The document provides an overview of OzFlux, Australia's flux tower network. It discusses:
1) A brief history of OzFlux, from early flux research in the 1990s to the establishment of a network of over 20 towers across Australia by 2012.
2) The achievements and impacts of TERN funding for OzFlux, including establishing infrastructure, standardized methods, a coordinated network, and building an ecosystem of researchers.
3) The connections OzFlux has with other TERN programs and global networks to advance ecosystem and climate science.
TERN Ecosystem Surveillance Plots Kakadu National Park
Helen Cleugh_OzFlux: hard and soft infrastructure for ecosystem research and earth system science
1. OzFlux: Hard and soft infrastructure for
Ecosystem research and Earth System Science
Dr Helen Cleugh, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
2. 1. A short history of OzFlux
What is a flux station network?
ET
Q
H • CO2 (NEE) and water use (ET)
• Energy: Radiation (Q) and heat (H, G)
Q
• Spatially-averaged at canopy-scale
NEE
• Continuous: hourly to multi-annual
G
3. The Tyranny of Scale
Scaling-up using flux towers, remote sensing and models
seconds
Years
106 GCM
Satellite Remote
Sensing
105
Plot Level
Observations
Days 104
Aircraft Remote
Sensing
103
Scale
Time
Leaf Level Land Aircraft
102 Physiology Surface Fluxes
assumed to apply Model
Minutes
101 Leaf Level
Tower
Observations
Flux
Direct
measurement
Seconds 100 Indirect
measurement
(remote sensing)
Modelling
10-1
metres
10-3 10-2 10-1 100 101 102 103 104
Leaf Length Canopy Patch Region
Scale
5. 1. A short history of OzFlux
Australian flux research and monitoring in mid 1990s
(OASIS: 1994 and 1995)
6. 1. A short history of OzFlux
Charles Darwin and Monash
Universities and ARC funds
Howard Springs (ca. 2000)
7. 1. A short history of OzFlux
CSIRO and ACCSP investment:
Tumbarumba in 2000
8. 1. A short history of OzFlux
By 2001, OzFlux was a vision shared across CSIRO, ANU, Monash
and Charles Darwin Universities....
but really a network in search Ozflux sites
of some flux towers
1 NT Uni.
2 James Cook Uni.
Darwin 3500
1 2 3 CLW Davies Lab
3200
Daintree
Newcastle 2400
waters 4 CLW Pye lab
3
Townsville 2000
Virginia 5 ANU
Park 4 1600
1200
6 CSIRO PI
1000
7 CLW Pye Lab 800
600
6 8 CSIRO Atmos. Res.
5 Janina Tamworth 500
Meredin 6 6 Wagga 9 Monash Uni. 400
Esperance Wagga
300
CSIRO Forestry
Tumbarumba 200
9 7
CO2 & H2O fluxes U. Wollongong 100
H2O fluxes Cape Grim
UNSW
Baseline concentration 8
UTS
9. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
1. NCRIS infrastructure investment in TERN in
2009 enabled OzFlux to grow:
• A continental network – hardware, software
• Nationally-consistent methods
• OzFlux community – Workshops & training
• Database – Monash eResearch Centre, funded
by ANDS (Australian National Data Service)
with co-investment from Unis, ARC, CSIRO ...
10. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
2. A network of flux towers
From just 4 flux
towers and 3 agencies
in 2003 ...
11. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
2. A network of flux towers
... to 23 flux towers at
remote sites around
Australia (not all TERN
funded) in 2012
Operated by 10 agencies
12. OzFlux and Fluxnet: Climates
OzFlux and FLUXNET: Climates
M. Williams et al.
www.biogeosciences.net/6/1341/2009/
13.
14. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
2. A network of flux towers and supporting
infrastructure
• Sensors, data acquisition and power supply
• Telecommunications
• Standardised across network of 23 remote sites
15. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
3. A network of flux towers plus data infrastructure
• Technically sophisticated and complex
• Standardised approaches
• Automated processing and QC/QA
• Coordinated by Central node – data checking,
problem solving, data management
All have represented big challenges for OzFlux
17. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
2011 2012 2013
Sites 8 19 28
Accounts 62 96
Site-years 46 62
20
9
18
TERN-funded
8
2012
16 Non-TERN funded 7
14 2013
Number of Sites
Number of Sites
6
12
5
10
4
8
3
6
2
4
1
2
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Years of Data
18. A decade of ecosystem breathing in a cool temperate forest
Tumbarumba, NSW (see van Gorsel talk)
Thanks to Peter Isaac
19. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
4. A network of flux towers and people!
• OzFlux Annual Workshops: ~ 50 researchers from
Australia and New Zealand attended in 2012
• OzFlux Training Days: the art of flux measurements,
data processing, .....
