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Identifying and quantifying global change impacts on biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems is critical to promote an effective adaptation that increases the success of conservation strategies. To achieve this goal, global and regional assessment efforts require certain degree of harmonization on local monitoring programs to establish relevant comparisons at different spatio-temporal scales. Otherwise, the lack of harmonization might hinder the detection and assessment on the effects of human impacts. In this work we have compiled information on freshwater monitoring programs located in areas of intensive research and conservation interest: International Long Term Ecological Research (ILTER) nodes and mountain National Parks. We aimed at evaluating the quality and robustness of these programs to assess the impact of global change, addressing from the worldwide to the European and Spanish national scale. Results highlighted that freshwater monitoring programs lack a common strategy to monitor these ecosystems. Even at the continental and national scales, contrasting strategies and level of detail have been historically applied. Water quality, habitat and biodiversity are more commonly monitored than community structure and ecosystem functioning. Monitoring efforts on the Spanish Mountain National parks indicated differences on the targeted aquatic ecosystems. Rivers and lakes received a higher attention, while mires were rarely considered. Our results provide evidence that greater efforts should be directed towards constructing a coordinated strategy to monitor freshwater ecosystems at national, continental, and global scales. This strategy should involve a shared backbone of biophysical and biogeochemical variables for each habitat type on agreed protocols that are implemented across regions and administrative borders. Achieving this will support a substantial advance on the ecological research to further delineate proper conservation strategies to face the challenges imposed by global change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benchmarking is of significant importance in geological and geotechnical engineering, for testing and verifying innovative soil investigation methods and foundation solutions. This Special Issue aims to present detailed characterization of a wide range of natural soils used for benchmarking in geological and geotechnical engineering that was presented at the ISGTS symposium in Oslo in June 2019. It also seeks to promote an increase in use of the benchmark sites as a research tool, as training and teaching facilities and as ground for development of new soil models, testing of new investigation methods and to further advance the state-of-the-art in the fields of geological and geotechnical engineering.

Abstract Climate change and other drivers are affecting ecosystems around the globe. In order to enable a better understanding of ecosystem functioning and to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies in response to environmental change, a broad range of information, including in-situ observations of both biotic and abiotic parameters, needs to be considered. Access to sufficient and well documented in-situ data from long term observations is therefore one of the key requirements for modelling and assessing the effects of global change on ecosystems. Usually, such data is generated by multiple providers; often not openly available and with improper documentation. In this regard, metadata plays an important role in aiding the findability, accessibility and reusability of data as well as enabling reproducibility of the results leading to management decisions. This metadata needs to include information on the observation location and the research context. For this purpose we developed the Dynamic Ecological Information Management System – Site and Dataset Registry (DEIMS-SDR), a research and monitoring site registry (https://www.deims.org/) that not only makes it possible to describe in-situ observation or experimentation sites, generating persistent, unique and resolvable identifiers for each site, but also to document associated data linked to each site. This article describes the system architecture and illustrates the linkage of contextual information to observational data. The aim of DEIMS-SDR is to be a globally comprehensive site catalogue describing a wide range of sites, providing a wealth of information, including each site's location, ecosystems, facilities, measured parameters and research themes and enabling that standardised information to be openly available. Highlights • DEIMS-SDR provides a means to describe protected areas, research sites and datasets via linked records. • Persistent, unique and resolvable identification of research sites and protected areas • Support for a wide range of metadata formats and standardised services [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the growth of social media and other forms of digital communication make it impossible for ethnographers to offer anonymity to research sites or to those significant people involved in the research sites. Indeed, it was never actually fully possible to offer anonymity in ethnography. Ethical Guidelines need to recognise these facts and researchers need to modify their research procedures such that the advantages of more openness in research are exploited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Senior centers are ideal locations to deliver evidence-based health promotion programs to the rapidly growing population of older Americans to help them remain healthy and independent in the community. However, little reported research is conducted in partnership with senior centers; thus, not much is known about barriers and facilitators for senior centers serving as research sites. To fill this gap and potentially accelerate research within senior centers to enhance translation of evidence-based interventions into practice, the present study examined barriers and facilitators of senior centers invited to participate in a cluster-randomized controlled trial. Primary barriers to participation related to staffing and perceived inability to recruit older adult participants meeting research criteria. The primary facilitator was a desire to offer programs that were of interest and beneficial to seniors. Senior centers are interested in participating in research that provides benefit to older adults but may need assistance from researchers to overcome participation barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although methodological discussions abound in qualitative research, little time is devoted to access, arguably one of the most important methodological components of social research. Access has often been treated as a side issue by scholarly sources, receiving only cursory attention, generally in a way that reduces it to a mere strategy and severs it from the ‘real’ methodological work of a study. We argue herein that access to all research sites, particularly to elite research sites, is a neglected and under-appreciated, topic that deserves greater scholarly attention, both in academic literature and in the classroom. This inquiry-based article aims to initiate dialogue around the concept of access and the conditions that act to constrain it. In highlighting issues of access, we hope to demonstrate that access is an enduring methodological concern and is a topic in need of greater scholarly attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biological effects of hazardous substances in the environment are influenced by climate, physiography, and biota. These factors interact to determine the transport and fate of chemicals, but are difficult to model accurately except for small areas with a large data base. The requirement for a large data base may be reduced locally if the regional influences of these factors were predetermined from existing data. Knowledge of the regional factors would also relax the restriction to considering only small areas. This paper advocates consideration of regional characteristics of the environment in the early stages of waste management strategy development. It presents as an example a procedure for selecting study sites from candidate-abandoned hazardous waste dumpsites in the southeastern United States. It uses small-scale maps of low resolution from the National Atlas to delineate the boundaries and to determine the environmental characteristics that prevail over units of land within the region. A computer map-overlay and graphic approach is used to facilitate the grouping of land types. Abandoned hazardous waste dumpsites found within land types that best represent the region are surveyed for selecting a study site. It is expected that environmental impact data obtained from a representative site would be useful for predicting impact potentials in similar remotely located areas within the same general region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]