REDOTE structure
 
REDOTE proposes to coordinate a group of monitoring stations located in the main type of Spanish ecosystems: terrestrial, fluvial, coastal and marine ecosystems. These stations will be selected according to some general criteria defined by the working group of REDOTE:

• To involve optimization of already available resources and reliable existing data bases.
   
• To have ongoing monitoring activities and/or to have human resources and facilities to make possible this kind of research.
   
• To be representative of important ecosystems or ecosystems threatened by global change.
   
• To be or contain an interphase.
   
• To be prone to interdisciplinary work.
   
• To have an extension in space and time appropriate for the system and the processes of interest.
   
• To include zones under different levels of conservation and/or protection.

Additional criteria for the selection:

• To include a diversity of natural systems of interest.
   
• To be part of protected areas as Biosphere Reserves (UNESCO-MAB) or National Parks.
   
• To be representative of the extension and the geographic diversity of Spain.

In these stations, the main parameters of the ecosystems functioning will be monitored and the drivers of global change that have affected them at different temporal scales will be studied. At the same time, these parameters will be calibrated with indicators of environmental changes of the recent past and modelling of the ecosystems dynamics in different global change scenarios will be developed.

These infrastructures will be opened to all the scientific community (national and international), both the access to data (available in Internet) and the access to the facilities.

REDOTE stations will have, moreover, an interdisciplinary character in their management and equipments. They will have automatic instruments for the monitoring of diverse environmental parameters (meteorology, ecosystem metabolism, biodiversity, etc.), and facilities for the in situ experimentation and for the analysis of the ecosystems dynamics in the past.

The research on the current and former global changes occurred in the selected ecosystems will need an identical equipment in all the stations and other specific equipment depending on the particular characteristics of each ecosystem. REDOTE stations will have some unique experimental instruments. These facilities will be organised in a national network of experimental high technology facilities which will allow to optimize and to facilitate their use by many different research groups.

The design of the stations will pay attention to their interdisciplinar character, with the use of high technology for data transmission to a central database, and with the possibility of access to data in real time.

REDOTE Network will have an educational module, generating some tools to spread the results obtained and to collaborate in the global change study in the Spanish secondary education.