Approaches that integrate knowledge within and across disciplines have emerged as one of the main drivers of scientific and societal progress.

The ability to detect overarching patterns makes these approaches extremely relevant to ecology, which is characterised by highly complex systems, heterogeneous environments and variable methodologies.

The relevance of ecological data to address many challenges of the Anthropocene largely depends on the power of combined ecological data, supplemented with the data from other disciplines, such as geosciences, or economics.

In this seminar I will discuss the role of integrative approaches, powered by the increasing amount of open data (available to anyone to easily find and reuse) and internet technologies/tools in modern ecological research.

I will use examples from research within NIOO to showcase how these can be used to increase our understanding of ecological systems, and how they can be pivotal in allowing us to constrain projections about future changes including global warming.