Growth And Opportunities In Networked Synthesis Through AmeriFlux

The Science

The AmeriFlux project now represents more than 5,000 registered scientists who use AmeriFlux observations for a range of applications, including ecosystem science, modeling, and remote sensing, as well as education and outreach.

The Impact

A team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) convened the series’ inaugural workshop, focused on emerging topics in decadal synthesis. Forty scientists gathered at LBNL for three days, discussing a range of topics. They identified six emerging themes of interest: (1) decadal ecosystem dynamics, (2) extreme event detection and ecological impact assessment, (3) plant phenological change, (4) methane cycling, (5) synthesis across multiple measurement types, and (6) land surface model-data integration.

Summary

The AmeriFlux community has evolved from a disparate group of collaborators focused on ecosystem carbon budgets to an established and highly organized network dedicated to improving the understanding of ecosystem function and providing observations to the broader scientific community. The growing mountain of observations necessitates a high degree of collaboration and opens opportunities to address questions that were previously unanswerable. Much still needs to be done, however, to improve connections to, and learn from, other networks around the world. The past decade has seen much change, and the community is excited about the progress yet to come.

Principal Investigator

Trevor Keenan
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
trevorkeenan@lbl.gov

Program Manager

Daniel Stover
U.S. Department of Energy, Biological and Environmental Research (SC-33)
Environmental System Science
daniel.stover@science.doe.gov

Funding

The AmeriFlux Management Project (AMP) is supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. DOE established AMP at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to support the broad AmeriFlux community and the AmeriFlux sites.

References