Abstract
AbstractImproving our ability to detect changes in terrestrial and aquatic systems is a grand challenge in the environmental sciences. In a world experiencing increasingly rapid rates of climate change and ecosystem transformation, our ability to understand and predict how, when, where, and why changes occur is essential for adapting and mitigating human behaviours. In this context, long‐term field research infrastructures have a fundamentally important role to play. For northern boreal landscapes, the Krycklan Catchment Study (KCS) has supported monitoring and research aimed at revealing these changes since it was initiated in 1980. Early studies focused on forest regeneration and microclimatic conditions, nutrient balances and forest hydrology, which included monitoring climate variables, water balance components, and stream water chemistry. The research infrastructure has expanded over the years to encompass a 6790 ha catchment, which currently includes 11 gauged streams, ca. 1000 soil lysimeters, 150 groundwater wells, >500 permanent forest inventory plots, and a 150 m tall tower (a combined ecosystem‐atmosphere station of the ICOS, Integrated Carbon Observation System) for measurements of atmospheric gas concentrations and biosphere‐atmosphere exchanges of carbon, water, and energy. In addition, the KCS has also been the focus of numerous high resolution multi‐spectral LiDAR measurements and large scale experiments. This large collection of equipment and data generation supports a range of disciplinary studies, but more importantly fosters multi‐, trans‐, and interdisciplinary research opportunities. The KCS attracts a broad collection of scientists, including biogeochemists, ecologists, foresters, geologists, hydrologists, limnologists, soil scientists, and social scientists, all of whom bring their knowledge and experience to the site. The combination of long‐term monitoring, shorter‐term research projects, and large‐scale experiments, including manipulations of climate and various forest management practices, has contributed much to our understanding of boreal landscape functioning, while also supporting the development of models and guidelines for research, policy, and management.
Highlights
Carbon dynamics, and the ecological integrity of northern regions are expected to change in response to global warming
Understanding and predicting how this trajectory toward a warmer climate will reshape the physical, chemical, and ecological properties of the natural environment at northern latitudes will be a critical challenge for the scientific community in the decades to come
What is needed for solving many future challenges are research infrastructures that combine field measurements from a multitude of disciplines in the same catchment. This type of effort goes well beyond what one research project or research group can achieve, and requires a well-coordinated infrastructure that can support and combine the collection of critical long-term monitoring data, provide large sets of ancillary empirical information, and host complementary long-term/ large-scale experiments that are crucial to achieving mechanistic understanding of ecosystem responses to environmental change
Summary
Carbon dynamics, and the ecological integrity of northern regions are expected to change in response to global warming. The boreal region is dominated by nutrient limited forests and peatlands representing large carbon stores (Loisel et al, 2014) that combined contain at least a third of the Earth's soil carbon pool (Bradshaw & Warkentin, 2015) Despite their global importance and vulnerability to ongoing climate change, boreal catchments have been subject to comparatively little experimental, integrative, and process-oriented research in the past (Song et al, 2019). What is needed for solving many future challenges are research infrastructures that combine field measurements from a multitude of disciplines in the same catchment This type of effort goes well beyond what one research project or research group can achieve, and requires a well-coordinated infrastructure that can support and combine the collection of critical long-term monitoring data, provide large sets of ancillary empirical information, and host complementary long-term/ large-scale experiments that are crucial to achieving mechanistic understanding of ecosystem responses to environmental change. Sphagnum spp. together with sparse coverage of sedges and dwarf shrubs dominate on open peatlands, which primarily can be categorized as oligotrophic minerogenic mires
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