Forests are essential to the well-being of society. They provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including storing carbon, regulating water, cooling the environment, supporting biodiversity, and offering opportunities for recreation and well-being. However, climate change is placing increasing pressure on forest ecosystems through drought, heatwaves, and water stress.
Understanding how forests respond to these changing conditions is therefore important not only for science, but for society as a whole. Reliable information on tree growth, water use, carbon storage, and the movement of carbon and water through forest ecosystems can help us understand how climate stress may affect the benefits that forests provide.
This knowledge can contribute to evidence-based policymaking, giving governments and decision-makers stronger scientific information when developing climate and forestry policies. It can also support climate change adaptation by helping societies anticipate and prepare for increasing risks to forests and the services they provide.
At the same time, improved knowledge of forest responses to climate stress can contribute to sustainable and climate-smart forest management. Understanding how trees grow, use water, and store carbon can help forest managers develop practices that maintain healthy, resilient forests while continuing to provide important benefits to people and the environment.
Ultimately, this research helps build the knowledge needed to protect forests, strengthen their resilience to climate change, and safeguard the essential services they provide for current and future generations.
Abstract and Project Objectives
The INETFLUX project will connect Czech and Swiss research institutions that are part of ESFRI ICOS ERIC, with the aim of strengthening bilateral cooperation, deepening international integration, and building the capacity of the CzeCOS research infrastructure. The project will focus on research aimed at understanding carbon and water fluxes in different forest ecosystems and how they change under conditions of climate change. The cooperation will focus specifically on the net ecosystem exchange of carbon dioxide (NEE) and evapotranspiration (ET), which are key processes determining the role of forests as carbon sinks and their capacity to modulate the land-surface energy balance through transpiration. Both processes are increasingly affected by droughts, heatwaves, and water stress.
The research objective of the project is to develop and validate new approaches for partitioning NEE and ET into their individual components—gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration, as well as transpiration and evaporation—and to identify the environmental drivers that regulate these processes. This will be achieved by combining advanced methods across spatial scales: isotopic analyses and sap flow measurements at the level of individual trees; eddy covariance observations of energy and matter fluxes at the stand level, analyzed through machine learning approaches (XGB algorithm, SHAP values); and remote sensing techniques with high spatial and spectral resolution.
The project targets three contrasting sites (Davos, Bílý Kříž, Lanžhot), representing different climatic conditions and species compositions. This setup enables detailed comparative analyses of forest responses to climate variability and extremes, with a particular focus on drought.
| Beneficiary | Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences
(CzeCOS) |
| Project partner(s) (Czech Republic) | NA |
| Project partner(s) (Switzerland) | Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich)
Eidgenössische Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft (WSL) |
| Project duration | 1.1.2026–31.12.2028 |
| Main project location | CzechGlobe, Brno; Lanžhošť, Bílý Kříž, Davos (ekosystém stations) |
| Project website | https://www.czechglobe.cz/en/institute-structure/research-sector/inetflux/ |
| Website: The Second Swiss Contribution | https://www.swiss-contribution.cz/en/ |
| Total eligible project costs | CZK 36,965,000 |
| Of which 85% from the Swiss contribution | CZK 31,420,250 |
| Project ID | 8K0205 |
