2nd NETLAKE Working Group meeting and Management Committee meeting

At a two-day Management Committee and Working Group meeting (2-3 August) , the Management Committee reviewed progress over the first seven months of the Action, while the Working Groups continued working on specified tasks. These two days were attended by 43 delegates including the DC Rapporteur Prof. John Sweeney. Day 1 began with the MC meeting, during which the group were given updates by the Chair and WG leaders, by the DC Rapporteur, and by the Chair as Grantholder.  The meeting also included discussion on the workplan for Year 2 of the Action.  The next meeting will be in Girona, Spain, in January 2014.  Minutes for the MC meeting will be circulated to the MC and substitutes. 

Day 1 also included a Sensor Information Session with five invited presentations, a set of break-out session to discuss science questions for WG 2, and a discussion on potential applications form consortia of those involved in NETLAKE under Horizon 2020.  On the latter, it was decided that the Core Group would meet and would progress this, and would keep the other participants informed.  Presentations in the Sensor information Session included a guest speaker, Gábor Széles from Velinor Ltd, an SME in Hungary, and one from Dr Mark Honti, who completed the first NETLAKE STSM in May.   Additional presentations by Alo Laas, Liz Ryder and Don Pierson illustrated some of the practical issues that are encountered when installing lake buoys and processing the data from these systems.  The NETLAKE WGs met on Day 2 and good progress was made in all areas.   

On Day 3 of the meeting, NETLAKE members travelled to Lake Balaton to meet the Women for Balaton, at Tihany.  This local voluntary lake group has over 700 members in 45 groups who meet in locations around the lake. It carries out education and awareness programmes related to the conservation of Lake Balaton, and also organises water quality monitoring under the BISEL (Biotic Index at Secondary Education Level) nation-wide environmental action programme.  The women were given a presentation on NETLAKE which was translated into Hungarian, and then gave the NETLAKE group a presentation on their activities. The day finished with a visit to Balaton Limnological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Tihany.