The Ecosystems and Climate Change research group studies how terrestrial ecosystems respond to changing climate conditions, especially drought and freezing stress, and how ecosystems, in turn, affect climate e.g. by acting as carbon sink and aerosol source. Ecosystems mediate the exchange of material and energy between the soil and the atmosphere, and are thus crucial components of the critical zone, i.e. the outer skin of the Earth. The critical zone and ecosystems within provide the life-sustaining resources and are increasingly impacted by human actions and thus it is crucial to study the interactions between ecosystems and climate. The team works in the Institute of Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) at the University of Helsinki.
Leader: Associate Professor Anna Lintunen.
The Soils and Climate Change group studies how soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycling processes change in response to global warming and aims to advance understanding of the underlying mechanisms. We work in different scales from field work on climatic gradients in high latitude and high-altitude ecosystems, to controlled mesocosm studies and laboratory incubations. We aim to better understand soil C and N cycle interactions, like priming effects, and the role of microbes in climate change feedbacks from the terrestrial ecosystems. Including these processes into soil C and global Earth system models would lead to improved predictions of climate change feedbacks, and our future climate. Our group is based at the Department of Forest Sciences, so forest soils are our focus, but we also study agricultural soils. We collaborate closely with the plant-microbe-soil-interactions group from the same Department of Forest Sciences and are also part of the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR).
Group leader: Associate professor Kristiina Karhu
The Intelligent enviRonmental mOnitoring and aNalytics (IRON) group specializes in the development and deployment of cutting-edge AI technologies to address computational and monitoring challenges in environmental sciences and related fields. Our research focuses on advancing AI-driven environmental sensing and analytics, with applications in smart cities, scientific instrumentation, and renewable energy systems. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, we aim to enhance real-time monitoring, data processing, and decision-making in complex environmental systems. The team works in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) at the University of Helsinki.
Leader: Academy Research Fellow Martha Arbayani Zaidan