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The knowledge and results from past and ongoing climate change projects and studies provide a significant potential for generating new knowledge through syntheses, integration and modelling and thereby help to improve our understanding and ability to better act to solve the climate change problems. Therefore, CLIMMANI aims to provide an umbrella for coordinated activities bringing together researchers, data and knowledge from past and ongoing European research projects in order to synthesise the knowledge and improve ecosystem models.
The specific objectives of the programme are to:
- establish a network of global change scientists researchers and promote communication and integration between them to assure and improve the benefit of the research activities for the society within global environmental problems
- organise workshops to present and discuss key ecosystem processes and the impacts and interactions by climate change factors
- generate a database on data from ecosystem manipulation studies for better comparisons, syntheses and modelling efforts
- synthesise and assess the impact of climate change factors on key ecosystem processes and the interactions between the different climate change factors and other drivers
- provide support for exchange of researchers studying impacts of climate change factors on ecosystem processes in order to facilitate syntheses and modelling of data
- facilitate European networking and coordination of research activities among Europe and US
- identify important gaps in knowledge, research priorities and future research needs related to whole-ecosystem responses to key global change factors.
Climate change projects, such as the CLIMAITE project conducted by Risø DTU, forms the basis for the CLIMMANI project by providing data for workshops, modelling and syntheses.
CLIMMANI will focus on the different climatic drivers and their interactions as key topics in the work. Furthermore, CLIMMANI will improve the foundation for overall ecosystem modelling as a tool to better understand the complex mechanisms of response to changes in the ecological drivers in atmospheric change.
CLIMMANI particularly focuses on the following activities:
- Workshop and conference organisation - bringing together researchers and working groups from different disciplines with experimental as well as modelling backgrounds to assess results from manipulation experiments, evaluate existing literature and databases and identify and discuss progress and developments within climate change research. Workshops and working groups will be formed, including collaborative meetings with the US networks INTERFACE, TERACC and PrecipNet;
- Shorter exchange visits of 2-6 months with the aims of analysing and synthesising data and results, writing synthesis and/or organising and gap filling measurements for use in databases, modelling as well as synthesis writing;
- Establishment of a comprehensive integrated database, which contain data on all manipulation experiments and from both ongoing and past EU research projects as well as from existing national databases. This will be conducted in close collaboration with major climate change related projects and hold links to other databases;
- International networking of CLIMMANI activities with existing US networks on climate change (Terrestrial Ecosystem Responses to Atmospheric and Climatic Change (TERACC) and Precipitation and Ecosystem Change Network (PrecipNet)). Activities will as far as possible be planned in joint cooperation.
Participants:
CLIMMANI involves 15 ESF member states (Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, UK, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Check Republic, Romania, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Poland).
Role:
Risø is chairman for the network.
Resources:
The project is funded through ESF, Standing Committee for Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences (LESC).
Duration:
CLIMMANI is funded to run from 2008 through 2012.
Web page:
CLIMMANI has a webpage for further information at www.climmani.org and www.esf.org/climmani
Employees involved:
Claus Beier (chair) and Leon Gareth Linden (modelling and database).
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