This was the joint plenary session of NFDI4Biodiversity & NFDI4Earth

From 22 to 25 September 2025, the NFDI4Biodiversity and NFDI4Earth consortia met at MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen. Four days of exchange, discussion, and inspiring insights gave participants the opportunity to review the results of the project work to date and present current developments and future tasks.

Monday & Tuesday: NFDI4Earth and Joint Plenary

The week began with the NFDI4Earth Plenary, which included workshops, keynotes, and initial discussion rounds on use cases, data visualization, education & training, as well as quality assurance in data infrastructure. You can find more details about the NFDI4Earth Plenary program and many visual impressions here.

On Tuesday, the Joint Plenary, jointly organized by NFDI4Biodiversity and NFDI4Earth, kicked off. The event started with an intriguing keynote speech entitled “Two Decades of Research Data Infrastructure” by Wim Hugo (Research Data Alliance (RDA) and Dutch National Centre of Expertise and Repository for Research Data (DANS)), in which he provided an impressive overview of global developments to date, shared important lessons learned, and opened up possible perspectives for future data strategies.

The poster session, with around 40 contributions, also offered an impressive cross-section of the diverse topics covered by the two consortia. The spectrum ranged from new approaches to research data management and FAIR data principles to tools for visualizing, annotating, and analyzing biodiversity and environmental data, to cloud-based infrastructures and sustainable data services. Many posters also focused on practical applications in biodiversity and Earth system research, such as linking large environmental and climate data sets, quality assurance and long-term archiving of research data, and the integration of citizen science and AI-supported methods.

Joint Plenary 2025

Shanice Allerheiligen

Wednesday & Thursday: Joint sessions and start of the NFDI4Biodiversity All Hands Conference

On Wednesday morning, the Software & Tools Marketplace opened its doors, allowing participants to learn about 22 applications and try them out for themselves. The Barcamp session then offered an opportunity to spontaneously find fellow participants for a wide variety of topics, including questions about optimizing cloud-based data formats in the geosciences, workflows for better interoperability between services, support for research data management (RDM) at various levels, and strategies for improving the discoverability of research software.

The program was complemented by engaging tours of MARUM, including visits to the drill core repository, where core samples from geological investigations are stored and made available for research purposes, and to the remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which is used to explore marine habitats and collect samples. The diversity of topics and the lively participation in the tours underscored how dynamic the inter-consortium exchange was.

In the afternoon, NFDI4Biodiversity spokesperson Frank Oliver Glöckner and co-spokesperson Barbara Ebert opened the NFDI4Biodiversity internal part of the event: the NFDI4Biodiversity All Hands Conference. With his presentation “Insights from Practice – Citizen Science in Use,” Dr. Alexander Wirth (NABU | naturgucker) provided a great, practical introduction to the conference, impressively demonstrating how citizen science data from the NABU | naturgucker portal for research and nature conservation is collected and used for research purposes, among other things.

Joint Plenary 2025

Shanice Allerheiligen

The following sessions focused on the successes and lessons learned during the first funding phase (2020-2025) – and the plans for the upcoming second phase. New (and old) measure leads presented their visions for the future in short flash talks and a World Café, inviting questions and discussion.

Joint Plenary 2025

Shanice Allerheiligen

The four days in Bremen impressively demonstrated how beneficial it was to bring the two consortia NFDI4Biodiversity and NFDI4Earth together in quick succession and with joint formats. The close temporal and spatial collaboration not only enabled valuable synergies, but also promoted a new understanding of the common challenges in data management, infrastructure, and sustainability. Whether in workshops, discussions, or informal conversations, it was clear everywhere that the dialogue between the communities unleashed creative energy and sparked new collaborations. For four days, Bremen became a lively hub of a growing research data landscape, where shared visions for the years beyond 2025 became visible.