Blessing Kavhu, recipient of the 2025 FLUXNET Secondment Program award, has completed the program and wrote the following to share with the FLUXNET community:
___________________________
Breathing Forests, Bridging Worlds: My Secondment Journey to Lund, Sweden
Somewhere between the mossy hush of Swedish boreal forests and the crackling urgency of California’s forests, I found myself, both as a researcher and a human being, growing in directions I had never imagined.
It was a quiet March evening when I arrived in Lund, that charming southern Swedish town cradled in history, cloaked in intellect. The air was crisp, almost too clean, as though the surrounding forests had taken it upon themselves to purify each breath. I had traveled far, not just across continents, but across ecological paradigms. From modeling habitat connectivity for California’s foundational tree species to this new world of flux towers and managed forests, FLUXNET had gifted me a bridge, and I walked across it with wonder.
I came with a question: How do we simulate carbon dynamics in the absence of flux towers? Moreover, how do we give voice to landscapes that have been long absent from the models shaping global climate policy? My journey was rooted in remote sensing, cultivated through years of work across Southern Africa. And yet, my true mission was deeper still – to make Africa visible in the global carbon conversation.
Lund welcomed me not just with open doors, but with open minds and warm hearts. At the Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, I was first greeted by Dr. Patrik Vestin, who, with disarming kindness, offered me an office and treated me like a brother from another continent. Moreover, Patrik led, organized, and facilitated nearly everything I did during the secondment. Even on days when he was away, he ensured my schedule was filled with meaningful learning, new faces, and fresh experiences. It was as if he had choreographed each moment so that I never stopped growing. His generosity, foresight, and gentle leadership quietly held together the structure beneath every opportunity I received, and I remain deeply grateful.
Then came Tobias, brimming with energy, eager to share his craft in the field. When Jutta appeared at my orientation, simply to check if I had arrived “in all pieces,” I felt something rare and grounding: I was home!
Before I could even catch my breath, we dove straight into conversations on flux tower design, data workflows, and forest management. I scribbled notes feverishly, unaware that I was drafting the very skeleton of a perspective piece on enhancing flux tower coverage in Africa for equitable climate science. As Patrik, Tobias, and Jutta told stories, I wasn’t just hearing facts, I was hearing the quiet language of mentorship, collaboration, and care. And before the week was out, the first manuscript draft was already taking shape.
There were field visits and tactile walks into the pulsing heart of Nordic ecosystems. At the Hyltemossa ICOS station, I stood among trees taller than ambition, clutching gas chambers to the soil, breathing the same air as instruments silently logging carbon’s whispered transactions. Each click of a sensor, each swish of pine needles felt like an affirmation – This is why we do what we do. Not just for data points on a plot, but to hear what forests, farms, and fields are trying to tell us.
During one such visit, I had the chance to engage in a rich conversation with Dr. Thomas Holst, who introduced me to the broader scientific infrastructure nestled within Hyltemossa. From the NordSpec and ACTRIS platforms to the sophisticated instrumentation used for aerosol, cloud, and trace gas measurements, I was in awe. Thomas opened my eyes to the invisible threads connecting land-atmosphere exchanges and atmospheric chemistry. His explanations wove together complexity and clarity and reminded me of the importance of multi-dimensional monitoring to understand the Earth’s changing systems.
Somehow, this rookie in carbon science found myself becoming fluent in its rhythms. To Tobias, Peter and Veronica – your patience, your unhurried dedication to teaching and your trust in my curiosity, I’m forever grateful. I left every field day changed.
Days blurred into a symphony of discovery bent over analyzers parsing microbursts of gas, ideas scribbled onto napkins at Fika. Spirited debates over hearty lunches often revolved around the complexities of expanding flux tower coverage. And yet, what shaped me wasn’t just science. It was the quiet dignity of Swedish landscapes, the humility of the brightest minds, the simplicity of bicycles parked outside centuries-old libraries.
A talk on my background as a researcher and my current work with the California Futures Project sparked rich feedback that didn’t just reshape how I think about fluxes but earned me new friends and future collaborators. But more than speaking I listened. I listened to researchers unraveling stories of the Sahel, the boreal, and the Mediterranean. It reminded me that we are all chasing the same elusive ghosts of carbon, only from different corners of Earth.
A subject entirely new to me, estimating carbon fluxes from agricultural fields, was brought to life during visits to Alnarp with Veronica. In winds that sliced through underdressed sleeves, she never hesitated. She taught. She lent me an extra jersey. She made learning unavoidable. And I’m better for it.
One crisp afternoon, as we were setting up a dendrometer in Hyltemossa, Peter said something that I carry with me: “Science is not just about solving problems. It’s about seeing clearly.” That clarity followed me back to my desk, where I typed late into the night, refining a manuscript that argues for a more inclusive carbon science, where African landscapes are no longer statistical afterthoughts but active voices in the climate story.
Tobias reminded me often that this data didn’t end with us, it flowed into ICOS, into global models. I imagined building a similar network across African landscapes: local scientists, local towers and globally significant data. The manuscript we’ve developed together now has the potential to mark the beginning of a new chapter – African-led, collaborative and equitable.
As I reflect from my desk back in California, preparing for the next round of papers and partnerships, I know that this secondment did more than build skills in data collection, processing, and modeling. It shifted my horizon. It gave me unexpected mentors, inspiration from snow-dusted trees and a sharper sense of purpose, to decolonize carbon science and to uplift the voices and ecologies that have long been overlooked.
To FLUXNET, to Lund University, to the forest walks and the stories shared over coffee – I owe you a chapter of my life.
And to young scientists across the Global South – Your questions matter. Your ecosystems matter. Your journey, like carbon through root and sky, is essential to the balance we all seek.
Because sometimes, a single secondment can spark a lifetime of clarity, connection and change.
