Visualizing Forest Ecosystems

Abstract

What are volatile particles, how can we measure and feel them? And why do we experience a fragrant forest as a consequence of climate heating?

In the 3D installation „Atmospheric Forest“, which is exhibited at „Critical Zones“, the artists Rasa Smite/Raitis Smits focused on the phenomenon of volatile emissions from trees and their visualization. In the course of Rasa Smites collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Forest Snow and Landscape Research WSL she learned that under the threat of climate change, certain trees do not only transform CO2 into oxygen, but also emit various gases into the atmosphere: forests breathe. Taking this artistic work as a point of departure, this issue of the Terrestrial University will handle in-depth the scientific and artistic research of fragrant forests, using the Pfynwald Pine forest of Swiss Alps as a case study. This 10’000 year old forest in the Valais, southwest Switzerland, is unique: As one of the first long term and large outdoor laboratories worldwide, it has been under close surveillance for more than 20 years.

The researchers and partners talk about tools, methods and scale of fragrant forests affecting the climate change alongside with the question how art translates the invisible and alarming interactions between the forest and atmospheric ecosystems into a sensible environment affecting people for system change.