BioVeL Deliverable Report D2.1: State-of-the-art & trends review on biospheric carbon sequestration, ecosystem functioning and valuation, and invasive species management

This report reviews the state-of-the-art and research trends for each the three science areas selected for the BioVeL project. The three science areas are: a) biospheric carbon sequestration; b) ecosystem functioning and valuation; and c) invasive species management. For each science area the report addresses: i) the science-policy context; ii) the main scientific questions being addressed in the area; iii) the most relevant research groups, networks and projects; iv) the existing models and methods; v) data source requirements; vi) the typical and most challenging workflows; and vii) web service requirements. The report concludes that the needs of biodiversity and ecology sciences for new leading-edge integrative IT tools are growing rapidly, while existing, reliable and open web services and workflow management services to fulfill these needs are still scarce. The planned and on-going developments of the BioVeL project, demonstrating the success of the virtual laboratory approach will go a long way towards meeting this need, and will open new perspectives for biodiversity analysis. However several gaps will remain unbridged and there are some constraints as well