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2020 > 12

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As we near the end of 2020, we wanted to extend a big thanks to the SITES community! We have enjoyed staying virtually connected this year and look forward to continued engagement in 2021. Season’s greetings and best wishes for 2021 from the SITES Secretariat! 
A model XL drone demonstrated its ability to fertilize GPS positioned plants during the “Future silviculture” excursion at Degerön (part of the Vindeln Experimental Forest at Svartberget). It got Santa Claus thinking, should he consider using a drone instead of Rudolph to lead his sleigh this year? Phto: Johan Westin.
A model XL drone demonstrated its ability to fertilize GPS positioned plants during the “Future silviculture” excursion at Degerön (part of the Vindeln Experimental Forest at Svartberget). It got Santa Claus thinking, should he consider using a drone instead of Rudolph to lead his sleigh this year? Phto: Johan Westin.
The picture shows a similar radar tower in Remningstorp, which in a collaboration between the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Chalmers University of Technology. The picture shows a similar radar tower in Remningstorp, which in a collaboration between the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Chalmers University of Technology.

The overall aim of this project is to develop a new observation method for reliably quantifying the forest-atmosphere water exchange over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.

This project is a collaboration between the department of Forest Resources and Management, SLU, Umeå, Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University and department of Forest Ecology and Management and based on the co-location with ICOS and the Krycklan Catchment studies (at Svartberget Research Station).

The work in this project will bridge the gap between the urgent need for spatially-distributed, long-term evapotranspiration (ET) observations and modern radar-based sensing capabilities that can resolve the spatial inhomogeneities and temporal variations that ET exhibits in forested regions.

The data generated with the new measurement method will help reveal some of the currently-hidden mechanisms by which ET in forested regions contributes to the hydrological and weather systems. The long-term, high-resolution ET observations extended to the global scale will aid in the development and verification of regional and global climate models, hydrological models and dynamic vegetation models.

Project contact person: Johan Fransson (johan.fransson@slu.se), Department of Forest Resource Management, SLU, Umeå.

Text: Mats Nilsson, SLU. This new article was previously published in the newsletter Krycklan news.

At lake Erken, tests of new automatic gas flux chambers have started. The chambers, with sensors inside, can be used to automatically measure greenhouse gas (GHG) flux between water and air.
 
The test is carried out as a joint initiative between SITES AquaNet, SITES Water, AQUACOSM-plus and the research group of David Bastviken at Linköping University.

The first tests have already been completed. More specifically, tests were carried out to investigate the performance of the chambers in the SITES AquaNET mesososms. Right now CO2 and CH4 gas samples from manual measurements are being analysed at the Department of Earth Sciences at Gothenburg University and the results will be compared with the corresponding gas flux measurements derived from sensor measurements.
 
Further tests are planned to investigate how the automatic chambers respond under rough weather conditions. The plan is to expose the chambers to strong winds on lake Erken. The chambers will be under surveillance during the test, allowing for fast rescue or adaptations, if needed, so that the valuable equipment is not at risk during this initial stage of testing.

Watch a video of the automatic gas flux chambers below.
 

November used to be the transition month between autumn and winter at Lönnstorp Research Station in Skåne in southern Sweden, but this year the temperatures have been a bit milder than usual. According to the automatic weather station placed at the station (data from the station is available in SITES data portal), the average temperature in the first three weeks of November has been around 10 ºC, while in the past three years the average temperature for the same dates was between 5–6 ºC. This could be the reason why this winter the crops of the SAFE infrastructure are still growing.

Bird´s eye view of the SAFE infrastructure in November 2020 at Lönnstorp Research Station. The growth rate this year has been unusual high for this part of the season. Photo: Ryan Davidson.
Bird´s eye view of the SAFE infrastructure in November 2020 at Lönnstorp Research Station. The growth rate this year has been unusual high for this part of the season. Photo: Ryan Davidson.

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