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. The Unit oversees Silvaboreal, a metadata database containing most of the forestry field trials in Sweden, currently with more than 2000 active long-term field trials. Silvaboreal ensures that documentation of the trials is kept up to date and available to the user community. Users can search the long-term field trials based on keywords or geographical location. Once logged in to the database, users can access statistics from each trial on the specific trial page.
More recently, a new system was developed in connection to the forestry field trials, SilvaArchive, which provides information on archived plant and soil material connected to the field trials. Users can browse the archive and inquire about the use of the archived material. By making the archive collection more accessible, the hope is to increase the interest from the scientific community and society at large.
Photo: Forest field trail near Svartberget Research Station (Koko Konstantinov, eLTER)