2008: Adelaide 2012: Methven, NZ
20. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
4. A network of flux towers and people!
OzFlux Workshop Site Visit 2012:
Landcare NZ Flux station: Measuring
greenhouse gas emissions on a dairy farm
Thanks to John Hunt
OzFlux Workshop Site Visit 2009:
Howard Springs Flux Tower Site
(Charles Darwin and Monash Universities
Thanks to Jason Beringer and Lindsay Hutley)
21. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
4. A network of flux towers and people!
• OzFlux and TERN websites
http://www.ozflux.org.au/monitoringsites/index.html
http://www.tern.org.au/OzFlux-pg17729.html
• OzFlux Project on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/project/OzFlux/
• FLUXNET
http://fluxnet.ornl.gov/
22. 2. Achievements and impacts of
TERN - OzFlux
5. OzFlux Research: data and process understanding
needed for research addressing National Challenges:
• Ecosystem science
• Sustainable resource management: carbon, water
• Carbon – climate – water interactions
• Ecosystem health and State of the Environment
assessments
23. Annual cycle of measured GPP at 12 OzFlux sites,
compared to BIOS2 simulations (see Haverd talk)
24. Annual cycle of measured ET at 12 OzFlux sites,
compared to BIOS2 simulations (see Haverd talk)
25. 3. Connections: the TERN
infrastructure “ecosystem”
OzFlux AusPlots, Supersites
Flux tower network Intensive field campaigns
Site characteristics
Surface fluxes
Biomass
AusCover Radiation
Soil carbon & nutrients
Meteorology
Remote sensing Soil properties
Leaf-level photosynthesis
eMAST
Vegetation type
Leaf area index Land surface models
Gross primary
product Ecosystem dynamics
Soil moisture Spatial and temporal
Hyperspectral dynamics
Continental & global
budgets
Knowledge of ecosystem exchange of
carbon, water & energy.
26. 3. Connections: Australia
Australian Water Australian Climate
Resources Change Science
Assessments Program
OzFlux
And TERN
Climate and Earth
System Modelling Regional carbon
(ACCESS) and water budgets
Australian ecosystem (e.g. RECCAP)
and climate science
27. 3. Connections: Global
GEWEX Future Earth:
WCRP - ESSP
OzFlux
And TERN
NEON
FLUXNET
Global ecosystem, climate and Earth
system science
28. 4. Future Directions and Focus
• Acquiring and sharing quality data
• Measurement and analysis techniques
• Data quality
• Automated processing and QC/QA
• Data access, sharing and curation
• Site and Network enhancements
9
• Continental coverage 8
7
2012
2013
Number of Sites
6
• Broader suite of observations 5
4
3
• Sustainability
2
1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Years of Data
29. Thank You and Questions
Thanks to:
• Ray Leuning
Founding OzFlux Director
• Eva van Gorsel and Peter Isaac
Deputy Facility Leader and Data Manager
• OzFlux PIs and technical staff
who have all contributed to this talk and
OzFlux in so many ways
31. Dargo, VIC
Daly Uncleared, NT
Daintree Discovery,
QLD
Gingin, WA
Dry River, NT
32. Howard
Springs, NT
Great Western Woodlands, WA
Riggs Creek, VIC
Nimmo, NSW
Otway, VIC
33. Sturt Plains, NT Virginia Park, QLD
Samford, QLD
Cape Tribulation,
QLD
34. Wallaby Creek
(pre and post-fire), VIC
Bago Forest
Tumbarumba, NSW
Wombat Forest, VIC
Wombat State
Forest, VIC
Notes de l'éditeur
This is a story about a transformation in capability ....ABSTRACT: OzFlux is the Australasian arm of the global initiative Fluxnet. For many years OzFlux was a relatively informal network that survived on the determination and success of a small group of scientists to understand the mechanisms controlling exchanges of carbon, water vapour and energy between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. This talk will cover the transition that has been facilitated by TERN from this informal network of enthusiasts into an Australian and NZ wide network of observing infrastructure providing real-time data streams and the collection of continuous ecosystem scale information on carbon and water cycle and climate.OzFlux is the most obvious deployment of field hardware in TERN with close to 30 flux towers and their associated micrometeorological instrumentation in place around the country, from the Alice to the Alps and covering ecosystems ranging from rainforest to alpine grasslands to mulga. Keeping these high-tech instrumental sites functioning in remote locations, ensuring consistency of data collection and quality control of the data to meet the needs of the ecosystem and earth system end user communities has been, and remains, a challenging endeavour. Soft infrastructure, the people and collaborations, remain just as critical as the hardware and OzFlux has had a program over the last 6 years to ensure that the flux community is well engaged, resourced and trained to carry out their tasks. CSIRO, the various universities and State agencies around the country have all played a part along with TERN and the ARC in facilitating this active network. The importance of, and role played by, TERN in transforming OzFlux into an operationally functional network will be underscored along with a description of the infrastructure developed to facilitate data quality assurance; data sharing and curation. The talk will also demonstrate where OzFlux infrastructure fits into ecosystem monitoring, carbon and water accounting and the future directions of the network.
