TERENO - Expectations more than fulfilled
TERENO was founded over 15 years ago - the most comprehensive research project to investigate the long-term regional impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems and their socio-economic consequences in Germany. In an article for the open access journal “Earth's Future”, 36 scientists from the TERENO network have summarized the most important findings of the initiative.
Closing a gap, giving a new impetus - the advance praise was not small when the TERENO initiative was launched at the end of 2008. In fact, TERENO was something new: the largest project in Germany to record the regional consequences of climate change. The Helmholtz centers involved not only brought together a broad spectrum of disciplines: together, they established a Germany-wide network of observatories that were extensively equipped with measuring instruments.
Today, more than 15 years later, the initiative can look back on very successful work. Hundreds of thousands of environmental data are publicly available in the TERENO data portal, hundreds of publications have been produced and dozens of national and international events have been organized. "TERENO data was and is important: for example, to test new remote sensing technologies, to calibrate and validate models and to enable data products such as the German Drought Monitor. The close link between in-situ measurements and remote sensing data on the one hand and between observation and modeling on the other has greatly advanced all sides,” reports Prof. Irena Hajnsek from the German Aerospace Center. TERENO has also supported large-scale experiments, provided impetus for methodological and technological advances and promoted international cooperation - for example in the eLTER RI research infrastructure. The effect on follow-up projects should also not be underestimated - for example, research projects funded by the German Research Foundation that use TERENO infrastructure and data.
All in all, TERENO has more than fulfilled expectations. “TERENO is now a key pillar for environmental modeling and forecasting in Germany and serves as an information hub for practitioners and policy stakeholders in agriculture, forestry, and water management at regional to national levels,” states Prof. Harry Vereecken from Forschungszentrum Jülich.
From the point of view of the 36 authors of the paper, TERENO has shown how valuable such comprehensive environmental monitoring systems are. “Only with such systems the data can be collected which is necessary to distinguish long-term trends from short-term fluctuations and develop appropriate adaptation measures,” emphasizes Dr. Theresa Blume from the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. However, planning, construction and operation require considerable effort - both in terms of resources and funding, which the participating centers largely raise themselves.
Other important findings: in order to adapt to changing research requirements and ensure long-term data collection, a research infrastructure must be designed flexibly. The necessary interdisciplinarity does not arise by itself either. "The culture of institutions is crucial. There must be a willingness to deal with the different views and requirements of the various scientific disciplines and also the user communities and ultimately to make compromises, for example with regard to locations or measurement methods. In TERENO, this has been achieved in an exemplary manner,” says Prof. Peter Dietrich from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. "All this shows that such integrated environmental monitoring programs must be continued in the future,” adds Prof. Hans Peter Schmid from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
Steffen Zacharias et al. (2024). Fifteen Years of Integrated Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO) in Germany: Functions, Services, and Lessons Learned. Earth's Future, Vol. 12, Issue 6. DOI: 10.1029/2024EF004510