Welcome to the Web Site for the FLUXNET Synthesis Data set.
This new database consists of over 960 site-years of data from over 253 eddy covariance measurement sites. Major efforts were made over the past 2 years to harmonize, standardize and gap-fill the ‘raw’ 30-minute data records submitted by participants. The database also includes value added products like gross primary productivity, ecosystem respiration, climate and site characteristic information. This database updates and supercedes the Marconi FLUXNET database that was produced in 2000 (with 97 years of data from 38 European and North American sites).
This database was produced in association with the FLUXNET-TCO synthesis workshop that was held in LaThuile, Italy, from February 18 to 22, 2007. The aim of the workshop was to produce a new and extensive FLUXNET dataset, discuss its scientific potential, propose new synthesis activities and start first analyses. The workshop was attended by 60 scientists, who represented a cross section of younger and established scientists and were members of regional networks from around the world: CarboeuropeIP, AmeriFlux, Fluxnet-Canada, LBA, Asiaflux, Chinaflux, USCCC, Ozflux, Carboafrica, Koflux, NECC, TCOS-Siberia and Afriflux. More information about the FLUXNET project can be found here.
A policy on data distribution to the wider scientific community was discussed and established during the Workshop. It was agreed that this dataset will be accessible only to teams of people associated with the Principal Investigators who contributed data or individuals who have worked to build the database. Afterward, the database may be made open, with investigator-specified restrictions to the wider biogeoscience community to improve contemporary land-surface-atmosphere transfer schemes implemented in global circulation models and global biogeochemical cycling models.
A call for synthesis paper proposals was open until May 15, 2007 and we received more than 50 papers proposed, covering a large range of traditional as well as new topics and methodologies related to carbon, water and energy balances and ecosystem-atmosphere exchange and biophysical as well as biogeochemical feedbacks therein. To minimize parallel work and maximise synergies between groups and efficiency of the analyses, a “Scientific Moderation Committee” has been created to coordinate the synthesis effort (Dennis Baldocchi, Jiquan Chen, Bev Law, Hank Margolis, Dario Papale, Markus Reichstein and Celso von Randow). Additional proposals have been submitted and approved since the original cut-off date and there are now more than 60 approved proposals.
We hope that this will be the first step into a new “global flux perspective” where the different eddy covariance networks will try more and more to harmonize and share data with the aim to increase the quality of the research and the collaboration. In future this dataset will be regularly updated with data from new sites.
Finally, a sincere thank to the institutions that sponsored the FLUXNET-TCO Workshop and are supporting the development and implementation of the database. These include Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry – Germany, University of Tuscia – Italy, FAO-GTOS, iLEAPs, US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation –USA, Microsoft Research eScience, Berkeley Water Center, University of California - Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of Virginia, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
