Welcome to the Web Site for the FLUXNET Synthesis Data set.
This site provides information about and access to the FLUXNET Synthesis datasets, designated LaThuile, Open, and Free Fair-Use. The overarching database consists of over 960 site-years of data from over 253 eddy covariance measurement sites, thereby updating and superceding the Marconi FLUXNET database that was produced in 2000 (with 97 years of data from 38 European and North American sites). The FLUXNET Synthesis database harmonizes, standardizes and gap-fills the ‘raw’ 30-minute data records of carbon dioxide, water vapour and energy fluxes submitted by 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. The database also includes value added products like gross primary productivity, ecosystem respiration, climate and site characteristic information.
This web site contains tools that assist scientists to acquire, query, plot and manipulate diverse combinations of data from many sites, for many years and with various independent variables. These tools are the product of a collaboration with database specialists at the national laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory , Max Planck Institute of Biogeochemistry, Jena ), Universities (Tuscia, Virginia, California-Berkeley) and industry (Microsoft). The collaboration was fostered by the fact that the FLUXNET network has grown to a large and unwieldy size (+500 sites) and the need to provide software tools to distribute and navigate through the database in an effective and efficient manner.
The LaThuile dataset is accessible only to teams of people associated with the Principal Investigators who contributed data to the dataset or individuals who have worked to build the database. At present this database is being mined by the FLUXNET data providers in accordance with the ‘fair-use’ criteria established by the global network and its regional members. 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). At present, there are now more than 70 approved proposals.
The FLUXNET community has also opened up two new data sets that are subsets of the LaThuile dataset. The largest subset will be be 'Open' for use by a group after acceptance of a proposal submitted to the steering committee. Any group of researchers interested in carrying out an analysis can submit a proposal. The policy for this 'open' subset can be found here and the template for submitting a proposal here. This data set will consist of site years from PIs who give us permission to designate their datasets with the status of ‘Open'. The second subset will be open for use by scientists based on an 'Free Fair-Use' policy'. The intent of these datasets is to provide flux data to the wider community of scientists who need flux data to test, parameterize and validate land surface schemes in climate models, dynamic vegetation models, remote sensing algorithms, hydrological models, global carbon cycle models and phenology algorithms. (the meeting kicking off the effort to open the datasets to the larger community was held at Asilomar meeting agenda and pictures)
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 you 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.
