Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Infrastructures: Challenges and Opportunities

Dr. habil. Abad Chabbi, Director of Research at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) is a plant ecologist and soil biogeochemist. He worked at the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; the Faculty of Environmental Science in Cottbus, Germany; the University of Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris, France; and at INRA, where he has been leading the National Observatory for Environmental Research-Agro-Ecosystems, Biogeochemical Cycles and Biodiversity (www.soere-acbb.com) since 2009. His current research centers on understanding the link between soil carbon sequestration, nutrient availability and stoichiometry in the plant-soil system, biodiversity, and the influence that land use management and climate change may have on these dynamics. During his career, Dr. Chabbi coordinated a number of international multidisciplinary projects, chaired and organized numerous international symposiums, and edited books and several special issues of leading international journals. He has presented a number of keynote lectures and seminars around the world. Currently, Dr. Chabbi is a member/expert of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, the Chinese Academy of Science, the Czech Science Foundation, the German Research Science Foundation (DFG), the Hercules Foundation (Hercules Stichting), Belgium; the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), UK; the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), UK; and the European commission (DG Research & Innovation and DG Agriculture and Rural Development). Dr. Chabbi is the coordinator of two strategic European FP7 projects, "ExpeER" (www.expeeronline.eu) and "ANAEE" (www.anaee.com), and deeply involved in ENVRIPlus, a cluster H2020 project. Since April 2013, he has also been leading the C2 component of the Ecosystems Task at Group on Earth Observations (GEO).

Dr. Henry W. Loescher's career has been at t