Introduction to AnaEE France

Entry point for platforms for experimentation, analysis and modelling on continental ecosystems.

Understanding the dynamics and sensitivity of ecosystems to global change is a fundamental research challenge. In this perspective, we need to manipulate ecosystems to characterize their dynamic properties, the complexity of the interactions at work and develop a fundamental corpus necessary for the implementation of adaptation and restoration measures. The AnaEE-France infrastructure (Analysis and Experimentation on Ecosystems), led by the CNRS, INRAE and the University of Grenoble Alpes, meets these objectives by providing a coherent set of services dedicated to experimentation for the study of terrestrial and aquatic continental ecosystems. With centralized access to experimental platforms, analytical instruments and modeling platforms, AnaEE-France facilitates the use of experimental platforms, the emergence of innovative projects and the reuse of data.

Missions

Missions of AnaEE France

AnaEE-France offers the scientific community, companies and civil society organizations full access to the study of continental terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems through its experimental platforms distributed throughout mainland France and the French overseas territories. The infrastructure also supports your projects by providing data access devices, analyses on its analytical platforms and modelling tools.

More specifically, AnaEE-France currently brings together 36 unique and complex devices on a national scale to manipulate ecosystems either under more or less controlled conditions, or by experimenting in nature with contrasting management methods likely to generate long-term evolutionary trajectories. Ecosystem characterization requires modern technologies for recording variables related to biological organisms, soil and biodiversity, material and energy flows to link them to global changes. The capacity to characterize ecosystems is increased within the infrastructure by providing 7 original analytical services in the laboratory or in situ. To enhance the value of the results obtained, AnaEE-France offers an information system allowing a high level integration of the databases with modeling platforms.

History

The national AnaEE-France infrastructure was created in 2012 with funding of €14 million over the period 2012-2020 from the "Infrastructure in Biology and Health" programme of the ANR (French National Research Agency) as part of the Investments in the Future. The official launch of the AnaEE-France infrastructure took place on the inauguration day on February 14, 2013 at the Museum of Natural History in Toulouse. At the end of 2013, a consortium agreement was signed with the ANR. It sets out the main principles on the use of services, the principles of pricing and the ownership of data obtained through the means offered by the infrastructure. These principles will be applied in the charters specific to each department being drafted. At the end of a first so-called investment phase, concluded in 2016, all infrastructure services are now operational. The current so-called operational phase consists of a gradual improvement of the services offered, in particular through rejuvenation actions, the deployment of IT services and the improvement of the analytical offer.

European integration

The AnaEE-France infrastructure is the French node of the ERIC AnaEE project included in the ESFRI roadmap, of which it is a founding member and current project coordinator. AnaEE is an integrated, long-term, pan-European, continent-wide experimental research infrastructure based on four types of advanced distributed platforms:

  • Open-air ecosystem platforms: located in terrestrial or aquatic ecosystems, managed and unmanaged, crossing Europe's climate zones;
  • Enclosed ecosystem platforms: they complement outdoor platforms by allowing a higher level of environmental control and process measurement;
  • Analytical platforms: they provide advanced biological, physical and chemical analyses for a better understanding of ecosystem processes;
  • Modeling platforms: they provide access to software solutions and advanced installations for model development.

Click here to visit AnaEE Europe's website: https://www.anaee.eu/