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).
Silver Plains Flux Station was established in 2019 in Interlaken, on the Tasmanian Central Plateau, on land owned and managed by the Tasmanian Land Conservancy.
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.
Silver Plains flux station is part of the Australian Mountain Research Facility and ves grants from the Australian Rese. This site is part of OzFlux Australia.
Purpose
The purpose of the Silver Plains flux tower is to:
- monitor exchanges of carbon dioxide, water vapour and energy in a high-altitude grassy peatland ecosystem on the Tasmanian Central Plateau
- quantify the carbon balance of the ecosystem, along with the key components of net ecosystem exchange, gross primary productivity and ecosystem respiration
- identify key environmental and climatic drivers of carbon, water and energy fluxes
- complement manual chamber measurements of net ecosystem CO2 exchange in an adjacent climate change experiment
- utilise measurements alongside manual chamber measurements and ancillary environmental variables to model ecosystem carbon dynamics under a future climate
- utilise the measurements for parameterising forage and grazing models
- utilise the measurements for parameterising and validating remote sensing measurements over semi-arid savanna ecosystems
- utilise the measurements for parameterising and validating the Earth System models to better understand the effects of climate change.
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
- 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).