March 27, 2021

New Reporting Format for Soil Respiration

Researchers develop new reporting format for ESS-DIVE soil respiration data and metadata based on input from the global research community.

This reporting format focuses on chamber-level data and metadata describing soil-to- atmosphere CO₂ fluxes.

[Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) from Bond-Lamberty, B., et al. “A Reporting Format for Field Measurements of Soil Respiration.” Ecological Informatics 62, 101270 (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2021.101280]

The Science

Field observations of the soil-to-atmosphere carbon dioxide (CO₂) flux—soil respiration (RS)—are a prime example of ‘long tail’ data, or data that existed in many dispersed publications and incompatible formats, without either centralized databases or a standard reporting format. These storage and formatting gaps have hindered scientific transparency, analytical reproducibility, and syntheses with respect to this globally important component of the carbon cycle. To begin addressing these gaps, scientists developed a reporting format focused on RS fluxes, with the goal of optimizing data discoverability and usability while not placing an undue burden on data contributors.

The Impact

This new RS reporting format was developed with considerable community input, and provides a realistic and flexible framework for data providers, instrument manufacturers, and database designers. More generally, such reporting formats provide consistency and interpretability, making data more findable (by providing a pathway to data archiving), accessible (through free and open data repositories), and usable.

Summary

Soil respiration—the soil-to-atmosphere CO₂ flux— observations have historically lacked centralized databases and standard reporting formats, thereby hindering scientific transparency, analytical reproducibility, and syntheses with respect to this globally important component of the carbon cycle. To develop a relevant and useful reporting format, scientists investigated previous RS data collection efforts, examined lessons learned from related databases and data-oriented networks (e.g., FLUXNET) in earth and ecological sciences, and engaged in the process of community consultation. The proposed reporting format focuses on chamber-level data and metadata, specifying measurement conditions and, for a given measurement period defined by beginning and ending timestamps, a mean RS flux (or CO₂ concentration) and associated ancillary measurements. Drawing from research community input , the research team also developed research data and metadata templates to support data collection that adheres to the reporting format. Fundamentally, this format aims to enable findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data, while providing ‘future-proofing’ capabilities to support re-analyses using as yet unknown algorithms or approaches. This proposed reporting format is openly available online and is intended to be a dynamic document, subject to further community feedback and/or change.

Principal Investigator

Ben Bond-Lamberty
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
[email protected]

Program Manager

Brian Benscoter
U.S. Department of Energy, Biological and Environmental Research (SC-33)
Environmental System Science
[email protected]

Funding

This research was supported by community funds from Environmental Systems Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem (ESS-DIVE), through the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) within the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science. This research was also supported by the AmeriFlux Management Project, funded by DOE’s Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

References

Bond-Lamberty, B., et al. "A Reporting Format for Field Measurements of Soil Respiration." Ecological Informatics 62, 101270 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2021.101280.