Long-term environmental observation for understanding the Earth system in the Anthropocene

During the Anthropocene, accelerating human influences on climate and land cover, together with pollution are major drivers of environmental change. These changes contribute to the societal challenges that Agenda 2030 and the SDGs address. Science is called upon to provide an evidence base that society can rely on when navigating the trade-offs and synergies between different SDGs. Key pillars of this evidence-base are: understanding how a complex of human influences causes specific environmental changes, and what management options are available to address the societal challenges. understanding how a complex of human influences causes specific environmental changes, and what management options are available to address the societal challenges. Long-term observation is a key to detecting environmental change. Both technical advances and organizational commitment from local to international levels have contributed to great advances in monitoring some parameters. Ascertain the causes of change when a nexus of drivers are involved, however, is an even greater challenge than just detecting change. The greatest challenge of all is providing a scientifically grounded guidance on which to base management decisions at the scale of specific interventions. Environmental observatories, where both research infrastructures and expertise are gathered, provide a unique opportunity to investigate the scientific questions involved in linking different combinations of driving forces to environmental change. Networking such observatories at national levels, as well as international levels increases the ability to generalize. This presentation explores the possibility for even greater scientific leverage by linking observatories to dedicated environmental monitoring programs where temporal and spatial variation within and between regions is accounted for in the observational design . To realize that potential though, the capability of “Big Data” and “Open Science” will be essential. Examples will be provided from the areas of surface water quality (brownification), air pollution (mercury), climate change (seasonality of lake ice) and land use (sustainable forest management). These exemplify some of the methodological challenges and opportunities involved when individual scientific projects seek to make use of national and international monitoring programs to support observatories such as SITES (www.fieldsites.se), eLTER (www.elter-ri.eu), and ICP-Integrated Monitoring (www.slu.se/en/Collaborative-Centres-and-Projects/integrated-monitoring/).