The first LandSeaLot Integration Week begins
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Key players in the Horizon Europe project LandSeaLot are coming together in Lisbon, Portugal for the first LandSeaLot Integration Week, taking place from 20-24 January 2025.
LandSeaLot is a Horizon Europe project that aims to integrate, scale-up and enhance existing observation efforts – including in-situ, satellite, numerical modelling and citizen science efforts – to better study the land-sea interface area, where terrestrial and marine habitats meet. The project’s first Integration Week encapsulates its motto, “Let’s Observe Together!” in that it will connect diverse stakeholders involved in the observation of land-sea interface areas – including scientific experts, research infrastructures, long-term European initiatives and services like Copernicus and EMODnet, amongst others. These stakeholders will meet for the first time in Lisbon to co-design and work towards the realisation of a common observation strategy. Further dialogue with local stakeholders and managers of land-sea interface areas is also ongoing towards this end across 9 pilot sites, in the so-called LandSeaLot “Integration Labs”.
The need for a common observation strategy for land-sea interface areas
Many communities make observations of the land-sea interface area, but there is no consensus on a shared strategy to guide collaboration among these groups. LandSeaLot’s aim is to integrate working methods across these communities, bringing together the best scientific expertise with relevant stakeholders and local communities to address observation challenges, manage data gaps, and streamline and expand existing observation efforts, making them fit-for-purpose. These steps will support and improve ongoing efforts to study land-sea interface areas, empowering all actors to better understand and address urgent societal and environmental challenges that affect these areas, including increased pollution and climate change threats.
Exploring LandSeaLot in action
Integration Week attendees will have the opportunity to visit the LandSeaLot Integration Lab at the Tagus and Sado Estuaries System, one of nine Labs working across Europe to pilot proposed actions and improvements derived from the project and to inform a community-based observation strategy that draws on researcher and citizen scientist expertise. The field trip to the Tagus and Sado Estuaries System Integration Lab is set to include meetings with local researchers, stakeholders and citizen scientists, and will offer a chance to explore how the lab is making use of new cost-effective technology. This describes affordable and reliable sensors and other devices, which will measure different parameters like water temperature, salinity and sea levels at different sites. The Tagus and Sado Estuaries System Integration Lab is working to understand and address the effects of heat waves and flooding in the area, and plans to use cost effective sensors to fill observation gaps and quantify impacts to the local ecosystem and society at large.
Bringing stakeholders together
LandSeaLot Integration week promises to be highly collaborative, with sessions planned to assess progress so far, identify observation gaps, scope challenges and shape a shared approach going forward. It will also be unique in its composition, bringing together a Science Community Forum of researchers from relevant domains, and a Co-Designer Forum involving high-level European organisations and institutions, including EU data services such as EMODnet, and Research Infrastructures such as DANUBIUS-RI, JERICO-RI and ICOS. These attendees will work together to jointly define an action plan between all parties and endorse the first steps towards a common observation strategy for land-sea interface areas. The strategy will be further evolved in consultation with local and regional actors active in the LandSeaLot Integration Labs, and with citizen science organisations and representatives via the LandSeaLot Citizen Hub.
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