The Davos station received the status of an ICOS Class 1 Station in November 2019. It provides the 8th longest time series for CO2 and H2O vapour fluxes globally (since 1997) and is the only subalpine Class 1 forest ecosystem station within ICOS. The coniferous forest is located at 1639 m a.s.l. and mainly consists of Norway spruce with an average tree height of about 18 m and the tallest trees reaching 35 m. The average tree age is about 100 years, with some specimens reaching over 300 years. Davos is part of Swiss FluxNet.
Have a look at the detailed site description, the overview of the station history and the project list of past and ongoing projects.
Measurements at the Davos station are jointly organized by ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) / National Air Pollution Monitoring Network (NABEL). The infrastructure is provided by the Federal Office of Environment (FOEN).
The ICOS relevant measurement programme at Davos is organised as follows:
- Greenhouse gas measurements (CO2, H2O, CH4 and N2O) using the eddy covariance technique and custom-made automated soil chambers, soil meteorology (ETH Zurich)
- Meteorology (Empa)
- Measurements of tree growth, stem CO2 exchange as well as leaf area index, biomass, N losses etc. (WSL)
At the Ecosystem Thematic Centre, the full list of variables measured at an ICOS Class 1 forest station is shown.