#ARIES15years: Celebrating 15 years of AI for environmental sustainability

Since 2007, ARIES has been building the first ‘Wikipedia-like’ open-source platform for interoperable data and models, through AI. Check out this infographic providing an overview of our vision to take open science to the next level and watch for a series of new ARIES online infographics to be released throughout the following months!

ARIES for SEEA Explorer

The Statistics Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and the UN Environment Program (UNEP), in collaboration with the international research and innovation platform Artificial Intelligence for Environment & Sustainability (ARIES) at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), have developed a pioneering Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered application for rapid natural capital accounting: the ARIES for SEEA Explorer!

k.LAB's remote engine is available online!

Knowledge Laboratory (k.LAB) is the open-source software powering ARIES. It supports selection of the most appropriate data and models using cloud technology and following an open data paradigm: the resulting insight, in the same fashion, remains open and available to society at large, and becomes a base for further computations, contributing to an ever-increasing knowledge base.

#ARIES15years: Celebrating 15 years of AI for environmental sustainability

Since 2007, ARIES has been building the first ‘Wikipedia-like’ open-source platform for interoperable data and models, through AI. Check out this infographic providing an overview of our vision to take open science to the next level and watch for a series of new ARIES online infographics to be released throughout the following months!

ARIES for SEEA Explorer

The Statistics Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and the UN Environment Program (UNEP), in collaboration with the international research and innovation platform Artificial Intelligence for Environment & Sustainability (ARIES) at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), have developed a pioneering Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered application for rapid natural capital accounting: the ARIES for SEEA Explorer!

k.LAB's remote engine is available online!

Knowledge Laboratory (k.LAB) is the open-source software powering ARIES. It supports selection of the most appropriate data and models using cloud technology and following an open data paradigm: the resulting insight, in the same fashion, remains open and available to society at large, and becomes a base for further computations, contributing to an ever-increasing knowledge base.

An adaptive modelling technology

Keeping it simple, but realistic

ARIES is an artificial intelligent modeller rather than a single model or collection of models. ARIES chooses ecological process models where appropriate, and turns to simpler models where process models do not exist or are inadequate. Based on a simple user query, ARIES builds all the agents involved in the nature/society interaction, connects them into a flow network, and creates the best possible models for each agent and connection. The result is a detailed, adaptive, and dynamic assessment of  how nature provides benefits to people.

ARIES in OBServ: Empowering pollinator conservation and management

Together with Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA, ARIES has developed an open library of models to predict the availability of pollinators in space and time at a global scale in the frame of the OBServ project, where BC3 is one of the main partners. OBServ represents a...

ARIES relocates its servers!

The ARIES development team has successfully relocated the project’s computational infrastructure to the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) Supercomputing Center, based in Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain. This relocation will support a growing ARIES user base...

ARIES presents k.LAB at the Innovate4Climate conference

ARIES’ lead investigators at BC3 and Ikerbasque researchers Ferdinando Villa and Stefano Balbi showcased k.LAB at Innovate4Climate, a global event hosted by the World Bank Group in Bilbao, Spain, designed to accelerate climate action through the utilization of...

ARIES at WWF’s webinar on AI & Conservation

Last March, ARIES lead investigator and Ikerbasque professor at BC3 Ferdinando Villa was invited to talk about the ARIES platform as a case study in knowledge integration within WWF’s seminars series on AI and conservation. These online events highlight how AI is...

New ARIES article demonstrates key steps needed to create more interoperable models in agricultural systems

New article from the ARIES team at BC3, now published in Plos One, shows how scientific modelling applied to agricultural systems can be accessible, interoperable and user-friendly by integrating a set of complex ecological models coming from various disciplines,...

Second ARIES for SEEA workshop in Senegal! 

We held our latest ARIES for SEEA workshop in Senegal last week, from the 13th to the 16th of February. The first two days focused on identifying, with local experts, different ecosystems present in Senegal, in order to be able to compile the second set of accounts in...

ARIES gets involved in new research on soil biodiversity!

