Established in 1996 and currently made up of sites throughout the Western Hemisphere, the Ameriflux network
provides continuous observations of ecosystem-level exchanges of carbon dioxide, water, energy and momentum across multiple time-scales. The eddy flux technique allows continuous measurements of the flow of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other gases just above the forest canopy at a micro-climate level.
Flux towers are an integral part of the North American Carbon Program
, a multi-agency effort to measure and understand the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide in North America and in adjacent ocean regions. The flux towers provide information specific to one ecosystem type or condition. Increasingly, multiple flux towers are installed in locations with contrasting environmental conditions to increase understanding of the effects of different treatments (e.g., harvesting), gradients of vegetation composition, or age chronosequences. Data from flux sites help test and validation of physiological models of C exchange and are critical to relating fluxes and remote sensing data.
FluxNet from the Ameriflux Site and Data Exploration System has 6 Flux Towers within the H4SE geographical domain or in close proximity, which provide useful observational information for validation. Datasets available in this site include flux tower point data (shapefile) and complete datasets downloaded from Ameriflux.
Click Here for Flux Tower Data level description, process information and detailed information about biological, ancillary, disturbance, and metadata.