In order for its services to be the most relevant, AnaEE must be involved with the most pressing set of scientific and societal issues that can be identified or anticipated. This will be achieved by establishing, upstream of the experimentation activities, strong links with stakeholders and scientists in order to identify the future ecosystem science challenges and to transform them into fundable research programs. Core activities of ISC will be: 
  • Organising scientific prospective studies and lobbying for research programs : Major gaps in ecosystem sciences and mobilization of AnaEE platforms will be identified by leading scientists and representatives of international expert panels, such as the IPCC and IPBES. This information will be transferred to research funding agencies by the AnaEE DG together with the head of the Interface and Synthesis Centre, with the assistance of leading scientists.
  • Setting-up project building capacity : A European project engineer will assist scientist consortia in preparing proposals. In particular, the ISC will perform a meta-analysis of the state-of-the-art in ecosystem experimental methodologies, and of the services the experimental and analytical platforms provide for users, in order to determine the status of current scientific and technical capabilities. This will be used by AnaEE to help scientists to prepare large-scale projects combining a range of national platforms.
  • Elaborating outreach material directly related to AnaEE results : In addition to the scientific papers published by the platforms users, and to the delivery of the scientific and technological data from the other Centres, AnaEE needs to prepare outreach material to support the needs of various stakeholders, such as policy makers, education professionals and citizens. A Communication engineer will be responsible for the elaboration of outreach materials and organization of e-learning initiatives.
  • Organising worldwide ecosystem science syntheses : AnaEE will organise data/knowledge syntheses on specific ecosystem science aspects incorporating AnaEE generated and worldwide published data. One of the first topics to be considered will involve the combined impacts of heat and drought on terrestrial ecosystems.
  • Elaborating societal scenarios and innovation needs beyond AnaEE results : Scenario building requires workshops to be organized with policy-makers, relevant professionals and industries. These would be held every 3-4 years or whenever results of major societal significance are made available. Opinion/recommendation papers could be outputs of these meetings. Emerging innovative ideas will be shared with the Technology Centre in case new equipment or methodologies could be developed in partnership with industry.
  • Feeding the Interface and Synthesis Centre section of the AnaEE portal : Information on conferences and workshops and outreach materials will be published here.
  • Recommendations and synthesis papers for policy makers and regulators : At the request of relevant stakeholders, AnaEE ISC will contribute to the development of recommendations and perspectives associated with potential solutions to critical scientific and societal issues addressed in its platforms.

The ISC will be hosted by CzechGlobe (Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Science) in Brno, Czech Republic.