We are currently working with the program for the 2^nd NORDIC ICOS Symposium that will take place in Gothenburg on the 24^th-25^th of October with focus on “Sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in the Nordic countries”. The mire “Mycklemossen” that is part of the Skogaryd Sites station will apply to be the new ICOS site for University of Gothenburg and the old Lanna site will then be downgraded to an “associated site”. The reason being that the fluxes of N₂O at Lanna are low, below the detection limit by the instrumentation used within ICOS, and thus only short turn peak emissions can be detected. ICOS-Sweden did not have any hemi-boreal/temperate mires in their measuring program and the Mycklemossen well represents the mires in the southern parts of Sweden. It has been monitored by SITES since 2013 and the greenhouse gas fluxes has been dramatically affected by the drought events the current years, which resulted in net CO₂ emission, low CH₄ emissions and high DOC flows in the autumn. Intensive work is now ongoing in upgrading the site to a level 2 ICOS site, and the site will be presented at an excursion at the Symposium in October.

 

On the forested drained peat site at Skogaryd, work has started to allow harvest. After clear-cutting, parts of the site will be re-wetted and fluxes of GHG and mercury will continue to be monitored. This site is one of the most well studied afforested drained organic soils in terms of greenhouse gas flux and processes related the flux. The scaffold tower was taken down last year. Now the old “soil installations”, (frames used to separate root/mycorrhiza respiration from soil organic matter respiration) are removed, since they will not be in use when this part of the site is flooded.

The Erken station has recently finished the upgrade of the Kristineholm automatic monitoring station located at the main inlet of lake Erken.

This station provides data on stream stage/discharge, water and air temperature, CDOM and conductivity. The renovation included upgrades to a new data logger and communication system to achieve direct real-time online communication and the installation of a new water temperature thermocouple.  Finally, a new bio-wiper fluorometer was deployed into an aquarium into which stream water is pumped hourly to be able to enable consistent anti-fouling proof measurement of colored dissolved organic matter in the stream water.

It is now peak season for several of Grimsös` monitoring series on wildlife and forest, where some surveys overlap in time, as also for many of the external projects. For some weeks now around May-June for example season for the marking of roe deer fawns. This is often an exciting work including stalking, waiting and now and then handling newly born fawns. These data are used for e.g. mortality studies, but especially in combination with the long term data set on marked adult roe deers.
 

At June 3rd SITES` Steering group visited Grimsö for a meeting, but then most of the afternoon was spent touring inside the station and outdoors. For example, Mikael Åkesson explained the work at the DNA laboratory and the day was completed by a trip through parts of the 13 000 ha research area.

For three days in early May some of the SITES staff took a chain saw course, and thereby obtained a “driving license” and the competence to use chain saws at work. It is important that at least a couple of coworkers keep this competence so that someone is always available to take care of potential trees fallen over roads etc.