The Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) is Australia’s land observatory. TERN is part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) initiative, funded through the federal government Department of Education and Training. Since 2009, TERN has: (1) collected, collated and integrated ecosystem data across broad spatial and temporal scales; and (2) built data infrastructure to store, archive, discover, access, analyse, and publish a broad spectrum of terrestrial ecosystems data.

TERN will be launching the inaugural ‘EcoDatathon 2018’ on the 18th October 2018.  The aim of the EcoDatathon 2018 is to instigate a collaborative effort between ecologists to creatively and successfully use TERN data with other ecosystem data to develop innovative products. These innovative uses of ecosystem data from TERN and other sources could lead to potential grant proposals and/or publications. The EcoDatathon 2018 will have a duration of 6 weeks, finishing at the Ecological Society of Australia 2018 (ESA18) conference where projects will be presented and prizes awarded to the best three projects. Mentoring by world leading experts will be available to participating teams in the last 4 weeks of the EcoDatathon (1st to 28th of November, 2018).

The top 3 projects will be awarded a prize in the EcoDatathon workshop at the ESA18 conference (29th of November, 2018). Prizes include: AU$500 for 1st prize, AU $300 for 2nd price, and AU$200 for 3rd prize.

Registration and further details on the event (i.e. rules, datasets, mentoring, presentations, awards, and timelime) will be available from the 18th of October 2018 at TERN’s website (http://www.tern.org.au/).