The ILTER Nitrogen Initiative had a very good year in 2016. Hideaki Shibata, who leads the Nitrogen Initiative for ILTER, provided the following update. The Initiative produced many interactive activities, an international training course, publications, and firmed up links to other programs. The leaders of the Initiative truly appreciate the engagement, cooperation, and contributions of all its partners, including the U.S. LTER.
“Toward INMS” project launched
The UNEP-GEF funded project, “Toward INMS” has been launched at the workshop just before the INI 2016 conference in Melbourne, Australia in the beginning of December. The INMS project officially begins in January 2017 and extends for 4 years. The ILTER is assigned as a key partner of this project, meaning that we have a number of opportunities to engage and work together under the INMS project. The GEF funding will be also available for the ILTER-N Initiative to contribute to those INMS activities. Hideaki Shibata is assigned as one of the leaders for the specific activity “Development of Nitrogen Threat Assessment Methodology” on behalf of the ILTER Nitrogen Initiative. Hide will providing more specific and detailed information to you shortly and work with you on this project.
International Training Course 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal
The first circular is nearly ready to be sent out. Hideaki appreciate the great efforts of the hosting team, especially Pedro Pinho, Cristina Branquinho, Margarida Santos-Reis and their colleagues. The date of the course will be May 15-26, 2017. This course is organized by NitroPortugal and co-orgnized by the ILTER-Nitrogen Initiative, eLTER, INMS and LTsERmontado. In addition, there will be a short strategic meeting on the above mentioned INMS projects with key people before the course (i.e. provisionally on May 14). Those who are interested, please plan to come there. The web report of the ILTER-N training course in 2016 is now available.
Special journal issue on the ILTER
As announced at the ILTER-OSM this October, the ILTER is now planning to publish the special issue in the Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN), entitled “Making use of large extent, long-term ecosystem research facilities: Detecting and explaining natural and anthropogenic changes within the International Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER) network”. Abstract submission has already closed. For those who have submitted abstracts, please keep in your mind that STOTEN’s timelines are very strict (manuscript deadline is July 31st, 2017).
N2O workshop in Taiwan 2017
The ILTER-N workshop on the N2O study in Taiwan 2017 is under planning by Chiling Chen, Jim Tang, Hideaki Shibata, and others with funding proposals. The workshop would be arranged in late 2017 (provisionally, early November). More information will be available soon.
