Synthesis and integration –
Work package 5

The multidisciplinary character of the work within CLIMAITE necessitates a strong coordination and a constant supervision of the work to keep the direction of the research towards the goals agreed upon. Work package 5 is designed to achieve a strong interaction and synthesis among the work packages and provide for a conceptual understanding of the ecosystem responses to climatic changes.

The main tasks are both practical and scientific. The main practical task will be to facilitate the accessibility of the results across the sub-projects and work-packages and advice ways for synthesizing the results in order to fulfill the overall goals of the CLIMAITE project. It also involves means to solve practical questions related to the experimental set-up and its optimal use, e.g. timing and coordination of sampling as to inflict minimal damage to the system.

The primary scientific task will be to make overall syntheses of the results from work packages 2-4. This will be done by various means:

• Data across packages will be used in modeling and linking of processes relevant for the goal of CLIMAITE.
   
  
• Ph.D. students will be actively involved in the research. Although each of the Ph.D. projects has a main focus on one work package, they should have mandatory links to other packages. To guarantee a broad educational basis, the students are supervised by senior researchers at two or more institutes.
   
  
• Internal workshops of 2-3 days duration will be organized annually. Beside containing presentations and discussions of  results within sub-projects and work packages, they also will provide opportunities for planning of forthcoming activities, including time-plans for sampling, field campaigns, sharing of samples, publications etc.
   
  
• Open workshops will be organized with invitation of a limited number of scientists involved in similar or relevant research projects once or twice during the project. Additional researchers outside the project group will be invited, preferably Ph.D.-students and younger post-doctoral scientists.
   
  
• A number of common publications integrating results across the work packages will be produced by the senior scientists with involvement also of relevant Ph.D. students.

To facilitate the communication, the members of CLIMATE have access to an internal website with practical and scientific information. The webpage includes protocol for each of the work packages to facilitate the integration and coordination of the practical and scientific work across the packages. As data from the work are being generated, the page will have a continuously up-dated data base with common access. The page also includes a forum for discussion, a “pin-board” for messages and announcements and other relevant information for rapid and efficient communication among the CLIMAITE partners. A similar website also is available for the members of the CLIMAITE administration.