AnaEE-Belgium is the national branch of the European infrastructure AnaEE (Analysis and Experimentation on Ecosystems). It focuses on the ecological and agronomical challenges posed by environmental change, and conducts experiments that offer us a look into the future. AnaEE-Belgium manages five state-of-the-art experimental platforms that enable such forward-looking research. These platforms are managed by research groups ECOSPHERE and Plants and Ecosystems (both UAntwerp), Center for Environmental Sciences (UHasselt) and Liège Université.
The overarching objectives of AnaEE-Belgium are to:
-Provide scientists and society with predictions of global change impacts on a variety of ecosystems relevant to our climatic zone.
-Develop adaptation and mitigation pathways pertinent to land managers and policy makers.
At Campus Drie Eiken, ECOSPHERE manages a large mesocosm facility. A mesocosm is a controllable semi-natural system in which environmental and biological processes can be studied on an ecologically relevant scale of complexity, space and timeframe. The installation consists of a 1000 m² greenhouse housing 16 large ponds (2 m ø, 1.2 m water depth), four 5 m long raceways with variable waterflow equipped as respirometers, an aquaculture installation (2 x 3.8 m³), and one 20 m long and 2 m wide flume allowing simulation of tides in shorelands or in-stream processes. Besides the ponds all systems are fully or semi automatically controlled. The raceways and aquaculture is also temperature controlled and equipped for gas exchange (e.g. CO2).
The infrastructure is open for third-party users. Please contact us for more information.
