Katarina Hedman started to work at SITES Svartberget and

Within the framework of the project “Host-parasite-interactions in freshwater phytoplankton blooms” Ingrid Sassenhagen from Uppsala University is currently sampling the diatom spring bloom in Lake Erken. The project aims to test if parasites preferentially infect highly abundant microalgal species, thereby controlling the diversity of phytoplankton communities.

A new study shows that the evapotranspiration from boreal peatlands will increase in a future warmer climate. This has a major importance for the global water balance and could lead to lead to accelerated peatland carbon loss.

The study is based on data from 95 different flux towers on the northern hemisphere (including several within SITES) and underlines the importance of long-term and well distributed networks of measurements of the natural environment.

The study also provides an example on the importance of open data for scientific progress.

Ana Barreiro and Lina Fransson-Engman will start to work at SITES Lönnstorp during 2020.

During the winter, staff from Abisko Scientific Research Station has replaced one of the three houses at Latnjajaure. Latnjajaure, located at 982 m a.s.l. 14 km west of Abisko, is the most commonly used field huts of the research station and has been a site within the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) for more than 30 years. The old cabin started to tilt and was slowly but surely sliding towards the lake.

Spring is arriving with sunny days and increasing temperatures. This is long awaited weather not only for the staff at Asa Research Station, but also for the spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus). Due to draught, southern Sweden has experienced high levels of damage in spruce forests the past two seasons. How the situation will be this season remains to be seen.

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the crucial need for access to long-term, real-time data sources in order to advise policy makers and react appropriately from the regional to national and global scales. More than 100 scientists are engaged in the EU funded initiative European Long-Term Ecosystem Research Infrastructure (eLTER), who today published a position paper in the context of the Covid-19 crisis. Read it here

In the beginning of the week, SITES Röbäcksdalen finally got permission to install the last water logger for the SITES Water stream flow measurements. The two creeks Röbäcken and Degernäsbäcken are sampled at five different spots and during the fall 2019 four of them were equipped with loggers to measure the water level and temperature.

Fig 1. Excavator heaps up mounds to restructure the drained organic soil site at Följemaden. Photographer: David Allbrand
 

SITES AquaNet is happy to announce that our standardised mesocosm infrastructure available in five lakes across Sweden is now part of AQUACOSM-plus. AQUACOSM-plus is an EU-funded research infrastructure project for mesocosm-based research in marine and freshwater ecosystems starting in April 2020.