Swedish Infrastructure for Ecosystem Science - SITES

The Swedish Infrastructure for Ecosystem Science (SITES) enables field-based research of the highest international standards.

SITES focuses on terrestrial ecosystems and inland waters, while recognizing the connectivity of elements within and between landscapes.

In this context, SITES provide researchers access to long-term measurements and experiments and data from these activities.

At the core of SITES is a set of active and well-equipped research stations representing a variety of climatic zones and ecosystems, including agricultural land, forests, wetlands, mountains, lakes and streams.

Each of the stations provide user support and have unique infrastructures and strengths, but their true power is harnessed by highly standardized and comparable experiments and observations across geographical gradients. To realize this potential, SITES operates five Integrative Facilities (IFs) which link the individual stations.

Three of these IFs are fully operational to support research on aquatic landscapes (Water), terrestrial landscapes and vegetation (Spectral), and replicated large-scale aquatic enclosure experiments (AquaNet).

To further serve the research community and create synergy between stations, two new IFs will enable research on biodiversity responses to environmental change (BioReact) and provide access to long-term terrestrial manipulation experiments (TerraNet).

Combined, the infrastructure and facilities will strengthen ecosystem science and prepare the field to meet current and future challenges in environmental and climate change research.

Science enabled by SITES will integrate observations made at scales ranging from molecules and organisms to ecosystems and landscapes, and can be further coupled with ecosystem services such as agricultural and forestry production, access to clean water and maintained biodiversity.

SITES vision is to be an internationally leading and highly integrated infrastructure, giving Swedish ecosystem science a competitive edge.