30 years of measurements at SMEAR II station – practical work at a field station and how it has changed during decades
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: University field sites have long been important places for research and education. SMEAR II (Station for Measuring Earth surface - Atmosphere Relations) by INAR (Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research, University of Helsinki) is the leading measurement station in ecosystem–atmosphere interactions with continuous and mostly automatic measurements of ca. 1200 parameters. SMEAR II belongs to ICOS, ACTRIS, eLTER, and AnaEE. In addition to our own measurements, SMEAR II hosts scientific visitors and their campaigns. Here, we discuss how the scope of the work has both changed and expanded during its 30 years of operation and especially in relation to the establishment of the above-mentioned research infrastructures (RIs). We describe the changes from the viewpoint of the technical and research staff working either permanently at the station or tightly related to SMEAR II measurements and data management. While we only deal with a single site, we believe that many discussed aspects are either universal or applicable to many similar stations. Different field stations have different focus points and those can also change with time, e.g. due to the development of RIs. What is in common for all field sites is that the activities are versatile and varying continuously, affecting also the everyday work. Therefore, the skills needed for field site work are wide-ranging. As the activities at SMEAR II have grown, the number of onsite staff has increased in 30 years from one to 14. With growing number of staff with different educational backgrounds and duties, the importance of a well-functioning working community has increased. Furthermore, the significance of planning and prioritizing the work has increased during the site operation period and further with RIs. The increased number of staff has led to more specified set of tasks for most employees even though, as said, field site work is in any case versatile. Larger community, more specified tasks, more extensive development projects and overall, maintaining a wide scoped functioning site also requires active development of communication methods. One of the most obvious changes at SMEAR II is that while in the early years scientists spent long time periods at the site collecting data for their own research and sharing ideas, over time the operating principle has changed towards the site being a data factory where the local staff conducts their duties as ”office work”. This change is enhanced by the progression of RIs since measurements need to develop in a long-term and comparable manner to fulfil RIs´ requirements. This, in turn opens possibilities to resolve novel, wide-scope, global-scale questions and increase the site´s scientific impact. With the development of RIs, requirements for data management concerning both the amount of work and amount of data storage space have greatly increased. For SMEAR II, a large part of data management is conducted by INAR data management team. They are not working permanently at the site, but having a dedicated staff is a clear advantage for data quality. This also adds an extra layer to the data pipeline from the instrumentation to a ready data file, further emphasizing the need for active communication. SMEAR II had an open data policy already before RIs but the large RI databases further enable high-impact research and promote the use of data worldwide. The development of the RIs has not only improved the documentation of the site and its measurements, but also the installations, calibrations etc. Better documentation and more harmonized data processing further simplifies the wide use of data. However, the clearly increased workload related to data management highlights the need for as uniform data policies, data processing and submission procedures as possible among different RIs. The importance of maintaining basic infrastructure is one very important but -if everything works- quite an invisible aspect of field site work. As the number of measurements and requirements for the data stability increase, also the share of work time that is allocated for basic infrastructure increases. Failures in power, network or pressurized air mean breaks in data flow and lower data quality, and therefore repairing the failures quickly and the continuous maintenance to prevent those are crucial. For example, SMEAR II used to suffer from frequent power breaks, causing quite a workload, until setting up a backup power system in 2017 improved the situation. Snow work during winter, adjusting the temperatures of the instrument spaces, renewing wooden pathways within the forest area, maintenance of tower structures, removing wasp hives and coppice clearing are other examples of basic infrastructure maintenance that are needed to keep the site in operation. Even though not directly related to RIs, the improvement in working conditions, regarding e.g. safety and equality has been significant and thus we want to raise it up here. This improves work wellbeing and decreases accidents. However, it is also noteworthy that developing safety regulations also require creating new procedures as the methods or equipment that were used before are not considered appropriate anymore. Another, not directly RI linked change is the noticeable increase in societal interaction performed at the site during the last ten years. Societal interaction at SMEAR II includes e.g. science education for students of ages 5-18, science trail introducing the research done at the site and hosting Pirkanmaa climate action lab that promotes climate related discussion and solutions among municipalities, parishes, companies and universities. These activities offer multitude ways of increasing the use and the overall impact of the field site.
Source: ARPHA Conference Abstracts
Institution: University of Helsinki
Language: English
Subfield: Geology
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4410826174