About the safe deposit

The safe deposit is a system where researchers who are active at the unit for field based forest research can easily collect their research materials, find ongoing and past research projects and collaborators, as well as make their research materials easily accessible to colleagues and the public.

Furthermore, The intention is that the safe deposit will act as a long-term storage solution to ensure that research data and data regarding manipulations of the natural environment can be found in the future.

We also use the system to collect and collate key statistics about active researchers and projects, which we can then report to the organisations which fund our infrastructures.

The unit for field-based forest research

The unit for Field-based Forest Research formed in 2004 and is primarily responsible for the maintenance of and data collection from The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) long-term forest trials. Field-trials have always been very important for forest research in Sweden and globally. SLUs long-term trials have lead to significant contributions to our understanding of forests and forestry, which in turn has had a large impact on Sweden as a country.

Currently, the Unit manages about 1800 long-term field trials all across Sweden, from Muodoslomolo (latitude 68) in the north to Klagstorp (latitude 55) in the south.

On-going activities at the research stations and experimental forests constitute the core of the unit. Permanent and highly competent staff is responsible for the establishment of research plots as well as for taking measurements and sampling. They also teach and inform at various activities.

Additionally, the stations have visiting researchers with a broad focus on field-based researchers from multiple departments at SLU as well as other universities from both Sweden and abroad.

The unit finances and manages several long-term monitoring programmes with long time-series that are used by researchers from around the world.

Svartberget and Asa are two of the eight research stations within the SITES consortium, a national infrastructure for ecosystem science. Additionally, Svartberget is one of seven stations within ICOS Sweden, a subsiduary of ICOS Europe which is an initiative to quantify and understand the greenhouse gas balance of the European continent.