SITES agricultural research stations provide long-term agricultural crop experiments with projects linked to ecosystem services and environmental impacts on biodiversity, vegetation and phenology and aquatic eutrophication.
In 2025, a government evaluation is planned to assess the current hunting periods for various small mammal species (SEPA). To support this effort with updated data and insights on the reproductive periods of these species, a research program titled “Reproductive timing in relation to hunting season in small mammals” was launched this year. The program includes several sub-projects (post docs), each using different methods and focusing on different species.
On September 2, Simone Moras started his new position within the SITES Secretariat Staff. Welcome Simone!
1. Tell us about your background
My interest for nature and the environment led me to pursue a PhD in Limnology at Uppsala University, which I completed in 2024. My research focused on understanding and predicting methane emissions from lake sediments.
The run-off scenario mesocosm experiment was set-up 5 times in a total in three lakes: in Bolmen and Erken in the summer of 2022 and in Bolmen, Erken, and Erssjön in the spring of 2023.
As part of the SITES Water program at Abisko, lake monitoring in Stordalen is being established. Stordalen is a peatland catchment area with sporadic permafrost, which has been an important site for data collection since the 1950s.
SITES provides users access to long-term monitoring of forests, through the Unit for Field-based Forest Research at SLU, connected to both SITES Asa and Svartberget Research Stations, which has several decades of data.
How is climate change impacting mosquito species in Sweden? SITES stations are participating in a collaboration with researchers from a laboratory group affiliated with The University of Hong Kong to help answer this question. The project is being led by early career researcher Dr. Alexander Williams and his supervisor Prof. Tommy Lam with support from the International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic (INTERACT).
SITES focuses on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and recognizes the interactions of biological communities, which drive biogeochemical and ecological processes.
SITES Röbäcksdalen Station Manager, Brooke Micke, and researchers from the Department of Soil and Environment at SLU, Lisbet Norberg and Maria Blomberg, recently finished a project funded by SLU’s fortlöpande miljöanalys program.
SITES enables researchers to enhance field-based ecosystem research by supporting a network of field stations across Sweden. SITES offers expert technical competence at the stations for helping plan and implement research projects and provides open access to local monitoring and remote sensing data as well as contextual information about the surrounding ecosystems. Taken together, SITES provides a rich context for setting up field sampling and experiments at one or multiple stations across Sweden.