CEOP BALTEX Lindenberg

Lindenberg is a small village situated in a rural landscape in the East of Germany about 65 km to the South-East of the centre of Berlin, the capital of Germany. The landscape in the region around Lindenberg was formed by the inland glaciers during the last ice age exhibiting a slightly undulating surface with height differences of less than 100 m over distances of about 10 km. The lowest areas in the Spree river valley (which forms a wide bend around Lindenberg in the South, East and North at distances of between 10 and 20 km) are at about 40 m above sea level and a few hills north-east of Lindenberg reach 130 m above sea level. A number of small and medium-sized lakes are embedded in this landscape. Both, the orography and the mixture of surface types are rather typical for large parts of northern Central Europe south of the Baltic Sea. The terrain around the GM Falkenberg is slightly slanted from NNE towards SSW with height differences of less than 5 m over a distance of about 1 km. The central part of the field site is a flat meadow of 150 * 250 m2 covered by short grass (managed regularly so that the vegetation height is always less then 20 cm), this area is surrounded by grassland and agricultural fields in the immediate vicinity, a small village is situated about 600 m to the SE (see also Figure 2), and a small, but heterogeneous forest area lies to the W and NW at about 1 to 1.5 km distance. The basic installation of the GM Falkenberg was performed in 1998, and the number of sensors and measurement systems has gradually been complemented over the following years.