“Monitoring is Science”

Prof. R. Valentini (University of Tuscia, Italy) Gembloux, Belgium – May 8th, 2007

Environmental pollution, land use, climatic change and climatic extremes are influencing the stability, the different protective functions and the sustainability of various ecosystems like forests, watersheds, soils, etc..

Long-term environmental sensing and monitoring is necessary to gain comprehensive datasets for

• further system understanding,
• to identify relevant processes and their interactions,
• to observe extreme events and their effects
• to identify mechanisms, trends and/or patterns
• development and validation of descriptive models

The challenges and aims of environmental sensing and monitoring are

• identification and parameterization of system relevant processes
• interdisciplinary, multiple-scale and scale-dependent interactions,
• spatial heterogeneity and,
• temporal variability of natural processes and systems.

The activities of the group “Environmental Sensing and Monitoring” comprise the Kopecky ring up to the water catchment on the spatial scale and 10 minutes up to several years on the time scale.