Start with explaining what a flux station network is.
Processes and quantities that we seek to measure and model occur across many ranges in space and time scales
And bioclimates too! Approach is not around representation but a population that samples full coverageIn the mid to late 1990s; global community embarked on a “global experiment”, with flux station networks in Canada, USA, EuropeFollowed by Japan, China and Korea
The distance OzFlux has come, riding on a wave of technology advances, is a good point to make. This is where we were in the early 1990sIn 1995 we were still doing short duration field trips, 2 or 3 weeks long campaigns where the flux towers needed to be manually operated (eg OASIS).Here is Alan Jackson minding the OASIS flux tower in 1995 - not continuous, manual, not autonomous
This photo is here to acknowledge that the transformation in large part was because of technological advances; many of them resulting from partnerships with instrument companies such as Licor and CSI. Here is CSI’s Engineer – Bert Tanner. And interestingly these developments built on decades of investment from CSIRO and Uni’s
Tumbarumba was up 5 years later and operating 24/7/365.
The process starts at remote sites around the country – 23 at last count and growing – where researchers install towers ranging from a few metres in height to almost 100 m over tall forests.
The process starts at remote sites around the country – 23 at last count and growing – where researchers install towers ranging from a few metres in height to almost 100 m over tall forests. Note 28 sites on site list, but 4 non-active ones are not plotted here (Adelaide R, Virginia Pk, Daly Regrowth, Otway) = 24 PLUS Coolibah not shown
Bring back to climate space: we seek a distribution of cool to warm to hot climate and hot dry to hot wet climates with low to high radiation loading (colour represents shortwave radiation flux density)*high temp and high shortwave radiation flux density and low precipitation*cool climate low shortwave radiation flux density and relatively high precipitation + evergreen!
The process starts at remote sites around the country – 23 at last count and growing – where researchers install towers ranging from a few metres in height to almost 100 m over tall forests. A suite of instruments is then installed on and around the towers. Sonic anemometers and open-path gas analysers measure the wind speed, wind direction, temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide concentration 10 to 20 times a second. Other instruments on the tower record the amount of incoming and outgoing solar and terrestrial radiation. Buried deep in the ground around the tower is an array of sensors measuring soil temperature, soil moisture and the heat stored in the soil. Rain gauges record precipitation. All this instrumentation takes power. At the remote sites this is provided by solar panels and generators, some of which have occasionally been souvenired by interested members of the public seeking a more direct return on this public investment in critical Australian research infrastructure. All sites attempt to collect data 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, though challenges sometimes arise due to the combination of technically sophisticated instrumentation and remoteness. Throw in the climate extremes found across the Top End, at the top of the Great Dividing Range or in the Red Centre and it’s not surprising that the challenges occasionally beat the best efforts of the most experienced, canny and paranoid technicians. Data gaps are a fact of life in OzFlux, but the facility has developed specific data infrastructure – methods, software and processes – that help get over these occasional quality-control hurdles.
OzFlux’s data infrastructure is technically sophisticated and highly automated. The key to managing this level of complexity has been standardisation: across instruments, data collection methods, data processing and data format. With a typical site storing around 1 million processed numbers a year, OzFlux needed easy-to-use, standardised quality-control procedures and a system that could be used across the network sites. These procedures and system enable OzFlux to automate the quality control process and publish uniform quality datasets across the flux network. The system was written by members of the OzFlux community in the Python language so that it is open-source and cross-platform. The central idea was to automate as much of the data processing as possible, but to still leave a human to review and accept the results. This design makes use of the fact that while people are very good at recognising the patterns indicating good or bad data, they get bored very quickly. In contrast, it's hard to get computers to recognise patterns but they never get bored. The data infrastructure developed for OzFlux combines the best of both worlds.Getting some 11 different research groups to adopt a standard approach to managing near-real-time data streams has been one of the greater challenges for OzFlux, but it is now clear evidence of the facility’s success.
