We carry out research and monitoring in a variety of areas such as agricultural science, ecology, climatology, phenology, geochemistry, biology, agroecology, soil science, animal science, food science and environmental science.
At Röbäcksdalen in Umeå there are two sections, a field research station and research dairy farm facility, belonging to the department of Crop production Ecology and the VH faculty, respectively. Röbäcksdalen represents a district in Umeå and the Röbäck plains, which makes up the majority of Röbäcksslätten, the largest continuous agricultural land in northern Sweden. The urban location of the infrastructure opens up opportunities for interdisciplinary research and to other research disciplines outside of natural science.
The entire infrastructure encompasses 280 hectares of fields and pastures. At the field research station about 40 field trials are conducted annually. The station also coordinates variety trials at three additional field stations in northern Sweden with focus on crop science. At the research dairy facility there are 105 dairy cows available for trials focusing mainly on forage and sustainable food production.
The field research station is one of eight stations in SITES (Swedish Infrastructure for Ecosystem Science). SITES is a nationally coordinated infrastructure for terrestrial and limnological field research that will help to strengthen Swedish field-based research and ecosystem monitoring. SITES is accessible for researchers on equal terms, regardless of the organisation of the researcher. Through SITES, the station has taken part in two thematic programs, SITES Spectral and SITES Water (see facts box).
Overall the infrastructure at Röbäcksdalen has excellent conditions for teaching and applied studies of crop cultivation, animal science, soil science, climatology and research at an ecosystem level. Moreover, the infrastructure at the research dairy farm offers opportunities for research on cultivation, evaluation, and feeding of forages, primarily to dairy cows.
Visitors and users of the infrastructure can get access to the land and a stream collecting drainage and surface runoff-water from the area, animals in the dairy facility, workshops, machines, measuring equipment, personnel, laboratories and working stations. Data from the station is also available, both through the SITES data portal and from the long term experiments that are cultivated at the field station.
SITES has three monitoring programs which continously creates data. Röbäcksdalen reserach station is part of two of these programs.
SITES Spectral is an infrastructure for collecting spectral data for ecosystem monitoring.
SITES Water builds a unique long-term measurement program where hydrological, physical, chemical, and biological parameters within lakes and streams are measured.