Project leaders: Dr. Anke Günther (University of Rostock), Prof. Dr. Jürgen Kreyling (University of Greifswald)

WETSCAPES2.0 hinges on joint field sites and experiments that require central coordination and maintenance in order to fully exploit their value for interdisciplinary research and to maintain them in a state undisturbed by the expected scientific traffic. In project Z2, we set up the basic infrastructure for all field sites, assemble the (land use) history of the sites and support the sampling campaigns of all Research Projects. This includes for instance the installation of boardwalks to reduce disturbance at sensitive sites. Z2 conducts monitoring of all field sites with respect to basic environmental state variables such as groundwater table, soil moisture, or temperature. These data will be monitored live and continuously. Z2 also provides a basic characterization of all sites concerning their peat and stores frozen samples for long-term scientific use. In the L-LExps sites, the basic instrumentation for monitoring environmental conditions described above will be set up in higher spatial resolution and will be augmented by more sophisticated infrastructure such as additional EC towers. Taken together, Z2 provides the infrastructure and the basic environmental data for the sophisticated research of all research projects in WETSCAPES2.0 and will thus provide the data backbone of WETSCAPES2.0.