Mention John Hunt from KiwiFlux
Mention John Hunt from KiwiFlux
TERN’s OzFlux facility is a network of observational sites for measuring how Australian ecosystems exchange water and carbon with the atmosphere. But OzFlux is more than just a distributed network of measuring sites. It is also a distributed network of researchers bound by a common belief in the importance of researching Australian ecosystems, and linked by modern communications, technology and infrastructure to share data, ideas and work together efficiently.
The benefits of this cooperative development of data infrastructure are beginning to be realised, inside and outside the OzFlux community. Other research groups within Australia (e.g. the Regional Carbon Cycle Assessment Program) and the international ecosystem exchange community (via FluxNet) are already achieving efficiency and productivity gains by routinely using OzFlux-generated data for their projects. OzFlux remains committed to further refining its data infrastructure as it continues into its second decade of flux data collection.
The benefits of this cooperative development of data infrastructure are beginning to be realised, inside and outside the OzFlux community. Other research groups within Australia (e.g. the Regional Carbon Cycle Assessment Program) and the international ecosystem exchange community (via FluxNet) are already achieving efficiency and productivity gains by routinely using OzFlux-generated data for their projects. OzFlux remains committed to further refining its data infrastructure as it continues into its second decade of flux data collection.
Change CSIRO logo
The process starts at remote sites around the country – 23 at last count and growing – where researchers install towers ranging from a few metres in height to almost 100 m over tall forests. A suite of instruments is then installed on and around the towers. Sonic anemometers and open-path gas analysers measure the wind speed, wind direction, temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide concentration 10 to 20 times a second. Other instruments on the tower record the amount of incoming and outgoing solar and terrestrial radiation. Buried deep in the ground around the tower is an array of sensors measuring soil temperature, soil moisture and the heat stored in the soil. Rain gauges record precipitation. All this instrumentation takes power. At the remote sites this is provided by solar panels and generators, some of which have occasionally been souvenired by interested members of the public seeking a more direct return on this public investment in critical Australian research infrastructure.
Shows range in climates
Mention John Hunt from KiwiFluxTERN’s OzFlux facility is a network of observational sites for measuring how Australian ecosystems exchange water and carbon with the atmosphere. But OzFlux is more than just a distributed network of measuring sites. It is also a distributed network of researchers bound by a common belief in the importance of researching Australian ecosystems, and linked by modern communications, technology and infrastructure to share data, ideas and work together efficiently.
The process starts at remote sites around the country – 23 at last count and growing – where researchers install towers ranging from a few metres in height to almost 100 m over tall forests. A suite of instruments is then installed on and around the towers. Sonic anemometers and open-path gas analysers measure the wind speed, wind direction, temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide concentration 10 to 20 times a second. Other instruments on the tower record the amount of incoming and outgoing solar and terrestrial radiation. Buried deep in the ground around the tower is an array of sensors measuring soil temperature, soil moisture and the heat stored in the soil. Rain gauges record precipitation. All this instrumentation takes power. At the remote sites this is provided by solar panels and generators, some of which have occasionally been souvenired by interested members of the public seeking a more direct return on this public investment in critical Australian research infrastructure.
As noted – not all funded by TERNGreen markers are sites not funded by TERN-EIF and liable to close without support.# sites: 22#operating sites: 17#TERN supported: 12 #not TERN supported: 10Note: Not shown are Coolabah/Weeli Wolli; DaintreeSome of yellow pins are not funded by TERN (Dargo, Otway, Cape Trib)There are 2 x Daly R.Not sure if 1 or Daly’s are continuing, along with Dry & HSSpecial attention to NATTExisting OzFlux sites are located in a wide large range of climates and biomes: wet schlerophyll forest, dry schlerophyll forest , tropical notophyll vine forest, coastal heath, Mallee woodland, alpine C3 grasslands, tropical C4 grasslands, arid Mulga, and tropical savannas.
This is a story about a transformation in capability ....
What is a flux station network? Why does the ecosystem science and ESS community need one?
Researchers upload their data to the OzFlux portal every quarter as NetCDF files, a format chosen for its ability to store metadata in the same file as the data itself. The data collections on the portal and the metadata for the files stored in the collections can be viewed by anyone, but access to the data currently requires an account, which is obtained by simply registering from the portal's home page. Metadata describing each collection on the portal is also packaged in RIF-CS files and made available to any interested organisations such as the TERN Data Discovery Portal and Research Data Australia.
Tumbarumba was up 5 years later and operating 24/7/365.
"Accounts" refers to the number of people who have requested a login account with the OzFlux Data Portal. It's a crude measure. I'd like to get some information on hits and accesses from Google Analytics but have to find out how from Monash eResearch.No. of academic researchers and government agencies from October 2012.