Hohes Holz

The Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ is running permanent ecosystem stations above different land use types in the Bode catchment within the foreland of the Harz mountains.

At the field site 'Hohes Holz', the energy and trace gas exchange between the ecosystem and the atmosphere is determined with the help of the eddy covariance technique. Therefore a 50m high tower was erected in spring 2014. Since June 2014 measurements in several heights at the tower are running. The variables determined at the tower and close to the soil surface are needed to describe the processes involved in energy and trace gas exchange. Soil respiration, sap flow, soil moisture as well as descriptive determinations of the vegetation characteristics were already performed since 2012.

All components that contribute to the carbon and water balance as well as their variability will be investigated in detail for this deciduous forest ecosystem. As such, a soil moisture network is distributed within an area of about 1 ha. Soil respiration is measured at about 25 locations bi-weekly to reflect spatial heterogeneity, continuous measurements are performed at 8 locations (partly treated) to reflect variability in time.