Observatory for Climate, Environment and Biodiversity

The Observatory for Climate, Environment and Biodiversity (OCEB) is a multidisciplinary team of researchers and engineers who push the state of the art in monitoring and assessing various components of the Critical Zone from the top of the trees down to the groundwater. The Critical Zone is the Earth's thin surface layer where rock, soil, water, air and living organisms interact with each other. With its cutting-edge technological infrastructures and monitoring networks, the OCEB offers a wide range of services and leverages expertise and knowledge to produce science-based evidence for supporting policy-making processes towards sustainable and informed management of natural resources.

MISSION

Through the implementation of innovative sampling procedures and field data collection approaches across a range of application areas, the OCEB aims at moving beyond traditional environmental and ecological monitoring systems to provide the scientific community with strategic inputs for the development of national and international research projects.

The OCEB infrastructures host and maintain structured databases that are key for various end-users (such as private engineering offices, Luxembourgish and European decision- and policy-makers, or other stakeholders) to be informed on environmental and ecological changes across the Critical Zone.

The expertise, knowledge and know-how within the OCEB are mobilised to support the Government of Luxembourg in implementing several of its environmental regulations and in meeting legal obligations at the European level.

TEAMS

The OCEB is composed of around 20 researchers and engineers, with a wide range of scientific and technical expertise and competences, structured in two different teams:

• Biodiversity Monitoring & Assessment:
  This national hub for biodiversity monitoring information in Luxembourg includes multi-talented engineers and researchers developing and combining traditional and innovative approaches for sampling, collecting and analysing data on various living organisms within the Critical Zone and for assessing their changing status and dynamics.

• Hydro-climatological Observation & Sensing Technology:
  Through the continued development of innovative environmental monitoring approaches and observation techniques, this team has developed cutting-edge expertise to provide the scientific community and other stakeholders with highly valuable knowledge and know-how for evaluating spatial and temporal changes across various components of the Critical Zone (e.g. weather, soil, vegetation, water and sediment fluxes).