TERN Data Discovery Portal

Description

This release consists of flux tower measurements of the exchange of energy and mass between the surface and the atmospheric boundary-layer using eddy covariance techniques. Data were processed using PyFluxPro (v3.4.15) as described by Isaac et al. (2017). PyFluxPro produces a final, gap-filled product with Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE) partitioned into Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) and Ecosystem Respiration (ER).

The Gatum Pasture flux station, established in February 2015, was located on private farmland in southwestern Victoria, approximately 300 km west of Melbourne. The pasture is composed of winter-active perennial grasses (Phalaris aquatica L. and Trifolium subteraneum L.) and is used for sheep and, sporadically, cattle grazing.

Credit
We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

The research was supported by the Australian Research Council (grants no. LP140100871 and DP180101229). Rob Lawrance and Georgie Luckock are thankfully acknowledged for providing access to their farm.

Purpose
The main aim of the Gatum Flux station was to quantify the fluxes in a winter-active perennial pasture that is minimally managed. The complete dataset can be used to relate the inter- and intra-annual variability of environmental variables with fluxes variability.

Data Processing

File naming convention

The NetCDF files follow the naming convention below:

SiteName_ProcessingLevel_FromDate_ToDate_Type.nc

SiteName: short name of the site
ProcessingLevel: file processing level (L3, L4, L5, L6)
FromDate: temporal interval (start), YYYYMMDD
ToDate: temporal interval (end), YYYYMMDD
Type (Level 6 only): Summary, Monthly, Daily, Cumulative, Annual

For the NetCDF files at Level 6 (L6), there are several additional 'aggregated' files. For example:

Summary: This file is a summary of the L6 data for daily, monthly, annual and cumulative data. The files Monthly to Annual below are combined together in one file.
Monthly: This file shows L6 monthly averages of the respective variables, e.g. AH, Fc, NEE, etc.
Daily: same as Monthly but with daily averages.
Cumulative: File showing cumulative values for ecosystem respiration, evapo-transpiration, gross primary product, net ecosystem exchange and production as well as precipitation.
Annual: same as Monthly but with annual averages.

Lineage

All flux raw data is subject to the quality control process OzFlux QA/QC to generate data from L1 to L6. Levels 3 to 6 are available for re-use. Datasets contain Quality Controls flags which will indicate when data quality is poor and has been filled from alternative sources. For more details, refer to Isaac et al. (2017).

Temporal coverage

From 2/9/2015 to 12/31/2021

Dates

Creation date

10/6/2023

Publication date

12/21/2023

Revision date

5/3/2024

Citation information

How to cite this collection:

Silva, M., McHugh, I. & Daly, E. (2023): Gatum Pasture Flux Data Release 2023_v2. Version 2023_v2. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. (Dataset). https://doi.org/10.25901/fhgy-s761

Access data

These data can be accessed from following links:

Access metadata

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Parent Dataset

Gatum Pasture Flux Data Collection

Rights and Licensing

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

TERN services are provided on an “as-is” and “as available” basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure.

Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN.

Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting

Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.

Keywords

Parameters

Platforms

Gatum Pasture Flux Station

Instruments

GCMD Science

ANZSRC - FOR

Horizontal Resolution

Point Resolution

Temporal Resolution

1 minute - < 1 hour

Topic Categories

Climatology/meteorology/atmosphere

User Defined

Pasture

People and Organisation

Authors

Point of Contact

Publisher

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network

Distributor's Organisation

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network

Publications

Publications

Data Quality

Data Quality

Data Quality Assessment Scope:

Processing levels

Under each of the data release directories, the netcdf files are organised by processing levels (L3, L4, L5 and L6):
- L3 (Level 3) processing applies a range of quality assurance/quality control measures (QA/QC) to the L1 data. The variable names are mapped to the standard variable names (CF 1.8) as part of this step. The L3 netCDF file is then the starting point for all further processing stages.
- L4 (Level 4) processing fills gaps in the radiation, meteorological and soil quantities utilising AWS (automated weather station), ACCESS-G (Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator) and ERA5 (the fifth generation ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate).
- L5 (Level 5) processing fills gaps in the flux data employing the artificial neural network SOLO (self-organising linear output map).
- L6 (Level 6) processing partitions the gap-filled NEE into GPP and ER.
Each processing level has two sub-folders ‘default’ and ‘site_pi’:
- default: contains files processed using PyFluxPro
- site_pi: contains files processed by the principal investigators of the site.
If the data quality is poor, the data is filled from alternative sources. Filled data can be identified by the Quality Controls flags in the dataset. Quality control checks include:
- range checks for plausible limits
- spike detection
- dependency on other variables
- manual rejection of date ranges
Specific checks applied to the sonic and IRGA data include rejection of points based on the sonic and IRGA diagnostic values and on either automatic gain control (AGC) or CO₂ and H₂O signal strength, depending upon the configuration of the IRGA.

Gatum Pasture Flux Tower was established in February 2015, and was decommissioned in February 2022. The processed data release is currently ongoing, biannually.
Isaac P., Cleverly J., McHugh I., van Gorsel E., Ewenz C. and Beringer, J. (2017). OzFlux data: network integration from collection to curation, Biogeosciences, 14: 2903-2928

Additional information

Method Documentation

Collections

Gatum Pasture Flux Data Collection

Related datasets

with matching subjects

Access data

Contacts

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
QLD 4068
Australia

Spatial coverage

Spatial description

The Gatum Pasture flux station is located on private farmland in southwestern Victoria, approximately 300 km west of Melbourne.