Australia has long been a junior partner on the world ecological stage, but the collaborations established through TERN are rapidly elevating our profile.
TERN’s Director, Professor Tim Clancy, and the network’s Collaborations and Partnerships Director, Associate Professor Nikki Thurgate, were invited to attend the 20th International Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER) Symposium in South Korea this month as Australia’s delegates. There they met with the leading lights of long-term ecological research from more than 25 countries.
This symposium was hosted by Professor Eun-Shik Kim of Kookmin University in Seoul. The first three days were devoted to the science being conducted by ILTER member organisations. The breadth of TERN’s infrastructure and our ability to synthesise data and knowledge across disciplines to build a holistic network of environmental capabilities received high praise from ILTER members. As a result, Nikki was invited to join the Science Coordination committee to help international groups to grow their national networks from narrow, single-discipline programs into an ‘ecosystem observatory network’ model similar to TERN. This will allow improved integration between traditional ecology and other capacities including remote sensing, informatics and biogeochemical fluxes.
Tim led a workshop on education and outreach, and Nikki another on research and monitoring. Their goal was to identify possible collaborative projects. Each left the symposium with a fistful of business cards, a promising sign of opportunities for collaboration being high on TERN’s agenda for the next year.
The ILTER group at the new National Ecological Institute
Published in TERN Newsletter October 2013
