We are busy organising our 3 May Webinar on bioindicators and our 26-27 July Science Symposium – we hope to see you at one or both of them!
Welcome to our mid-Autumn 2023 newsletter in which we bring you three articles that have a carbon flux link and we also introduce Beth Cox, another of TERN’s amazing field staff, who apparently loves counting poo!
One of our articles, an explainer called What is an Eddy-covariance Flux Tower, has been produced by TERN intern Matt Wilson, a student at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Matt is finishing his dual degree in Science/communications at QUT and as part of his last semester comms subject he is required to do a short volunteer internship. We are so pleased that Matt chose TERN and we are already benefitting from his fresh ideas on TERN/SuperSite related communication articles and products.
TERN was excited to be represented in two presentations at The General Assembly 2023 of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), being held in Vienna, Austria and online, from 23–28 April 2023. This assembly is open to the scientists of all nations. This made it an appropriate forum for Dr Tim Rawling from NCRIS-enabled AuScope, to present Cross disciplinary collaboration for societal benefit across Australian Research Infrastructure Networks, which was about our within-Australia program to harmonise FAIR data from the earth and environment NCRIS-enabled projects to allow an integrated earth perspective to be taken in addressing big environmental challenges. Our second presentation, Addressing pressing global societal research challenges through targeted harmonisation of macrosystems ecology data sets, was related to a poster showing how we can harmonise national data from the world’s continental observatories to address environmental challenges at a global level.
TERN’s Dr Elisa Girolo from the University of Queensland-based Data Services and Analytics team is preparing to represent TERN in May at the USA’s Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab’s first Innovation Summit (the ESIIL Innovation Summit), to be held at University of Colorado Boulder. One purpose of the summit is to define a decadal research agenda for the growing field of environmental data science by articulating the most pressing environmental challenges and opportunities for solutions-oriented science, and by bridging environmental and biological sciences, social sciences, and data and computational sciences.
Another major event to which TERN has been invited in early May is the Global Earth Observatory workshop. This is organised by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and Atmosphere and Climate Competence Center (ACCC), in collaboration with the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR), University of Helsinki. The aim is to bridge data-collecting networks from around the world and work towards integrated climate and environment relevant observations, providing the Big data needed to solve Global Grand Challenges (climate change, air pollution, food production) and to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Aside from international travel plans, if you follow TERN’s Social Media, you cannot have missed the photos of our field teams being busy with monitoring activities. Back in the main office, we have been preparing for TERN’s second webinar this year, to take place on Wednesday 3 May at 3.00pm AEST – there are three excellent speakers to introduce us to some novel ideas about using bioindicators – we hope you can join us. In addition, we continue preparations for TERN’s biennial science symposium for 26-27 July– it is taking shape very quickly and we thank those of you who have already registered and/or sent in an abstract. The current round of short weeks in Australia due to public holidays is an ideal time to finish an abstract to submit!
Until next month – happy reading.
Beryl, TERN Australia Director
