SITES Water is a monitoring programme within the national infrastructure SITES (Swedish Infrastructure for Ecosystem Science), focusing on hydrological, physical, chemical and biological parameters in lakes and rivers at six Swedish research stations, three of which belong to SLU.
SITES Water provides a basis for studying how fundamental ecological, hydrological and biogeochemical patterns, processes and regime shifts are affected by climate change. In addition to the time series produced by the monitoring programme, background data such as land cover are available for the lakes, rivers and landscapes where measurements are made.
Data from SITES Water is openly available through the SITES data portal and includes meteorological data for catchments, water balance (i.e. water level and flow), water chemistry in lakes and rivers, and physical lake variables. For the three SLU stations participating in SITES Water, two stations (Svartberget Research Station and Asa Research Station) make measurements in rivers and lakes, while the third (Röbäcksdalen Field Research Station) only makes measurements in rivers. In addition, there are data from six other lakes and rivers that are or have been part of SITES Water, from the research stations Abisko, Bolmen, Erken, Skogaryd and Tarfala.