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 (v3.5.0) 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).

Robson Creek site is part of the Far North Queensland (FNQ) Rainforest Site along with affiliated monitoring sites at Cape Tribulation (Daintree Rainforest Observatory) and Cow Bay (Daintree Discovery Centre). The flux station is located at the foothills of the Lamb Range, part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, and north-west of a 25 ha census plot established by CSIRO in 2012.

The forest is classified as Regional Ecosystem (RE) 7.3.36a, complex mesophyll vine forest (Queensland Government, 2006). There are 211 species in the adjacent 25 ha plot, and average tree height is 28 m, ranging from 23 to 44 m. Elevation of the site is 711 m and mean annual precipitation is 2000 mm. The upland rainforests of the Atherton Tablelands are some of the most biodiverse and carbon dense forests in Australia. The landform of the 25 ha plot which is in the dominant wind direction from the station is moderately inclined with a low relief, a 30 m high ridge running north/south through the middle of the plot and a 40 m high ridge running north/south on the eastern edge of the plot.

The instruments are mounted on a free standing station at 40 m. Fluxes of heat, water vapour and carbon dioxide are measured using the open-path eddy flux technique. Supplementary measurements above the canopy include temperature, humidity, windspeed, wind direction, rainfall, incoming and reflected shortwave radiation and net radiation.

Note: Level 3 data for 2015 - 2018 were updated in 2018 correcting a rainfall issue in 2015 and a wind direction issue 2016 - 2018. A data gap from 2019-02-14 to 2019-02-21 was due to a major power supply failure.

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 is managed by James Cook University.

This work is part of a collaborative study between JCU and a number of other institutions at the Robson Creek node of the FNQ Rainforest Site (CSIRO, ANU, Griffith, La Trobe, UQ). The work was 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 Robson Creek flux station is:

to measure exchanges of carbon dioxide, water vapour and energy between the tropical upland rainforest in Far North Queensland and the atmosphere using
to quantify the changes in carbon and water balances of an Australian tropical rainforest on a long term basis in the face of climate change
to present the results from the study in real time to the public and inform the public on what these results mean.

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 8/1/2013

Dates

Creation date

3/31/2023

Publication date

5/4/2024

Revision date

5/7/2024

Citation information

How to cite this collection:

Liddell, M. & Weigand, N. (2024): Robson Creek Flux Data Release 2023_v1. Version 2023_v1. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. (Dataset). https://doi.org/10.25901/wbx0-f291

Access data

These data can be accessed from following links:

Access metadata

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Parent Dataset

Robson Creek 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

Robson Creek Flux Station

Instruments

ANZSRC - FOR

Horizontal Resolution

Point Resolution

Temporal Resolution

1 minute - < 1 hour

Topic Categories

Climatology/meteorology/atmosphere

User Defined

AU-Rob
Wet Tropics World Heritage Area
complex mesophyll vine forest
eddy covariance

People and Organisation

Authors

Liddell, Michael

Co-authors

Weigand, Nico

Point of Contact

Publisher

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network

Distributor's Organisation

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network

Publications

Publications

Beringer J., Hutley L. B., McHugh I., Arndt S. K., Campbell D., Cleugh H. A., Cleverly J., Resco de Dios V., Eamus D., Evans B., Ewenz C., Grace P., Griebel A., Haverd V., Hinko-Najera N., Huete A., Isaac P., Kanniah K., Leuning R., Liddell M. J., Macfarlane C., Meyer W., Moore C., Pendall E., Phillips A., Phillips R. L., Prober S. M., Restrepo-Coupe N., Rutledge S., Schroder I., Silberstein R., Southall P., Yee M. S., Tapper N. J., van Gorsel E., Vote C., Walker J. and Wardlaw T. (2016). An introduction to the Australian and New Zealand flux tower network - OzFlux, Biogeosciences, 13: 5895-5916

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.
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

Robson Creek 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

Robson Creek, 24 km northeast of Atherton on the western slopes of the Lamb Range in Danbulla National Park, within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.