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, read more in the station history) 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 (Picea abies (L.) Karst.). Trees are on average 17.5 m high, while the tallest trees reach 41 m. The average tree age is 119 years, the oldest tree is estimated to be 350 years old. For the average values, measurements of the ICOS CP and SP plots were weighted by the respective flux contributions (find more details in the published site description). Leaf area index is about 4 m2 m-2. The understorey vegetation is rather patchy, covering roughly 30% of the forest floor, and is mainly composed of dwarf shrubs, primarily Vaccinium myrtillus L. as well as mosses. Davos is part of Swiss FluxNet.
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). Past and ongoing projects cover topics from soil, vegetation, ecosystem to atmosphere.
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.