CarboEurope

The objectives of the CarboEurope cluster are to advance the
understanding of carbon fixation mechanisms and to quantify the
magnitude of the carbon sources/sinks for a range of European
terrestrial ecosystems and how these may be constrained by climate
variability, availability of nutrients, changing rates of nitrogen
deposition and interaction with management regimes. Research focusing
on European ecosystem is complemented by investigations of the sink
strength of Amazon forests.

The cluster is founded on a network of more than 30 European test
sites for in situ measurement of carbon and energy fluxes in boreal,
temperate and Mediterranean forests. A similar program is carried out
for the Siberian Taiga and Amazonia. Ground based measurements of
carbon will be accompanied by an aircraft monitoring program on
regional and European scale to determine the interplay of
anthropogenic emissions and ecosystem behavior. The measurements cover
the whole suite of available techniques at all relevant scales. These
are soil carbon and biomass studies, continuous measurements of
carbon, nitrogen, energy and water fluxes at forest stand scale, as
well as an aircraft monitoring program of CO2 and atmospheric tracers
on regional and European scale in order to determine the interplay of
anthropogenic emissions and ecosystem behavior.

The cluster was created in spring 2000 and involves 190 scientists
from a total of 69 institutions in 15 European countries. Eight
projects, operating at different scales and different problems will
work hand in hand in order to produce a reliable estimate of the
carbon balance in Europe.

CarboEurope is one of eight elements in the FLUXNET network, which is
dedicated to integrating worldwide CO2 flux measurements.

Data link:
"http://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/public/carboeur/data/index_d.html"

Information obtained from:
"http://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/public/carboeur/index.html"