Wüstebach forest station

The Wüstebach forest station (50.504°N, 6.331°E, 610 m a.s.l.) is located in the small catchment of the Wüstebach (38.5 ha), which is part German low mountain range within the borders of the Eifel National Park near the German-Belgian border. The site represents the typical, but not natural, spruce forest vegetation type of the region. During late summer/early autumn of 2013, trees were almost completely removed in an area of 9 ha by the national park forest management in order to promote the natural regeneration of near-natural deciduous forest from spruce monoculture forest.
In 2009 a 38 m high eddy covariance tower that was set up in a still forested eastern part of the study site. Currently the tower is equipped with a CSAT3 anemometer and a LI7500 gas analyser, a CO2 profile with a closed path gas analyser is in the planning stage. In order to monitor the matter and energy balance changes associated with the partial clear-felling, various continuously logging instruments were installed in the catchment, e.g. several weather stations, 3 runoff gauging stations, 6 weighable lysimeters, 2 cosmic-ray soil moisture sensors, several sap flow sensors and a wireless soil sensor network (see Bogena et al. (2015) for detailed information). Immediately after clear-felling a second small eddy covariance tower (50.503°N, 6.335°E, 667 m a.s.l.) was installed at the newly created forest clearing to observe its exchange processes especially in comparison with the tower measurements.

For more information see also:

Wüstebach research station

Interpolated soil moisture data from the SoilNet sensor network in the Wüstebach

Regularly updated data of the site can be achieved through this Link.