Iceland

The Impact of Climate on Plantations

This is a joint project between several research groups in Iceland and Queen's University. The project was started in the late 1980's when Dr. Sandy Robertson, Forestry Canada, in Newfoundland coordinated the formation of a collaborative group consisting of the Icelandic Forest Service, Forestry Canada, and Queen's University. Later, the Icelandic Agricultural Research Institute became the lead Icelandic agency. Today, the project is directed by Dr. Halldor Thorgeirsson. 

The original concept of the group was to examine the climatic controls of the growth of a fast-growing plantation of hybrid poplar. The site for the experiment was provided by the Icelandic Soil Conservation Service on their research farm at Gunnarsholt, south Iceland, and it was planted in 1990. Energy balance data have been collected since 1990 using the Queen's RTDMS, and in 1996, the site was upgraded and equipped for continuous measurement of carbon dioxide, and latent and sensible heat fluxes using eddy covariance technology. Currently, it is one of the sites in the EUROFLUX network.  This network is sponsored by the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) Biospheric Aspects of the Hydrological Cycle (BAHC) core project. 

Following the successful completion of his M.Sc. at the AECL site at Chalk River, Ontario, Ian Strachan from Queen's has been conducting his doctoral research at Gunnarsholt. Ian is examining the long-term aspects of the energy balance of the site in relation to plant growth and development of the stand. He is parameterizing the Shuttleworth-Wallace variant of the Penman-Monteith model for the sparse canopy. 

The Gunnarsholt site is ideally suited to energy balance work as a result of its location in the flat landscape of the south Icelandic plain, with long fetches in all directions. 

Photos

Soil conservation farm Gunnarsholt, 1992

Gunnarsholt landscape, 1992

Tower visitors, 1992