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The measuring station, SMEAR II

Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station, located in Juupajoki, Southern-Finland, is a unit of the Department of Forest Sciences in the University of Helsinki. Its mission is to enable forestry teaching and research in field conditions.

We have collected our data from SMEAR II station, which is an intensively equipped, world-class observatory operating near Hyytiälä since 1995. The main idea of SMEAR-type infrastructure is continuous, comprehensive measurements of fluxes, storages and concentrations in the land ecosystem–atmosphere continuum. An extensive collection of measurement data provides information on the effects of climate change across boreal forests in the region.

The station brings together forest ecologists, physicists, meteorologists and chemists. The station is particularly well-known by the aerosol research led by Prof. Markku Kulmala. The SMEAR II station is part of the Center of Excellence in atmospheric composition and climate change, physics, chemistry, biology and meteorology, funded by the Academy of Finland and a number of international research projects (including the European research infrastructure project, ICOS). Each year about 50 articles, that use the measurement data collected at SMEAR II, is published in international peer-reviewed scientific journals.

The forest-type at SMEAR II stand is VT (lingonberry type), which is most common forest type in Finland. The dominant tree species is pine (Pinus sylvestris) with approx. 700 trees per hectare. Spruces and deciduous trees grow mainly in undergrowth. Our CarbonTree is a medium-sized pine, which is at the moment, 17m in height and the crown holds approx. 5 kg of needles.

You can download measurements and view them daily on the Carbon Tree site in the Observations section and at SmartSMEAR website.