Research approach

We focus on understanding the nature and controls of ecosystem processes in terrestrial and aquatic systems of the forest landscape. A significant part of our research addresses the scientific understanding of ecological and societal issues through a combination of state-of-the-art analytical methods, laboratory experiments and small to large-scale field studies, including access to unique long-term field experiments.

Our research activities encompasses the full spectrum from the molecular to landscape level approaches. This includes spectroscopic methods and the use of isotopic signatures, e.g. C, N and Hg, as well as plot-scale soil and vegetation surveys, eddy-covariance measurements, weir networks, and long-term forest history, mensuration, experimental and monitoring data.

Our work involves an extensive collaborative network both locally and abroad. Much of our research is interdisciplinary, and we actively collaborate with e.g. archaeologists, historians, and social and medical sciences. This interdisciplinary dimension is apparent through outputs from this work being published widely not only in leading scientific journals in our field in popular reports and journals.

The societal benefits of our work span the full spectrum from general (e.g., informing on for example ecological impact of global change) to specific (i.e., serving the needs of specific stakeholders).

One very important part of our research is to teach undergraduate and graduate students. Teaching in classrooms, in labs and in the field is also a two-way process which helps us as researchers to formulate and express our ideas.