The Environment Agency Austria (Umweltbundesamt GmbH, EAA) was established in 1985 and is the environmental specialist institution of the Austrian Federal Government. It provides expertise on the condition of the environment and environmental changes as well as on measures to avoid or reduce environmental pollution. In 1998 the Agency became a limited liability company owned by the Federation, in order to allow a more flexible management. Currently, the agency employs some 450 people. The Environment Agency Austria undertakes environmental monitoring, assessment and evaluation for the Austrian Minister of the Environment and the implementation of federal environmental laws, EU directives and regulations. It plays an important role in the EIONET, in that it is the National Focal Point (NFP) for the EEA as well as a partner in several European Topic Centers and it is the National Reference Centre of the EEA in several areas. The Department for Ecosystem Research & Environmental Information Management deals with long term ecosystem monitoring (running the Austrian UNECE IM Site Zöbelboden), semantic data management, coordination of regional research activities and networking (currently chairing LTER Europe).

Principal Investigator:

Johannes Peterseil had a PhD in ecology from the University of Vienna with special focus on landscape ecology, deputy head of the department Ecosystem Research & Environmental Information Management. He contributes to a number of European projects dealing with long-term ecosystem observation and monitoring on European and national scale. Leader of the Expert Panel on Information Management of LTER Europe and member of the Information Management group of ILTER.
His role in Ecopotential is to lead WP5 (In situ Monitoring Data), but he is also involved in WPs 3, 4, 6, 9 and 10.