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Samford Ecological Research Facility Flux Data Release 2023_v1

Parent Dataset: Samford Ecological Research Facility Flux Data Collection
Ver: 2023_v1
Status of Data: on going
Update Frequency: biannually
Security Classification: unclassified
Viewed: 0
Accessed: 0

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 (v3.5.0) 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).

Samford flux station is situated on an improved (Paspalum dilatum) pasture in the humid subtropical climatic region of coastal south-east Queensland. Located only 20 km from the centre of Brisbane city, Samford Valley provides an ideal case study to examine the impact of urbanisation and land use change on ecosystem processes. The valley covers an area of some 82 km2 and is drained in the southern regions by the Samford creek, which extends some 13 km to Samford Village and into the South Pine River. The Samford Valley is historically a rural area experiencing intense urbanisation, with the population increasing almost 50% in the 10 years to 2006 (Morton Bay Regional Council, 2011). Within the Samford valley study region, the Samford Ecological Research Facility (SERF) not only represents a microcosm of current and historical land uses in the valley, but provides a unique opportunity to intensively study various aspects of ecosystem health in a secure, integrated and long term research capacity. Mean annual minimum and maximum temperatures at a nearby Bureau of Meteorology site are 13.1 °C and 25.6 °C respectively while average rainfall is 1102 mm.

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 site was established around the Samford Ecological Research Facility and managed by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

This work was jointly funded by the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), an Australian Government National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) project, and the Queensland Government Research Infrastructure Co-investment Fund (RICF).

Purpose
The purpose of the Samford site is to:
  • examine the influence of land-use change and intensification associated with peri-urban environments on soil, plant, animal and atmosphere interactions
  • measure the exchange of carbon dioxide, water vapour and energy between the soil/pasture and the atmosphere of an improved pasture in response to increasing harvest intervals
  • use micrometeorological techniques in conjunction with automatic GHG static closed chambers (CO2, N2O, CH4), soil moisture probe transects, stream water quality and terrestrial biomass measurements to close the carbon, water and nitrogen budgets of the improved pasture
  • develop a full global warming potential analysis from this data for this land use
  • examine the suitability of micrometeorological techniques in complex terrain in a sub-tropical environment.

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 productivity, 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 6/2/2010

Dates

Creation date

3/31/2023

Publication date

5/4/2024

Revision date

6/20/2024

Citation information

How to cite this collection:

Grace, P., Rowlings, D., Grace, L. & Tucker, D. (2024): Samford Ecological Research Facility Flux Data Release 2023_v1. Version 2023_v1. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. (Dataset). https://doi.org/10.25901/06ce-ra13

Access data

These data can be accessed from following links:

Rights and Licensing

CC-BY

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
Instruments
GCMD Science
ANZSRC - FOR
Horizontal Resolution
Temporal Resolution
Topic Categories
User Defined
  • AU-Sam
  • eddy covariance
  • pasture

People and Organisation

AuthorsAuthors
Co-authorsCo-authors
Point of ContactPoint of Contact
PublisherPublisher
Distributor's OrganisationDistributor's Organisation

Publications

PublicationsPublications

Data Quality

Data QualityData 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.
  • 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 DocumentationMethod Documentation
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Contacts
  • Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
  • Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
  • QLD 4068
  • Australia
Spatial coverage
Spatial description
20km from the centre of Brisbane, Queensland