Lund University is one of the largest research organisations in Northern Europe and has a strong profile in environmental sciences. The Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science (INES; Institut för Naturgeografi och EkoSystemvetenskap) enjoys an international reputation as a centre for multi-disciplinary studies of ecosystem-atmosphere interactions, based both on empirical approaches and modelling. It hosts or contributes to the leadership of a number of excellence-centres and research networks within Earth system science, including the Swedish node of the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) and the ICOS Carbon Portal.
The LPJ-GUESS dynamic vegetation-ecosystem and biogeochemistry model (see: http://iis4.nateko.lu.se/lpj-guess/), originally developed by INES researchers, is widely-used internationally both for ecosystem impact studies, and to account for biogeophysical and carbon cycle feedbacks in Earth system model (ESM) simulations. Lund University has been a long-running partner in the consortium developing the EC-Earth ESM (www.ec-earth.org), leading work on the representation of vegetation dynamics and biogeochemical land-atmosphere coupling. INES hosts a working group of about 10 scientists and technical staff who continuously further the development of both LPJ-GUESS and EC-Earth, keeping them up-to-date with latest developments. INES contributed significantly to the sixth assessment report (AR6) of the IPCC.