Lehrforst Rosalia – Long-term forest monitoring for improved ecosystem understanding

Generating long-term ecological data is essential for understanding how ecosystems respond to environmental stressors and is a core motivation of the eLTER research infrastructure. At Lehrforst Rosalia, a forest site in eastern Austria, we conduct ecological monitoring using a heavily instrumented infrastructure, which we will introduce in this presentation. Our observations integrate novel methods to investigate geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere components of the ecosystem. The role of soils for the production and consumption of greenhouse gases is examined with automated chamber measurements and continuous monitoring of soil environmental parameters. Atmospheric measurements include classical weather stations and eddy covariance measurements of CO 2 , water vapour and energy fluxes above the forest canopy. Hydrological processes are studied with a nested catchment approach with continuous monitoring in four gauging stations and point observations. Vegetation is assessed digitally with terrestrial laser scanning and biodiversity is monitored with classical methods assisted with novel techniques (e.g. malaise traps combined with artificial intelligence for identification). Overall, we integrate observations at different scales and specific foci, allowing for a whole system approach. Thus, we can address critical challenges, such as forest responses to global change, including impacts on energy and matter fluxes in the soil-water-plant-atmosphere continuum, plant and soil response to extreme events and biodiversity changes.