To kick-off the year, SITES leadership team, including the Secretariat, the SITES Station Managers and Thematic Program leads, met in-person at SITES Grimsö Wildlife Research Station this week (30-31 Jan 2024). The meeting provided an opportunity to reflect on SITES accomplishments from 2023 as well as strategize and prioritize for 2024.
At Skogaryd Research Catchment (SRC), the flow and balance of nutrients are studied in various ecosystems and across the whole catchment. Since January, deposition of nutrients has been measured, inching towards complete nutrient budgets.
The ongoing process with uploading data to the SITES Data Portal continues. For Asa Research Station, as ice beings to settle on lake Feresjön, the SITES Water monitoring is reduced from biweekly sampling to monthly. This allows for more time to process and upload SITES Water data.
The SITES 2024 Calendar theme is “SITES Collaborations”. SITES aims to promote excellent ecosystem research and high-quality data that support this research. This includes collaborations that increase the number of projects that utilize multiple SITES stations and connect between aquatic and terrestrial processes. Further, SITES aims to strengthen the collaborations with relevant research infrastructures and networks across Sweden and internationally, including data infrastructures and services.
The last SITES data retreat of the year is taking place in Umeå this week with Svartberget Research Station. Updates to include the 2023 data to the stream level and discharge at the five locations existing on the SITES Data Portal (Catchment locations, C2, C4, C5, C6 and C7) have already been made. Stream level and discharge data from additional locations will be added to the SITES Data Portal soon! The lake water level data from Stortjärn has also been updated for 2023 and other data updates from the lake are in the works.
The SITES 2023 Calendar theme is “Data in Focus”. The openly available data produced within SITES and stored on the SITES Data Portal is the “golden thread” of the infrastructure, allowing users access to ecosystem data that covers diverse habitats and climate zones across geographical gradients in Sweden. Each month follow along as we highlight a unique SITES dataset.
This week the data retreats continue: next in line is Bolmen, SITES associated research station in Småland. The team is working on establishing workflows and a data structure for the first SITES Water related data sets coming from Lake Bolmen and to discuss future multi-station collaborations. The station lead around Sydvatten have ambitious plans to develop a high-frequency measurement program on the lake in the coming years, which is planned to follow the SITES Water layer structure.
Joel Gräsman has been working as a Field technician during two field seasons at the Asa Station, from December 2023 he will have a full time employment at the station.
When the ice starts to settle on the lakes in Sweden, it is time to increase the focus on SITES data again. Therefore, the SITES Secretariat has scheduled several data retreats to meet with colleagues at the SITES research stations, in the weeks left before the end of the year. This week, the team is meeting at Grimsö Wildlife Research Station working with the Grimsö Station Manager and colleagues from Lönnstorp and Röbäcksdalen.
The SITES 2023 Calendar theme is “Data in Focus”. The openly available data produced within SITES and stored on the SITES Data Portal is the “golden thread” of the infrastructure, allowing users access to ecosystem data that covers diverse habitats and climate zones across geographical gradients in Sweden. Each month follow along as we highlight a unique SITES dataset.