Open Palaeoecological Data – analysing the past building foresight (OC-2023-1-26573)

Project aims to investigate past states of individual ecosystem components and the response of selected biota to climate and land use change to better understand various ecological processes. These reconstructions will include: the range of climate change, natural trophic state of lakes and past forest cover. This information is critical to assess the legacy of an ecosystem and derive conservation measures. However, only a small amount of the underlying data is in the public domain, dispersed over different databases and repositories, hampering analysis of whole ecosystem change on regional to continental scales. This COST Action will bring the relevant European palaeoecological data into the public domain, providing organised information on the functioning of European ecosystems since the last ice age and beyond. The Action will provide much-needed information for the management of current and future ecosystems and for a better-informed debate on the type of nature to be conserved or restored.

Many data collections compiled by European palaeoecological communities or research groups are not publicly available. The COST Action will reach out to individuals and communities, initiate data mobilisation and data rescue campaigns, support local research communities to become constituent database initiatives joining Neotoma database or making the data otherwise OPEN. More specifically the Action will address three related challenges:

• i) Develop multidisciplinary palaeoecological research addressing questions on how different ecosystem components interact in response to climate and land-use forcings on the continental scale, with relevance to nature restoration and management.
• ii) Unlock the existing data from European Quaternary palaeoecological and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions to enable access and harmonisation of the data.
• iii) Make palaeoecological data accessible to practitioners, interesting for the public and an asset for education.

The challenges will be approached by building a multidisciplinary European palaeoecological community conducting OPEN SCIENCE with OPEN DATA. The Neotoma database is central to this process as it provides a common platform for sharing and analysing data across communities. By inviting ecosystem modellers and researchers with extensive experience in data analysis to participate in addressing scientific questions the Action works towards bridging the gap between data generators and users.

Project is divided into three interacting tasks and four working groups (WG 1−4). Researchers from ZRC SAZU – Dr. Maja Andrič and Dr. Nina Caf- are involved in working group 1 (WG 1).

Cross disciplinary data analysis: WG 1 (Terrestrial ecosystems) and WG 2 (Aquatic ecosystems); data mobilisation, uploading, harmonization and analysis; scientific meetings to develop a common research agenda to motivate the data collections, taxa harmonisation workshops, winter schools for using R or Phyton scripts

Data Storage and Management: WG 3 will address problems related to data and metadata standardisation, storage, and management, the main task is to develop strategies supporting and enabling effective multi proxy analysis of dispersed European palaeoecological data, specific tasks: to develop data exchange strategies, support data analysis, organise initial meeting, support winter schools

Education and Outreach: WG 4 will develop and implement a science communication, outreach and education scheme