Esterbergalm: setup of metereological station is completed

On Thursday, April 30 a fully automated metereorological station was deployed to Esterbergalm site. The meteorological station is in terms of energetic supply, completely autharc.

The meteorlogical station also has a webcam, with which actual snowheight over winter and actual grass height can be determined over entire vegetation periods.
Besides air temperature, air humidity, precipitation, solar radiation, vapour pressure, barometric air pressure, wind (speed, gusts and direction), and lightning (number and distance) are determined.

The Esterbergalm site is part of the national projects TERENO und the setup of the meteorological station complements actual already existing installations: soil cores (mesocosms) were collected and  translocated along a climatic gradient from higher-altitude (colder locations) to lower-altitude (warmer locations) according to the ‘space-for-time’ approach. In this context the Esterbergalm site serves as a control site. 

In addition, the Esterbergalm site forms part of a national monitoring network for spatially extensive measurements of soil moisture using cosmic-ray technology. 

With establishing the meteorological station in combination with the already esisting installations and instrumentations also at other experimental sites at different altitudes we are getting deeper insight for explaining how climate change has an impact on pre-alpine grassland ecosystems on a mid to long term perspecive.