SITES AquaNet
SITES AquaNet is a standardized infrastructure for national and international researchers to run mesocosm experiments in lakes at Asa, Erken, Skogaryd, Svartberget and Bolmen field stations.
Apply to use AquaNet in 2022
- In summer 2022 SITES AquaNet will offer transnational access though the EU-project AQUACOSM-plus, including travelling, lodging and logistic, technical and scientific support.
- We invite research groups, individual researchers and trainees to join a synchronized mesocosm experiment in five SITES lakes to study how differences in nutrient run-off variability resulting from extreme weather events affect plankton composition and ecosystem processes
- More information about the experiment and how to apply.
SITES AquaNet offers
- Open access to equipment to run mesocosm experiments in one or more lakes spread across a geographical and climatic gradient in Sweden.
- Experimental and technical support from qualified station´s personnel.
- Linkage of experimental results to lake time series data and stream-lake interactions in collaboration with the sister monitoring project SITES Water.
Description of the infrastructure
SITES AquaNet is described in an open access article in Limnology and Oceanography: Methods.
Urrutia-Cordero, P., et al. (2021), SITES AquaNet: An open infrastructure for mesocosm experiments with high frequency sensor monitoring across lakes. Limnol Oceanogr Methods.
The infrastructure is located in four SITES stations (Svartberget, Erken, Skogaryd and Asa and an associated station at lake Bolmen, which is operated by Swedish Water Research/Sydvatten) and hence enables modularized experimental manipulations in lakes along a latitudinal gradient in Sweden. The lakes in each respective station (Stortjärn, Erken, Erssjön, Feresjön and Bolmen) vary in local environmental conditions. This allows achieving general conclusions on ecological phenomena; particularly how local differences between important variables across sites (e.g., temperature, elevation, nutrients and water colour) mediate the outcomes of experimental manipulations of explanatory predictors for the phenomena.
PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTS
Activities in 2019
In July 2019 a team from Oldenburg University led by Maren Striebel used the SITES AquaNET Infrastructure in lake Erken for an experiment to test how variations in multiple environmental parameters affect planktonic food webs. More specifically, variation in light and nutrient fluctuations were manipulated to investigate the direct and indirect effects of the treatments on nutrient availability as well as biomass, composition, traits, function and resource use efficiency of different plankton groups (zooplankton, phytoplankton and bacterioplankton).
Between April and June 2019, Marcus Lee, a PhD student in Aquatic Ecology at Lund University, conducted an experiment at Bolmen research station on how the energetic state of individual zooplankton effects their migratory behavior in response to threats. Specifically, Marcus tested if increases in food availability resulting from increases in phytoplankton due to eutrophication strengthened the diel vertical migration behavior of the water flea Daphnia magna.
Activities in 2018
The stations at Asa, Erken and Svartberget participated in a global mesocosm project organized by GLEON (Global Lake Observatory Network) together with researchers at Uppsala, Umeå and Kalmar Universities. The major aim was to investigate effects of salinization of inland waters on plankton communities.
The station at lake Bolmen implemented a brownification experiment to study effects on plankton communities and nutrient concentrations
Test experiments 2017
- validate the use of experimental enclosures, sensor systems, sampling material and laboratory facilities,
- train research station´s personnel in conducting mesocosm experiments,
- create standardized protocols for field and laboratory work and
- produce a test case to promote the infrastructure nationally and internationally with the purpose to further achieve a larger, global endeavor similar to the Nutrient Network in grassland ecosystems.
- no disturbance (control),
- light reduction as a press (constant) disturbance,
- fish predation as a pulse (temporary) disturbance and
- press and pulse disturbances combined.
SITES AquaNet expects to upload these experimental data to a publicly available SITES server, so that researches can use it to produce scientific publications. A publication policy for the use of this data will also be available at this website with the purpose to promote those actions and hence SITES AquaNet both nationally and internationally.
The following data files are now available from the experiments:
- Zooplankton abundance and biomass
- Nutrient concentrations
- OTU table (18S rRNA sequencing)
Please contact us for more information.


Coordinator
Silke Langenheder
silke.langenheder@ebc.uu.se
Participating field
research stations
PI
Helmut Hillebrand
Contact persons at the stations
Svartberget
- Johannes Tiwari (johannes.tiwari@slu.se)
- Charlotta Erefur (charlotta.erefur@slu.se)
Erken
- William Colom Montero (wiliam.colom@ebc.uu.se)
- Silke Langenheder (silke.langenheder@ebc.uu.se)
Skogaryd:
- Leif Klemedtsson (leif.klemedtsson@gu.se)
Asa
- Niels Aagaard Jakobsen (niels.aagaard.jakobsen@slu.se)
Bolmen
- Juha Ränkinen (juha.rankinen@sydvatten.se)