As part of the project LiWeFor (Living labs for Wetland Forest research) a group of scientists from the University of Helsinki (UH), University of Tartu (UT) and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) went this November to Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon. The goal of the project is to analyse environmental factors of CO2, CH4 and N2O production in a tropical swamp forest as well as transfer of knowledge about the behaviour of greenhouse gases in wetland ecosystems of Europe, Asia and South America.
The team (including Ivan Mammarella, Mari Pihlatie, Lukas Kohl, Sami Haapanala, Salla Tenhovirta and Eyrún Gunnlaugsdóttir) did many different measurements while on site, such as soil and stem greenhouse gas measurements, incubation studies to measure gas exchange of plants, porewater profile studies and microbiome analysis. The team also installed a Los Gatos N2O and CO gas analyzer in an eddy covariance tower in the forested peatlands at Quistococha, the very first installation of such an analyser in a tropical peatland.