Nature Based Solutions for Soil Management (NBSoil) is a four-year project coordinated by the Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation (IUNG-PIB) which kicked off last December 12. The Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), through the ARIES Team, has recently...

Advancing Earth Observation for ecosystem accounting with ARIES

The Earth Observation for Ecosystem Accounting (EO4EA 2022) workshop was held from November 28 to December 1, 2022. It served as a platform to discuss the statistical framework brought by the United Nations Statistical Commission for natural capital accounting (NCA):...

The ARIES team coordinates and participates in the EO4EA workshop!

ARIES team members Ferdinando Villa (ARIES Lead Investigator at BC3), Stefano Balbi (ARIES managing director at BC3), Kenneth Bagstad (Natural Capital Accounting Specialist at USGS), Kii Hayashi (Ecosystem Services Professor at University of Nagoya) and Alessio...

ARIES for SEEA Sector Hub at UN Big Data Conference!

Ikerbasque research fellow at BC3 and ARIES managing director Stefano Balbi presented the ARIES for SEEA Sector Hub in the "Sustainability and the global economic recovery" panel at the 7th international conference on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics...

Modelling on the semantic web

ARIES is based on the radically novel k.LAB technology, which allows models and data to be contributed by independent researchers, hosted on a network, and automatically assembled into model workflows following a user’s simple. The technology, which can be applied beyond the field of ecosystem services, is the first operational example of semantically integrated, distributed, collaborative modelling. As an international network of scientific collaborators contribute data and models, the ARIES system grows by itself, and each new assessment automatically adopts the best data and models available. In the next year, users will be able to not only develop, but also run models directly from the world wide web, enabling a simple, two-step modeling workflow suitable for non-technical users, such as decision makers and their staff.

Hightlights

While work continues on ARIES’ web-based infrastructure that will enable more its independent use, ARIES is being used by researches and practitioners to quantify, map, and evaluate a broad spectrum of ecosystem services and beneficiaries in case studies across the globe. We have partnered with government agencies, universities, NGOs, and other stakeholders to develop data and models that are relevant to resource management, producing high-quality knowledge and understanding to support decision making. The case studies highlighted here were designed using local, high-resolution spatial datasets whenever available to populate models that account for a broad range of ecosystem services in a variety of ecological and socio-economic settings. The map below highlights some of the projects where ARIES has been used. Click a pin on the map to review the details for individual case studies.

Ridge to reef ecosystem services in Hawaii, USA

IMG_1290 Project Leads: Ken Bagstad, Kirsten Oleson
Project Collaborators: University of Hawai’i
Ecosystem Services: recreation, sediment regulation
Project Status: Ongoing
Contact: kjbagstad@usgs.gov, koleson@hawaii.edu

The social dynamics of water in Madagascar

Spiny_forest_3,_Ifaty,_Madagascar Project Lead: Ferdinando Villa
Ecosystem Services: coastal flood regulation, carbon sequestration and storage, sediment regulation, subsistence fisheries
Project Status: Completed
Contact: ferdinando.villa@bc3research.org

Mapping capacity and flows of ecosystem services in the Puget Sound, WA, USA

PugetPinPicture Project Leads: Ken Bagstad, Dave Batker
Project Collaborators: Earth Economics
Ecosystem Services: aesthetic viewsheds, carbon sequestration and storage, flood regulation, open space proximity, sediment regulation
Project Status: Completed
Contact: kjbagstad@usgs.gov

Fresh water access for pastoral livelihoods in the Ruaha River watershed, Tanzania

TanzaniaPinPicture Project Lead: Brian Voigt
Ecosystem Services: surface water (households, farmers, power producers Project Details
Project Status: Ongoing
Contact: bvoigt@uvm.edu

Comparing ecosystem services modeling approaches for the San Pedro River Watershed, AZ, USA

SanPedroPinPicture Project Lead: Ken Bagstad
Ecosystem Services: aesthetic viewsheds, carbon sequestration and storage, open space proximity, recreation, water supply
Project Status: Completed
Contact: kjbagstad@usgs.gov

