Leveraging research infrastructure co-location to evaluate constraints on terrestrial carbon cycling in northern European forests

Abstract

Integrated long-term, in-situ observations are needed to document ongoing environmental change, to “ground-truth” remote sensing and model outputs and to predict future Earth system behaviour. The scientific and societal value of in-situ observations increases with site representativeness, temporal duration, number of parameters measured and comparability within and across sites. Research Infrastructures (RIs) can support harmonised, cross-site data collection, curation and publication. Integrating RI networks through site co-location and standardised observation methods can help answers three questions about the terrestrial carbon sink: (i) What are present and future carbon sequestration rates in northern European forests? (ii) How are these rates controlled? (iii) Why do the observed patterns exist? Here, we present a conceptual model for RI co-location and highlight potential insights into the terrestrial carbon sink achievable when long-term in-situ Earth observation sites participate in multiple RI networks (e.g., ICOS and eLTER). Finally, we offer recommendations to promote RI co-location.

High-resolution Carbon cycling data from 2019 to 2021 measured at six Austrian LTER sites

“…Combining several research and monitoring activities at already heavily instrumented sites not only saves money but widens the data analyses portfolio (Futter et al 2023;Kulmala 2018). Even though we provide Eddy covariance data for two of our sites, Austria is not part of the International Carbon Observation System (ICOS).…”

“…It issues persistent identifiers for sites (see Table 1) that allow to uniquely identify sites across research projects and networks. Tools are being developed to query available information about sites programmatically (Oggioni et al, 2023;Wohner, 2023) providing contextual ecosystem information.…”

“…For deriving such baselines as well as interannual variability of ecosystem carbon cycling coordinated and representative observation networks need to be in place to enable data retrieval as well as rapid-response scientific campaigns to study after-effects and post-disturbance trajectories resulting from ECEs (Kulmala, 2018;Mahecha et al, 2017;Mirtl et al, 2018;Dirnböck et al, 2019;Müller and Bahn, 2022). Datasets obtained through such observation networks are also essential for benchmarking models (Futter et al, 2023;Baatz et al, 2021;Wu et al, 2018) and for comparison with ecosystem experiments (Kröel-Dulay et al, 2022).…”

Fifteen Years of Integrated Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO) in Germany: Functions, Services, and Lessons Learned

“…For multi-institutional RIs, such as TERENO, long-term data collection can only be guaranteed if the RI and its design are flexible enough to adapt to the changing research needs, some of which may be institution specific. Environmental science is not limited to our geo-political borders, hence it is particularly important to continue international efforts to harmonize interdisciplinary measurements and concepts, like those being implemented by the Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructure (GERI)*, a federation of environmental RIs globally (Loescher et al, 2022), or eLTER* (Futter et al, 2023) that already offers robust sustainable structure and proven approaches. Reid et al (2010) states "Develop, enhance, and integrate observation systems to manage global and regional environmental change," is the greatest challenge of Earth system science.…”

“…Because we know ecological systems can telecommunicate across large regions of the globe and beyond geopolitical borders, establishing stronger international collaborations is just a natural logical progression (Kulmala, 2018;Loescher et al, 2022). Also, by bringing together each single or multi-site observatory, and/or each single-or trans-disciplinary research infrastructure (RI) approach the respective strengths are combined toward a more integrative global understanding (Futter et al, 2023;Kulmala, 2018;Loescher et al, 2022). Fostering international collaborations then creates new challenges that center around; (a) harmonizing data and technical setup, (b) training and building an equitable international user community, and (c) organizationally establishing the flexibility to tackle future, as yet unknown, environmental problems globally.…”