News archive

The pandemic has slowed down and Röbäcksdalen is able to welcome visitors once again.

Friday was the second big sampling day for the SITES AquaNet and Aquacosm mesocosm experiment. The experiment is examining the impact of changes in run-off on lake plankton communities since rainfall patterns, and thereby run-off, are expected to be impacted by climate change.

Surprisingly the extreme snowfall events in early April have not delayed the start of the summer season in the Tarfala valley. A warm May and June caused rapid snow melt and the summer conditions are now quite normal. The discharge in the rivers has been generally high over the last month but has now settled to a normal rate. The ice covering the lake Tarfalasjön is still solid but is expected to break up soon. The Tarfala Research Station opened on June 28th and the SITES sampling program is just now getting started for the year.

The wild boar (Sus scrofa) project at Grimsö Wildlife Research Station explores several research topics, including, the effects of supplemental feeding on local boar populations and the surrounding habitat. Supplementary feeding is a management practice where attractive food and nutrients are supplied on daily basis at feeding stations. These feeders are often used in hunting to attract animals to a set location but are also used with the goal of shifting habitat use away from agricultural fields.

PhenoCams are cameras designed specifically for tracking the timing of when plants grow buds, leaf out, flower, fruit and die back, the science known as plant phenology. In Abisko, SITES is operating a PhenoCam which is programmed to take pictures towards Mount Nuolja several times per day. The concept of repeat photography has been increasingly used to continuously monitor the foliage and canopy changes mainly because of its low cost, high temporal resolution, high-quality imagery, and automatic operation.

Abisko Scientific Research Station was built in 1912 after the research station in Katterjokk burned down. The following year, the meteorological measurements were started, and for several decades data has been collected on behalf of SMHI. The over one-hundred-year long series of measurements has qualified the measuring station as a Centennial Observing Station, an award given by the World Meteorological Organization WMO.

ACTRIS (Aerosol, Clouds, Trace gases Research Infrastructure) is a pan-European research infrastructure that provides a network of stations for observations of short-lived climate forcers (SLCF). The SLCFs have a short residence time in the atmosphere and include airborne particles, aerosols, and reactive trace gases.

Natural biological surfactants are ubiquitous at the air-water interface, or the surface microlayer (SML), the uppermost ~1000 µm of surface water. Consequently, surfactants cover ~71% of Earth’s surface and are a principal control of all mass transfer between air and water phases.

Lake Bolmen, the drinking water reservoir for southern Sweden, as well as a source of local fish production and a popular tourist destination, is becoming increasingly browner. Since this trend is expected to continue, it is important to understand the ecosystem consequences of increased brownification as well as potential concurrent nutrient loading. In summer 2021 a mesocosm experiment was conducted in Lake Bolmen using Aquanet mesocosms and the SITES platform and infrastructure at Sydvatten’s Research Station Bolmen in Tiraholm.

The bathymetry of a lake is a crucial cornerstone to be able to conduct hydrological and ecological research in lakes. Existing bathymetric data for Lake Bolmen is now more than 30 years old and very limited in detail. A recently purchased echo sounder, which is able to measure the water depth with the help of acoustic waves, will be used in 2022 and 2023 to update current maps. Other than improved resolution for the bathymetric map, the new echo sounder will provide information on submerged aquatic vegetation cover as well as sediment composition in the lake.