Over the past few months, the SITES Water Thematic Program and the associated openly available data, has been featured in several events.
In December, Marcus Wallin (SITES Water Thematic Program Lead) presented a poster about SITES Water at the Hydrology Days 2022, hosted by Svenska hydrologiska rådet SHR. The theme of the event was "Freshwater: from source to sea", covering the broad spectrum of water from bio(eco)logical, physical and chemical, and society. The meeting took place in person this year at SLU Uppsala, after two years of being online, and offered a great opportunity for SITES Water to connect to academic researchers beyond SLU, including Uppsala University, Stockholm University, KTH, as well as to institutes and companies, including Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Tyréns AB and SMHI.
On the 2nd of March, an all day seminar titled, Hur beräknar vi Sveriges växthusgasbalans i skog, mark och vatten? - Nuvarande klimatrapportering och framtida möjligheter. (Translating to, How do we calculate Sweden’s greenhouse gas balance in forest, land and water – current climate reporting and future opportunities) brought together researchers and different stakeholders, e.g. governmental authorities, municipalities, private companies with interest in Sweden’s greenhouse gas balance. The focus was on the Land use, Land use change and Forestry sector, and how the national greenhouse gas balance is reported. The seminar also included presentations concerning greenhouse gas fluxes that are not covered in the national reporting and development of new measurement and modelling methods. Several SITES researchers as well as SITES collaborator, ICOS, presented during the seminar. It was obvious after the day that data generated within SITES are essential for improving our understanding of Sweden’s greenhouse gas balance.
Later in March (the 20th and 22nd), the third internal water seminar series at SLU took place. SLU has a strong and broad expertise on water, but is spread out across different faculties, departments and campuses and thus, the water seminar series is an opportunity to connect water research at SLU as a whole. This year’s program focused on early career scholars, where Blaize Denfeld (SITES Deputy Director) presented SITES Water in the context of her PhD and PostDoc research at multiple SITES Stations including Erken, Svartberget, Skogaryd and Röbäcksdalen.
Major efforts have been made lately among SITES stations and by the Secretariat to upload data generated within the SITES Water program to the SITES Data Portal. These data include meteorology, water chemistry from lakes and streams, lake temperature and oxygen profiles, lake water level and stream discharge. The SITES Water data is now openly available on the SITES Data Portal and more will be uploaded soon.