How do climate change, atmospheric nutrient deposition and land use affect the capacity of headwaters to regulate greenhouse gases?

The SERVICO2 project studies a little-known but fundamental ecosystem service: the ability of headwater catchmentsf to act as sinks or sources of greenhouse gases such as CO₂, CH₄ or N₂O. Understanding how these fluxes vary in a context of global change is key to preserving the services that nature provides us and to developing effective management strategies.

An international project

SERVICO2 is a project within the Water4All 2023 Joint Transnational Call, with participation of research institutions from Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland.

Headwater ecosystems are sentinels of global change. Understanding how they respond helps us protect them… and protect ourselves.

Collaborating institutions

Funding agencies

In Focus

Discover the project in depth.

Protected: Mapping 31 Years of Chemical Weathering Across Europe

How does water slowly transform rocks across Europe’s headwaters, and how does this process vary from year to year? A MSc thesis developed within SERVICO2 brings together three decades of hydroclimatic, geological and spatial data to explore chemical weathering across nearly 223,000 European headwater catchments.

From prototype to the field: developing SERVICO2’s GHG flux monitoring system

How can greenhouse gas fluxes be monitored continuously in remote headwater catchments, where access to power and communication networks is often limited? As part of SERVICO2, we are developing a modular and autonomous sensing system designed to measure natural greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in both terrestrial and aquatic environments.

Spring–Summer 2026: SERVICO2 Takes to the Field

Spring and summer 2026 marked an important step for SERVICO2 as field activities got underway across the project’s headwater catchments. Teams have been setting up monitoring sites, collecting the first measurements and putting the new automated greenhouse-gas chamber prototypes to the test under real field conditions. This slideshow offers a glimpse behind the scenes as SERVICO2 moves from preparation and development into field implementation across Europe.

A project supported by the Water4Al Consortium. For more information about the project, you can contact us at:

servico2@ceab.csic.es

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