LTER Switzerland

The Swiss Long-term Ecological Network is a set of highly instrumented research platforms, comprising 19 sites from the Long-term Forest Ecosystem Research Programme LWF and one treeline resarch platform Stillberg of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, 2 ICOS flux sites of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich ETHZ (overlapping with the LWF Programme), and the Alpine Research Station Furka (ALPFOR) of the University of Basel.

Continuous measurements of environmental factors and observation of forest condition on long-term research plots, allow the evaluation and meaningful conclusions on possible causes of changes and future scenarios. Measurements are based on international standard methods and quality control as set down in the manuals of ICP Forests and ICOS.

The long-term research sites of the LWF programme (established in 1994) provide a gateway to other monitoring networks. For example, the Federal Office for the Environmental FOEN financed TreeNet and makes use of LWF and IAP sites. Additional sites where treatments and/or experiments occur, extend the LWF programme in order to answer specific questions on cause-effect relationships in ecologically relevant issues.