The added value of our Centre of Excellence to society

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The FCoE has had a major input in land-atmosphere research on many levels and in various disciplines, such as the exchange of trace gases and aerosol particles between forests/lakes/wetlands and the atmosphere, micrometeorology, theoretical and empirical aerosol dynamics, and observations and modelling of all these in many different climatic zones from the tropics to the Arctic.

However, the effect of the FCoE does not end there; the research conducted in Kumpula and in Viikki contributes significantly to socioeconomic issues related to global sustainability and land-atmosphere-society interactions as well. Research programmes such as PEEX (Pan-Eurasian EXperiment), iLEAPS (Integrated Land-Ecosystems – Atmosphere Processes Study), and HENVI Forests and Climate Change concentrate on the effects of climate change on the environment and agriculture, forestry, energy consumption, urban planning, and extreme events. The FCoE is equipped to deal especially with questions such as sustainable managed environments and the mixed anthropogenic (sulphur and nitrogen) and biogenic (BVOCs) input to cloud and aerosol processes. The FCoE research is applied to socioeconomic issues also via the National Climate Panel chaired by Prof Kulmala; via the FCoE’s membership of the Forum of Environmental Information that produces scientific information for policy-making; and via Future Earth, the international initiative on global sustainability led by ICSU, ISSC, and UN. Yet another new avenue is opening this year, when the FCoE begins to steer the Finnish global change research towards global sustainability science co-designed by funders, scientists, and policy-makers: Prof Markku Kulmala has been elected to chair the new Finnish Global Change National Committee that will lead this development; Tanja Suni is also involved in the Committee as a Global Environmental Change programme expert.

As a major player in all these organisations, the FCoE will add value to the research conducted by its members also by advancing major global observation infrastructures such as the SMEAR and ICOS networks where the FCoE has a leading coordinative and research role; finally, the uniquely multidisciplinary composition of the group also allows a systems approach to land-atmosphere interactions from soil to vegetation and to atmospheric chemistry and cloud processes.

Tanja Suni
iLEAPS Executive Officer

 

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