News

While the first LifeWatch ERIC podcast season focused on the Internal Joint Initiative, the construction of that Virtual Research Environment, the second season draws on the experiences of the scientists and ICT specialists involved in the five validation cases used to develop said Virtual Research Environment. Five investigations into the impact of Non-indigenous and Invasive Species on a range of environments suffering from climate change and anthropogenic pressures.

During season 2, Katrina Exter (data manager at VLIZ) and Matthias Obst (marine biologist at the University of Gothenburg) explain in great detail how they use ARMS artificial reefs (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures) to discover a previously hidden wealth of species on hard-bottoms. But also how to deal with the mass of data this research generates. The European ARMS initiative is supported by ASSEMBLE Plus, EMBRC and GEANS, and makes use of the LifeWatch VLIZ’ World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) to identify the different ARMS species. For Flanders, the programme was made possible through the genetic component of the biodiversity observatory of LifeWatch Belgium.
In addition to the episode on the ARMS artificial reefs, there are also interesting stories on the Atlantic blue crab and how metabarcoding is a very special approach in biodiversity research.

This summer LifeWatch ERIC releases season 3 which features initiatives connected with LifeWatch ERIC that describe how the virtual research environment works in practice. LifeWatch Belgium will feature early in the new season, talking about WoRMS and WRiMS (World Register of Introduced Marine Species).

All  these podcasts, are available on the LifeWatch ERIC website (find all of Season 1 here and the live episodes of Season 2 here), and also on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music.