Forest ecosystem services in Satoyama, Japan

forest Project Leads: Ken Bagstad, Takahiro Ota, Takuro Uehara
Ecosystem Services: flood regulation, water supply
Project Status: Ongoing Contact: kjbagstad@usgs.gov

Food security and rural livelihood strategies in the Zomba region

Project Lead: Stefano Balbi
Project Collaborators: University of Southampton, CI
Ecosystem Services: Food security
Project Details: part of the ASSETS project
Project Status: Ongoing
Contact: stefano.balbi@bc3research.org

Mapping biophysical and cultural ecosystem services in the Rocky Mountains, USA

Moraine_Lake_17092005 Project Lead: Ken Bagstad
Project Collaborators: U.S. Geological Survey
Ecosystem Services: cultural ecosystem services, aesthetics, carbon sequestration and storage, sediment regulation, water supply
Project Status: Completed
Contact: kjbagstad@usgs.gov

Trade-offs from agricultural production in Alava, Basque Country, Spain

10599658_324134171091261_3607550444762009846_n Project Lead: Stefano Balbi
Project Collaborators: Basque Centre for Climate Change
Ecosystem Services: air quality, crop yield, carbon sequestration and storage, water quality
Project Status: Completed
Contact: stefano.balbi@bc3research.org

Flood risk analysis in the Zurich metro area

Project Lead: Stefano Balbi
Project Collaborators: F. Villa, V. Mojtahed, K. T. Hegetschweiler, and C. Giupponi
Ecosystem Services: Flood regulation
Project Details: see the discussion paper
Project Status: Completed
Contact: stefano.balbi@bc3research.org

An assessment of cultural ecosystem services in the Kailash Region

Project Lead: Ferdinando Villa
Ecosystem Services: Cultural services, including sacred landscapes
Project Details: exploratory assessment of the Kailash region sacred sites
Project Status: Ongoing
Contact: ferdinando.villa@bc3research.org

Ecosystem Services from pastureland in Trentino

Project Lead: Alessandra La Notte
Project Collaborators: Provincia Autonoma di Trento
Ecosystem Services: Sustainable fodder production
Project Details: see the published paper
Project Status: Completed
Contact: alelanotte@gmail.com

Training - Metro Vancouver

Project Lead: Brian Voigt
Project Collaborators: Metro Vancouver
Ecosystem Services: Multiple
Project Status: Completed
Contact: bvoigt@uvm.edu

Analysis of transboundary water ecosystems and green/blue infrastructures in the Intercontinental Biosphere Reserve of the Mediterranean Andalusia (Spain) – Morocco (IBRM)

Project Lead: Javier Martínez-López (BC3)
Project Collaborators: UNESCO-IOC, UAVR, Ecologic, IGB, IMDEA
Ecosystem Services: Green and Blue Infrastructures
Project Status: Ongoing
Contact: javier.martinez@bc3research.org

Visual resource management and minerals development under the Moab Master Leasing Plan, Moab, UT, USA

MoabMLPPinPicture Project Lead: Brian Voigt
Ecosystem Services: recreation (hiking, mountain biking, auto and OHV touring, horseback riding
Project Status: Ongoing
Contact: bvoigt@uvm.edu

Improving integrated management of Natura 2000 sites in the Vouga River

Project Lead: Javier Martínez-López (BC3)
Project Collaborators: UAVR, UNESCO-IOC, IMARES, IMDEA, BOKU, EAWAG
Ecosystem Services: Protected Areas
Project Status: Ongoing
Contact: javier.martinez@bc3research.org

Trade-offs in ecosystem-based fisheries management in the North Sea aimed at achieving Biodiversity Strategy targets

Project Lead: Javier Martínez-López (BC3)
Project Collaborators: Ecologic, IGB, IMARES, ULIV, RBINS
Ecosystem Services: Fisheries
Project Status: Ongoing
Contact: javier.martinez@bc3research.org

Modelling dependency on ES from the beneficiaries' perspective

https://aries.integratedmodelling.org/?p=1374

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