows that such integrated environmental monitoring programs must be continued in the future,” adds Prof. Hans Peter Schmid from the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT).
Find out more about the success story of TERENO: https://lnkd.in/gBA-6HaA
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#soilscience
Heye Bogena, Sander Huisman, Thomas Puetz, Jannis Groh
