European Network for Arctic-Alpine Environmental Research

Network of Research Infrastructures   ENVINET is a "Infrastructure Co-operation Network" focusing on multidisciplinary environmental research in Northern Europe. The network involves 17 research stations from the European Alps to the Arctic. Each station participates with representatives from its operator and their scientific users. ENVINET also has representatives from relevant international organisations and networks. The participating stations cover a broad range of environmental sciences, primarily within atmospheric physics and chemistry, and marine and terrestrial biology. Purpose ENVINET shall contribute to improve the quality and the quantity of the European environmental sciences in order to increase the understanding of processes involved in environmental changes and to monitor such changes. Objectives The co-operation between the researchers and operators of the research stations in the network shall contribute to generate datasets and methods which: • are relevant for the environmental changes the networks agrees to work     on, and that cover the needs for different sciences involved. • have high quality and are intercomparable across the stations. • are large enough and have great enough geographic extent to study the      changes of environmental phenomena in time and space, or their     variation under changing environmental conditions. In order to address this, the network shall: 1. Exchange experience and information 2. Prepare existing data for research across the stations 3. Identify needs for new data collection 4. Improve the methods in use for obtaining data through dissemination      of "best practice" in the network and projects for scientific/technical          development. 5. Co-ordinate activities in order to foster common research projects on     existing data-sets, sampling of new data, data-management or     improved methods. Funding and Organisation ENVINET is funded under the action "Enhancing Access to Research Infrastructures" of the  "Human Potential Programme" of the EU 5th framework program. The duration is May 2000- April 2003. The Norwegian Polar Institute is the responsible co-ordinator of the network and hosts the secretariat. Four General Meetings and an International Conference are scheduled during the contract period. In its initial documentation phase, the network has established three working groups; Marine, Terrestrial and Atmospheric. These have contributed to identifiy fields of collaboration between the stations. The result so far, is technical tasks, each with its own funding and a project leader. Several ideas for research collaboration between the stations have also been developed. The secretariat collaborates with the research stations to document their research infrastructure and projects in a standardised way.