Participant number 5.
Short name: UJOE
Department of Biology, University of Joensuu, Finland.
Principal investigator for ACCROTELM: Dr Jukka Alm
Brief summary of the department and its capabilities:
The Department of Biology in the University of Joensuu encompasses, for the most part, Botany and Zoology, with courses in Genetics, Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Applied Biology. There are 11 professors and 4 assistant professors. The annual enrolment of biology students is 35, and the number of PhD theses in biology accepted in 1999-2000 was as high as 17. The research team directed by Prof. Jorma Tahvanainen became a sub-team in the 'Research Unit for Forest Ecology and Management' and was selected as a Centre of Excellence in research for 2000-2005. The Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council selected the Department as a National Centre of Excellence, a Quality Unit in University teaching, for 1999-2000. Basic resources of the department in 1998 were 1.8 million euro, while the external research funding was over 1.4 million euro. The main expertise in the Department contributing to the proposed research is on wetland ecology: studies on greenhouse gas balance, palaeoecology, and carbon accumulation in teams conducted by Dr Jouko Silvola, Prof. Kimmo Tolonen, and Dr Jukka Alm.
Greenhouse gas and wetland carbon-balance research has been conducted in the Department since the 1970s, including major national (Finnish Research Programme on Climate Change, SILMU) and international research programmes (2 EU projects, BERI and GEFOS). The group has produced 4 PhDs in 1999. Topics range from wetland greenhouse gas (CO2, CH4 and N2O) fluxes, carbon accumulation in peatlands, and process studies in field and laboratory under raised CO2. Thus the equipment necessary for ACCROTELM (field equipment, IR analyzers and gas chromatographs with FI-, TC and EC-detectors) are available. The measurement techniques have been adapted for varying field conditions. UJOE has advanced GIS and other computational facilities available to the research team.
In the present consortium, UJOE will work in close collaboration with Partner 4 (UH.DES) and Partner 3 (Tallinn Institute of Ecology) in the team dealing with the Baltic mires. UJOE will coordinate the carbon balance studies (WP4) through Dr Jukka Alm, who has been in the Department since 1990 on external research funding. The main contribution of UJOE will be the assessment of Holocene carbon accumulation history and atmospheric interaction of the paludifying landscape by combining the high-resolution radiocarbon dating (from WP6) with field results (WP4) in a 3-dimensional simulation model (WP4), and contributing these data to WPs 8, 9 and 10.
Staff involved in ACCROTELM:
Dr Jukka ALM
Boris TUPEK
Role of the department within ACCROTELM:
Expertise in carbon accumulation in mires
Baltic mires
Co-contractor for and main contribution to WP4
Supplier of data for WP4
User of project data for modelling
Contribution to WPs 9,10