Little data, big data, no data? : data management in the era of research infrastructures. Workshop report

Abstract

<div lang="en" class="abs"><p class="abs_header">Introduction</p><p>This workshop was organized to provide members and other stakeholders of INAR RI Ecosystems with an introduction to data management in the ecological and related sciences. The notion of local data management was used as a starting point to discuss data management activities taking place at or close to the origins of data, and to envision how data was coordinated within and across boundaries of a variety of related contexts.</p><p>INAR RI Ecosystems is a consortium project funded by the Academy of Finland Research Infrastructure (FIRI) program 2017–2021. The aim of the project is to propose and consolidate an umbrella for environmental and ecosystem research infrastructures (RIs) in Finland (Bäck et al. 2017, ENVRIplus 2017). The consortium is led by University of Helsinki and composed of key ecosystem research components in Finland including Universities of Helsinki, Eastern Finland, Turku, Oulu, and Jyväskylä, as well as three national research institutes including Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE), Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), and Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). Figure 1 shows the INAR RI Ecosystems components and depicts which of the locations are ecosystem observation stations, experimental field stations, biological as well as ecophysiological laboratories, or co-locations of these.</p><p>The aim of INAR RI Ecosystems is to 1) upgrade existing platforms and construct new platforms and data structures for analysing the functional relationships between ecosystems and the environment, 2) strengthen national ecosystem research and its linkages to atmospheric and environmental sciences, and 3) build a national scale, coordinated RI which enables the development and participation of Finnish partners in international RI initiatives such as ICOS, AnaEE and eLTER as well as data RIs such as EUDAT CDI and Lifewatch. Thus, INAR RI Ecosystems contributes as a national focal point for European Strategic Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) RIs.</p></div>