Table 1.

General characterisation of the study sites (see Table S1 for further details on experimental setup).

	Blodgett Forest (BF)	Missouri Ozark (MO)	Harvard Forest (HF)	Vielsalm (VA)	Oensingen INT (OS-INT)	Oensingen EXT (OS-EXT)	Neustift (NS)	Stordalen Mire (SD)
Country	USA	USA	USA	Belgium	Switzerland	Switzerland	Austria	Sweden
Latitude	38.89° N	38.76° N	42.54° N	50.30° N	47.28° N	47.28° N	47.12° N	68.33° N
Longitude	120.63° W	92.16° W	72.17° W	5.98° E	7.73° E	7.73° E	11.32° E	19.05° E
Elevation (m)	1315	216	340	450	450	450	970	351
MAP (mm)	1290	1110	1066	1000	1100	1100	852	304
MAT (°C)	9.0	13.6	7.8	7.5	9.0	9.0	6.5	−0.7
Climate	Mediterranean	Temperate continental	Temperate	Temperate maritime	Temperate continental	Temperate continental	Temperate alpine	Boreal
Plant functional type	Coniferous evergreen forest	Deciduous broadleaf forest	Mixed forest	Mixed forest	Grassland	Grassland	Grassland	Wetland
Management	Understory cut	–	–	–	Harvest	Harvest	Harvest	–
LAI(m2m−2)	1–1.7	1.3–3.5	4.8–5.4	2.6–3.8	0.4–3.5	0.2–5.1	0.2–7.8	up to 3.5
Measurement/avg. canopy height (m)	11/5	29/20	30/23	52/30	1.2/0.15	1.2/0.2	2.5/< 1.0	2.95/< 0.5
Data coverage from-to DOY (year)	142–170 (1999)	125–296 (2012)	149–248 (2007)	182–304 (2009) 60–273 (2010) 91–334 (2011)	176–213 (2004)	158–175 (2004) 214–249 (2004)	143–325 (2008) 78–305 (2009) 77–346 (2011) 87–330 (2012)	121–273 (2006) 121–260 (2007)
Flux method	REA	vDEC	vDEC	vDEC	vDEC	vDEC	vDEC	vDEC
Key reference	Schade and Goldstein (2001)	Seco et al. (unpublished)	McKinney et al. (2011)	Laffineur et al. (2012)	Brunner et al. (2007)	Brunner et al. (2007)	Hörtnagl et al. (2011)	Holst et al. (2010)

Abbreviations: MAP – mean annual precipitation, MAT – mean annual temperature, LAI – leaf area index.