“In this photo, I’m inspecting the data-acquisition system installed at one of the five soil plots at the Siikaneva fen, a remote peatland located about 60 kilometres north of Tampere, in southern Finland. Fens, a kind of peatland fed by groundwater, cover nearly half of the total global peatland area and are important to study because fen ecosystems have the highest methane emissions among natural peatlands.
The monitoring station is part of the Station for Measuring Ecosystem–Atmosphere Relations (SMEAR II) and is included in the Integrated Carbon Observation System, a European research infrastructure that provides long-term measurements of greenhouse gases to support climate science and policy. The University of Helsinki operates the station in collaboration with the University of Eastern Finland, based in Joensuu and Kuopio.
The instrument box in this photo contains electronics that gather data on soil temperature, heat flux, water content and water-table depth. At the Siikaneva fen, we operate more than 50 instruments and sensors. They continuously provide data on greenhouse-gas concentrations, as well as a wide range of atmospheric and soil variables. These include air temperature, humidity, pressure, radiation and snow depth.
