COST Action |

A COST Action set to bring together scientists and stakeholders from across 14 countries within Europe

Intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams (IRES) are waterways that cease to flow and sometimes dry. However, there is much left to learn about them, including their occurrence in the landscape, ecology, economic and societal values and incredible biodiversity. For efficient and adequate management and protection actions, these knowledge gaps need to be closed sooner rather than later.

In a call for a better understanding of IRES and their vital role in nature, a large international team, led by Dr. Thibault Datry, a freshwater ecologist working at IRSTEA, Lyon, France, has initiated the “Science and Management of Intermittent Rivers and Ephemeral Streams (SMIRES)” project. Their grant proposal, as approved for funding by the European framework COST, is published in the open science journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO).

This COST Action brings together hydrologists, biogeochemists, ecologists, modellers, environmental economists, social researchers and stakeholders from 14 countries from around the continent. The aim of the interdisciplinary team is to develop a research network for synthesising the fragmented knowledge on IRES. In turn, improved understanding of IRES will translate to a science-based, sustainable management of river networks.

Along with networking between scientists and stakeholders, the Action will accommodate a whole set of good practices, including data sharing, technology development and citizen science.

*The Calavon River, a Mediterranean IRES, during flowing (left) and dry phases (right).*

Amongst the goals of the project are the creation of two meta-databases providing open data about IRES research activities and flow stations with intermittent flows; a proposal for novel indicators and technologies to assess changes and associated ecological responses in IRES; and the development of a European-scale network of citizen scientists to monitor, locate and map river flow states with the help of smartphone technology.

Having been ignored in conservation policies and initiatives, IRES are being degraded at an alarming rate. Water extraction, flood harvesting, river impoundment, channel modification, land-use change and mining are only part of the threats faced by IRES across Europe. In many areas, they are even used as disposal areas. For others, they are channelled underground or connected to larger water bodies as a means of flow augmentation, which could potentially lead to the spread of invasive species.

The researchers point out that lack of recognition and understanding lead to the rapid degradation of IRES.

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Original source:

Datry T, Singer G, Sauquet E, Jorda-Capdevilla D, Von Schiller D, Subbington R, Magand C, Pa?il P, Miliša M, Acuña V, Alves M, Augeard B, Brunke M, Cid N, Csabai Z, England J, Froebrich J, Koundouri P, Lamouroux N, Martí E, Morais M, Munné A, Mutz M, Pesic V, Previši? A, Reynaud A, Robinson C, Sadler J, Skoulikidis N, Terrier B, Tockner K, Vesely D, Zoppini A (2017) Science and Management of Intermittent Rivers and Ephemeral Streams (SMIRES). Research Ideas and Outcomes 3: e21774. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.3.e21774

Mobilisation, coordination and cooperation are among the pillars of the Unifying European Biodiversity Informatics (BioUnify) project, described in a Grant proposal, submitted to the COST Association and published in the open-access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO). Both short-and long-term plans are clearly set to bring together the biodiversity informatics community and simultaneously synthesise the available data from across the relevant disciplines. The outcomes are to eventually translate into efficient global biodiversity policy.

While structuring, aggregating, linking and processing the constantly increasing biodiversity data efficiently is a globally recognised issue, many isolated research groups are working on their own. The large international team of scientists, led by Dr. Dimitrios Koureas, Natural History Museum, London, address the problem by providing a detailed plan, which builds on experience and available data to create a new platform, promoting cooperation across disciplines and expertise.

The proposed COST Action is probably the first to be fully published in the context of Open Science practices. It promises to aid biodiversity research through improving the access and reproducibility of data, mobilised from both natural history collections as well as remote sources from across Europe; bringing together the outcomes of ongoing separate biodiversity projects; transferring skills and technical awareness between researchers and information technologists, and formulating long-term goals in order to ensure that the European biodiversity informatics are aligned with the global ones.

While the common approaches used to achieve scientific dialogue rely mainly on scientific publications and conferences, the authors accept that such practice is time-consuming, while not necessarily focused on specific and urgent technical or societal issues. Therefore, in their present proposal the scientists list a summary of the activities to be undertaken by the project’s initial network of supporters. They include among others 30 Short Term Scientific Missions, 8 Training schools, 6 Joined Student Supervisions, 10 Consolidated Reports/Task-specific documents as well as a website.

“Agile and effective communication between people, at the level (across scientific domains and communities) and timeframe needed to address explicit societal challenges, demands a highly focused network of people and activities,” the researchers explain. “A network that will enable researchers to jointly shape research goals and adjust methodologies for delivering results in scope and on time.”

Having been marked by three external reviewers, the proposal eventually received an average mark of 29.33/40, which fell just a step short of being selected for funding by the COST Association. However, in their present publication, the scientists list the key points from the received feedback, and discuss them.

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Original source:

Koureas D, Hardisty A, Vos R, Agosti D, Arvanitidis C, Bogatencov P, Buttigieg P, de Jong Y, Horvath F, Gkoutos G, Groom Q, Kliment T, Kõljalg U, Manakos I, Marcer A, Marhold K, Morse D, Mergen P, Penev L, Pettersson L, Svenning J, van de Putte A, Smith V (2016) Unifying European Biodiversity Informatics (BioUnify). Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e7787. doi:10.3897/rio.2.e7787

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Image credit: NASA. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/vegetation.html

License: Public Domain

Tag: COST Action

Advancing the science and management of European intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams

BioUnify COST Grant proposal brings EU biodiversity scientists and their data together