News archive

On April 11th, the vice chancellor of SLU and her leading council visited the field station at Röbäcksdalen. The purpose of the visit was to learn more about the infrastructure, but also to sign a collaboration agreement between SLU and Umeå municipality. Röbäcksdalen SITES manager Johanna Wallsten talked about the SITES activities in the region, and Charlotta Erefur from Svartberget presented some of their activities, and talked about collaborations between the two SITES stations.  In addition, researchers at SLU in Umeå demonstrated some of the spectral equipment at the station.

The central data coordination team has scheduled several data-focused meetings with individual stations to facilitate uploads to the SITES Data Portal during the off-season when field sampling is less time demanding for the station staff. 

Currently, the SITES secretariat and staff from Erken Laboratory are processing data from complex lake profile measurements collected using YSI sonde technology which will be uploaded soon. Follow-up data meetings are scheduled with Svartberget and Skogaryd, so more data will be available for download in the coming weeks. 

The snow cover around Tarfala Research Station has changed dramatically as a result of a period with a high rate of cyclonic activity. About a meter of snow has accumulated in the area around the station recently, and while this accumulation is good news for the glaciers it makes travel and measurements more difficult. After a storm, it takes several days for the snow to settle, making ground transportation possible and reducing the threat of avalanches. Late snowstorms also make mass balance studies difficult to perform properly.

In fall 2021 a temporary technical workshop was established at Grimsö Wildlife Research Station to develop technology for decreasing the number of traffic accidents involving wildlife. Research and development projects are conducted with project leaders from Grimsö in collaboration with several national and international stakeholders, including, the Swedish Transport Administration, Interreg Sweden-Norway, the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIMBO), and the Norwegian railway infrastructure BaneNOR.

We are excited to welcome Emily Pickering Pedersen, to the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat at Abisko Scientific Research Station.

The short spring season at TRS is of extreme contrast to the extended summer season. Instead of hiking the 24 km from Nikkaluokta one must use a snow scooter, instead of worrying about mosquitos one must be aware of avalanches and one must be even more prepared for the unpredictable infamous Tarfala weather. Yet spring is an essential time in the Tarfala calendar, representing the beginning of the station’s glacier mass balance programme.
 

A restoration case study called “Beaver re-introduction” is the Swedish contribution to the new EU Green Deal project MERLIN*. The case study will have a before-after design, which means experimental construction as well as removal of 60 beaver dams in Sweden, of which 10 will be located in the Vindeln Catchment including Krycklan (Svartberget Research Station). It is a four-year project and aims to sample two years before the measures (dam construction/removal) and two years of sampling after the measures.

Ongoing work by SITES spectral uses satellites to give researchers a broad spatial view of vegetation conditions at SITES stations. This work generates data layers describing vegetation productivity and phenology for 20 x 20 km areas. Layer data ready for inclusion in GIS databases will be distributed in analysis-ready format, in the Swedish reference system. The data show the seasonal development of green vegetation and can be useful for monitoring vegetation’s response to variations in weather, human influence, and other factors.

In 2018 researchers from Sweden and Germany used the SITES AquaNET mesocosm infrastructure to participate in a global mesocosm experiment on salinization led by scientists from the University of Toledo in the US and Queen's University in Canada. The overall aim of the project was to study how the increasing salt concentration in lakes observed in many parts of the world resulting from human activities (e.g. road deicing, mining, agriculture) and increasing droughts and water scarcity affect life in freshwater ecosystems.

SITES Lönnstorp will start the process of converting 10 ha of farmland to an organic experimental field this year. SITES Lönnstorp will manage this field and we hope that it will be available for organic experiments as soon as next year. The field will be visible from the road leading to Campus Alnarp (see map below) and we think that the location close to campus will help to attract interesting experiments. We expect that this visible location will also help to promote the facilities and infrastructure to students, researchers, companies, and the wider public.