Ecological research infrastructures in the Netherlands

The Living Lab is an outdoor lab, suited for research on the consequences of pollution from pesticides, fertilisers, microplastics, advanced materials and invasive species such as crayfish. It consists of 32 ditches (8 meter length, 50 cml width, 30-60 cm depth)that are allowed to develop natural communities so that actual biodiversity and ecosystem functionality impacts can be assessed. The ditch systems are connected o a watershed that allows natural colonization of organisms into the test ditches (=cosms).

Besides, it is an important place for education of elementary school pupils to higher education students.

The aim of Living Lab B7 is best summarised as providing insights and KPI’s (critical performance indicators) to Greenport Duin- and Bollenstreek, Nationaal Park Hollandse Duinen and the Deltaplan Biodiversiteitsherstel to contribute to the practice of biodiversity recovery in rural areas on local, regional and national scales.

The LTER-LIFE lab allows building digital twins (digital replicas) of ecosystems. With these twins, scenarios can be constructed to understand how ecosystems respond to pressures in order to develop effective response strategies. LTER-LIFE will initially focus on 2 of the most extensive and best-studied ecosystems in the Netherlands representing aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems: the Wadden Sea and the Veluwe.

The Long-Term Socio-Ecological research platform Dutch Wadden Sea area is a large coastal area bordering the north of the Netherlands.

The area defined as ‘the Veluwe’ lies in the province of Gelderland, the Netherlands, West of the river IJssel and North of the river Rhine. The region hosts the largest connected nature area of the country. The natural landscape consists of a mix of forests, heathlands, sand drifts, lakes, and moorlands and is surrounded by agriculture, settlements, or infrastructure. This means there is a lot of interaction between humans and nature.

The Marker Wadden is a newly constructed archipelago in lake Markermeer, which aims to improve the lake’s degrading food web by stimulating primary productivity. The archipelago consists of five islands that add a currently missing habitat type to the lake: shallow, sheltered waters with high nutrient availability and gradual land-water transitions.

A total of 40 mesocosms are distributed in five rows of eight mesocosms with a spacing of 0.5 m between them. In spring/summer we grow plant species that are currently expanding their range within Europe and species that belong to the same genus while being native in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) houses 36x10L microcosms (transparent polycarbonate carboys; NALGENE, Rochester, USA) for plankton research. The microcosms can be temperature-controlled in water baths (at 0.5 °C temperature resolution), and automatically stirred through magnetic stirrers mounted below the water baths.

The National Research Fleet of the Netherlands is operated by NMF, the National Marine Facilities at NIOZ and consists of three research vessels: RV Pelagia, RV Navicula and RV Adriaen Coenen. Each is dedicated to a specific area of operation, from the shallow waters of the Wadden Sea to open oceans around the world. In addition to the vessels, NMF operates a pool of seagoing equipment.

NPEC’s Ecotron facility at Utrecht University consists of a range of 36 fully closed and controlled mesocosm systems that allow for real-life plant ecosystem analyses in real time.

NPEC’s Multi-Environment Climate Chambers Module hosts a series of 15 small climate chambers with the highest level of homogeneity in temperature, humidity, and light intensity available.

The Plant-Microbe-Interaction Phenotyping Module consists of two independent phenotyping installations designed for high-throughput phenotyping of the plant shoot (Helios) and in-vitro root system (Hades).