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Title: The AmeriFlux network: A coalition of the willing

Journal Article · · Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [2];  [6]
  1. Indiana Univ., Bloomington, IN (United States). School of Public and Environmental Affairs
  2. US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA)., Tucson, AZ (United States). Southwest Watershed Research Center, Agricultural Research Service
  3. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States). Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
  4. Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States). Dept. of Biology
  5. Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States). School of Natural Resources
  6. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division
+ Show Author Affiliations

AmeriFlux scientists were early adopters of a network-enabled approach to ecosystem science that continues to transform the study of land-atmosphere interactions. In the 20 years since its formation, AmeriFlux has grown to include more than 260 flux tower sites in the Americas that support continuous observation of ecosystem carbon, water, and energy fluxes. Many of these sites are co-located within a similar climate regime, and more than 50 have data records that exceed 10 years in length. In this prospective assessment of AmeriFlux's strengths in a new era of network-enabled ecosystem science, we discuss how the longevity and spatial distribution of AmeriFlux data make them exceptionally well suited for disentangling ecosystem response to slowly evolving changes in climate and land-cover, and to rare events like droughts and biological disturbances. More recently, flux towers have also been integrated into environmental observation networks that have broader scientific goals; in North America these include the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Critical Zone Observatory network (CZO), and Long-Term Ecological Research network (LTER). AmeriFlux stands apart from these other networks in its reliance on voluntary participation of individual sites, which receive funding from diverse sources to pursue a wide, transdisciplinary array of research topics. This diffuse, grassroots approach fosters methodological and theoretical innovation, but also challenges network-level data synthesis and data sharing to the network. In conclusion, while AmeriFlux has had strong ties to other regional flux networks and FLUXNET, better integration with networks like NEON, CZO and LTER provides opportunities for new types of cooperation and synergies that could strengthen the scientific output of all these networks.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1476627
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1549405
Journal Information:
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Vol. 249, Issue C; ISSN 0168-1923
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 106 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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California air resources board forest carbon protocol invalidates offsets journal January 2019
Growth and opportunities in networked synthesis through AmeriFlux journal May 2019
TERN, Australia’s land observatory: addressing the global challenge of forecasting ecosystem responses to climate variability and change journal August 2019
Situating Ecology as a Big-Data Science: Current Advances, Challenges, and Solutions journal July 2018
How eddy covariance flux measurements have contributed to our understanding of Global Change Biology journal September 2019
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The trends in land surface heat fluxes over global monsoon domains and their responses to monsoon and precipitation journal April 2020
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