Lina Oskamp and Marta Pérez Rodríguez from the Environmental Geochemistry group attended the 12th BIOGEOMON conference, held in Umeå, Sweden, from 8 to 11 June. It was a busy and productive week for both researchers. Lina presented a poster showcasing the first results of her PhD project on “Leaf; Litter; Soil: Vertical Air Measurements reveal Seasonal Mercury Dynamics in Changing Temperate Forests”. Marta delivered a keynote lecture on “Anthropogenic mercury in environmental archives: the crucial role of signal formation” and gave a second talk entitled “Contrasting mercury sequestration dynamics in tropical dry and moist broadleaf forests”, presenting results from the FORVEST-Hg project. She also contributed to the poster session with findings from Antonia Schmidtke’s Master’s thesis, “Tracing mercury in tropical trees – wood Hg concentrations across two contrasting forests in Costa Rica”. As is tradition at BIOGEOMON, the conference also included a field trip. This year, participants visited the Krycklan research catchment, a forested area located about one hour from Umeå. Krycklan is a major long-term research site where monitoring, technology development, and experimental studies are carried out in hydrology, ecohydrology, geochemistry, and biology, many of them ongoing for more than 20 years. Despite the rainy weather in the morning, the field trip was a great experience. The organizers welcomed participants with a traditional Swedish fika, including warm coffee and kanelbullar.
