SITES Water aims to build a long-term and well-coordinated measurement program that will form the basis for the infrastructure where hydrological, physical, chemical and biological parameters in lakes and streams will be measured.

SITES Water builds a unique long-term measurement program where hydrological, physical, chemical, and biological parameters within lakes and streams are measured. Based on this ‘backbone’ infrastructure SITES Water will provide data and facilities to address a broad range of scientific questions relevant for the scientific community.

SITES Water share and develop competence for the personel at the stations working with these structures and data to deliver a state-of-the-art measurement program.

Seven of SITES nine stations participate in SITES Water. SITES Water was initiated as a new facility at some stations, and built upon already existing stream/lake monitoring at some stations.

• Read more about the lakes in SITES Water.

There are several types of data collected within SITES Water divided into six layers.

• Layer 1: Background information
• Layer 2: Water balance
• Layer 3: Physical variables
• Layer 4: Chemical variables
• Layer 5: Biological variables
• Layer 6: GHG and C fluxes

All layers are divided into base and advance level where base level apply to all stations, and advance apply to some and are usually a result of already ongoing programs and built on previous knowledge at the station.

• Read more about SITES Water monitoring program and the data layers.

SITES Water provide background information from measurement programs that can be used by researchers in a number of different research fields e.g. paleolimnology, ecology, physical geography, hydrology and beyond. The wide spectra of the measurements creates endless possibilities in combining dataset, comparing geographical regions and environmental characteristics and hence serve as a basis for a wide range of ecological and biogeochemical studies.

One large potential of SITES Water are the greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes and emissions which has a specific aim to establish the first long-term and broad-scale inland water greenhouse gas and carbon (C) networks in the world. Another potential are the archived DNA samples collected, given the increasing eDNA research community. SITES Waters establishment of a base platform regarding accurate and well calibrated water balances enhance the accuracy of catchment to landscape modelling in each stream and lake region.

On the longer-term SITES Water will establish unique multivariate time series across space that will allow the investigation of how fundamental ecological, hydrological, and biogeochemical patterns, processes and regime shifts may respond to climate change.

A connected stream-lake interaction of varying size, characteristics and climatic regions from each participating station.

Facilities/infrastructure such as physical access on rafts/floats, soil properties and lake bathymetry maps, data series from physical and chemical variables etc. that can support scientists in a wide range of different research fields.

Field support for “your own” in situ experiments in both lakes and streams
Access to consistent time series data across a large number of stations e.g. Hydrology, temperature, oxygen, pH and other chemical variables etc.